NOT EVEN the demobilising geniuses at Congress House could completely thwart the impact of 'Jobs Action Day' last Thursday, when the official unemployment figures crashed 3 million. Thousands of local government workers demonstrated - and that is no accident. For they know that up to 100,000 local government jobs face the axe unless a fightback begins.
But against this background of cuts, unemployment and recession, the government is in deep difficulty and the signs of resistance are Tories are locked in conflict over the pits crisis, torn between being seen to give in oralternatively to face parliamentary defeat on the issue.
Some small, but important, industrial disputes havedeveloped in the past period-at Yarrows shipyard, at Peugeot and 3 at Fords (see page 2). On 5 March there is the co-ordinated ballot for strike action against cuts and redundancies in the public sector, backed by the NUM, RMT and other public sector unions.
Most of all, there are welcome signs in the labour movement of reorganisation, and of resistance to the defeatist politics of 'new realism among the activists and militant left.
On 27 February, in an initiative by North West Miners Support Groups, a conference will be held which will be attended by different groups of workers in struggle. On 17 April, the Socialist Campaign Group Network conference meets to plan the fight against 'Clintonisation' in the Labour Party.
But most important is a conference in Stokeon-Trent on 6 March to found a Public Sector Alliance'. A huge turnout for this conference is essential.
The next stage of the Tory offensive is all about dealing decisive blows to every aspect of the public sector. This not only means prily of jobs. emerging. The VAND SNE MUEL period.
Mark Salmor vatising rail and the Post Office, but completerestructuring local government and the NHS with the loss of hundreds of thousands A labour movement body which can unite the struggles in the public sector and beyond, and reach out to an alliance with service users and non-organised workers and the unemIVER JOB Victims of market madness: Leyland Daf workers in Birmingham ployed, has been urgently needed in the last The Stoke conference has the official backing of UCATT, and the president of NUPE is speaking. The initiative in launching this body has been taken by Militant. However, if Militant try to repeat what they did with the poll tax campaign, and the Broad Left Organising Committee, and keep it under their own tight organisational control, it will crash and a major opportunity will be wasted.
For the left, then, the response to this danger Nation impossible.
VAN vening Mai CAMPAIGN SAlE 5239 ganises the unemployed. must be to build the conference to a size and attendance which will render such an operUnemployment is not some sad fact of life, which the government can do little about. It is a deliberately-fashioned weapon of the ruling class. All the apologists for the ruling class have said, when confronted with the 3 million jobless figure, that at least two and a half million unemployed were necessary to 'control wage inflation'. That's the reality: Major's 1.5 per cent public sector wage freeze only stands any chance because of the tear of unemployment. Real unemployment is probably 14-15 per cent of the workforce. But probably a full half of the working class ives in daily fear of the sack, knowing they have no prospect of getting another That, combined with the anti-union laws, weighs down heavily on the possibility of a fightback. But the vicious circle can and must be broken. That means championing every single struggle, no matter how small, that is actually launched in this unfavourable climate. It means uniting the struggles. But it also means in that process reasserting someof the fundamentals of working class struggle against unemployment. The demands must be raised for worksharing with no loss of pay, a sliding scale of hours to divide up the work available between the whole workforce, and banning overtime. And it means raising the demand that the labour movement orThese are basic demands of working class unity and solidarity. Without such measures, the outcome of the present recession will be to deepen division and fear in the working class.
As the Tories slide deeper into crisis over the miners, the economy and Maastricht, the left has a full agenda in the struggle to build the Public Sector Affiance
SAVE VANSE