A NEW MASS movement is on the march, shattering the customary peace of market towns and shire counties.
Angry Tory voters, Liberals, and many with no party affiliation are joining teaching and local government trade unionists and Labour activists in half-day strikes, demonstrations, rallies, pickets and publicity campaigns.
The impact of their protests is making many Tory MPs in marginal and not-so-marginal seats quake in fear for their future. And this in turn piles additional pressure onto ministers.
These are battles that can be won.
The movement is in opposition to swingeing cuts looming in education and other council services. The cuts packages are being implemented by county councils, but everybody knows they arise from policy decisions of the Tory government.
Right across the country, councils are reeling under a three-way squeeze, imposed by a reduction in central government funding, by the unfunded increase in teachers' pay, and by rigid Tory 'caps' on the amounts councils are allowed to raise through council tax.
Jobs at risk
The cuts threaten thousands of teaching jobs, and thousands more working in services for the elderly, the fire service, the arts, and other council-funded projects.
The revolt has thrown together an immensely broad and disparate cross-section of people: parents, school students, trade unionists, and pensioners. the fight.
There is no short-cut formula that can win. The Tory government will be forced to retreat only by a combined and wide-reaching campaign, including strikes and the threat of all-out action by teachers and other unions; local and national demonstrations like that called in London on March 25; and a mounting agitation of local communities on a scale big enough to convince Major that the Tories will suffer irreparable damage if the cuts proceed. - Labour councillors in many areas have so far sadly discredited themselves by debating or even proposing cuts packages in council chambers while protestors demand they join They must be told to stop doing Major's dirty work and come down firmly on the side of the vast majority - fighting back!
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 78. 25 February 1995, Page 2. ing was called jointly by the organise support to the sponta-