middle class against the fight for better services. Options such ds deficit
ment which is trampling on workers placency of the TUC, Labour leaders and union bureaucrats.
Wto convince workers to confront their councils and refuse to accept the right of
contractors to take over
Every joint shop stewards committee should discuss the Green Paper proposals and make sure the members know now what is in store. They should then draw up a plan for fighting it. Trades councils have to campaign actively against privatisation, linking the public sector and private sector unions. They should also be setting up sub committees to
400 A ETH budgetting were at one stage considered by the Regional party. They opted for rates rises as a approach. In fact only
powerful mobilisation against the government could possibly have won the day, whatever strategy was adopted
In some respects the tactics employed by the leading lights in the Labour Group in the early days were exemplary. Far from confining their fight to the Council chambers, combined their public statements with extensive speaking tours of spoke unite onsend workplaces. They spoke Council employees to take strike action.
This lead coincided with moves from the rank and file groups in NALGO and the Lead one day strike in tune . estrike Teachers union, was extremely successful in bringing out many workers who had never believed in strike action but saw the crucial need to letend services. An even larger one day strike tollowed a few weeks later . Thirty thousand people marched through Edinburgh on a weekday, one of the largest demonstrations tor years. Socialist Viewpoint, No. 4, March 1985. Page 14
work on linking the workers with the community who will bear the brunt of privatising, especially women in those communities, who will be ex pected to pick up the shortfall in service which the privateers cannot provide. Union branches should pass resolutions now and force the unions nationally to back them if they take strike action and to argue for supporting a miners have lost a lot but they action from other workers. have stood up tor their industry and have refused to go down on their knees to the Tories. Other workers did not given them the solidarity they deserved; but the least we can do is to have the guts to fight for our own industries and follow the magnificent lead that they gave us.
However within the day of triumph lay he roots of the complete fiasco which was to follow. As nursery worker in the Lothian Region I experienced the willingness of workers with very little union experience to go on strike when they telt i could make a difference. However the da of action offered not one iota of a direction. At the rally, Scottish union leaders waxed lyrical and committed themselves to nothing. It is not surprising that we went back to work wondering what would happen next.
It was the next few weeks that defined the sell-out which followed, a sell out which resulted from the traditional conservatism of the local union leaderships, undoubtedly under pressure from their naional leaderships to stop any moves to ex end the militancy. In 'NALGO almost thousand workers debated the strategy and the left's options for all out strike action failed to get more than a large minority behind them, whilst the branch officers assured us there were "other ways"
There were also two large meetings o Lothian shop stewards, the second of