The Left still needs to organise and cam paign more efficiently and raise the level of political discussion in order to prepare to take control locally. At the moment we tend to react only against the latest cuts or insanities of the Labour Group.
To aid this process, Socialist Viewpoint supporters locally produce monthly 6-page duplicated bulletin which we give out tree.
This forces us to seek out and to discuss amongst ourselves the key events and Issues and to relate them to our national and international perspectives. The bulletin also stimulates discussion with our readers which helps us to develop our politics.
In order to increase political discussion, we have encouraged one of our sup porters, Dave Spencer, a West Midiande County Councillor. go forward for parliamentary selection for the North East CLP. This has involved him speaking on our politics at a number of shortlisting meetings to Trade Union and Labour Party branches.
As far as campaigns are concerned, our supporters were involved in the occupation of Bell Green Primary School which was due to be closed by the Council. Although unable to prevent closure of heir school, the Bell Green Action Grour used its experience to help build a citywide organisation of defence committees when a further 8 schoole were threatened with closure. The building of such organisations, the encouragement of mass action, is central to the renewal of the labour movement.
We have also been part of a Housing survey and campaign in the same Bell Green/Wood End Council Estate. From these we have set up intormal political education groups in people's houses, which have been very succesiful
We have helped build an END group locally which heid a large peace rally on VE Day with some Hiroshima survivors and a speaker from the Philippines Support Group.
We hope here to use the international symbolism of Coventry's destruction and its town twinning policy (with 31 separate towns at the last count) to raise political debate on CND, Nuclear Free Zones and international policies.
In their Trade Unions our supporters are variously involved in the fight against redundancies at GEC and against cuts in the Health Service.
Alongside other union activists, our supporters were responsible for the recent successful campaign to persuade GEC to organise cervical cancer screening. This action (featured in Channel 4's Union World) uncovered a number of women who required treatment.
Throughout the miners' strike we maintained a regular presence in the local Support Committee and on the picket lines at Coventry Colliery. We carried out consistent support work, collecting money and food
All four Coventry CLPs passed resolutions calling for amnesty and reinstate ment for all sacked miners and 2 of them chose this as their Annual Conference resolutions.
This was in part due to SV supporters who initiated the appeal sent by the Supsort Committee to local trade unions anc abour Party branches. in 3 ot the 4 OLPs it was SV supporters who moved the amnesty and reinstatement resolutions.
Since the end of the strike, SV supporters have initiated through the loca Support Committee a succesful Adopt e Prisoner campaign and organised through Coventry South West CLP the only continuing street collection in the city.
AFTER Losing the vote in the Council on June 11 by the narrowest of margins, i.e. the Lord Mayor's casting vote, Coventry Campaign Against School Closures went to the courts to try to get th decision overturned.
Our case rested on the fact that the Council's "consultation" on the cuts package, laughably titled "Future Choices" but better known as "No Future. No Choice", was inadequate. Anyone who had been to one of the Council's "consultation" meetings would have been forced to agree. It was obvious that the leadership of the Labour Group had already decided on cuts and the meetings were just a sham and a cover up. In addition they refused to give the relevant information on the schools concerned so that alternatives could be drawn up.
To cap it all they hadn't a clue about how they were going to implement the plan to ciose the secondary schools. How do you run a temporary split site school with anything up to 2,000 pupils?
One school, St Michael's C of E primary school, took action in the courts before everyone else, because they stop the Council voting on June 11 on closthe school by judice. After June 11 the rest of the Action Groups in the Campaign decided to follow suit and try to get a joint case with
This was important: the Council were given the chance to hang themselves with their own rope and they took it. The cuts consultation" replien from people and organisations; only 43 (less than 59) were in favour of closing anything.
Our litigation was based on the Brent case* precedent and we arqued that the Council had failed to consult property failed to listen to the wishes of the people of Coventry and failed to justily closures.
However, we failed to get a joint case between St Michael's and the rest of the threatened schools, so we had to hire a barrister to attend the preliminary hearing for the St Michael's case. On September 23, after 4 days, the judge ruled that there was no case for the Council to answer.
In his statement he agreed that No Future No Choice was a load of rubbish, inadequately documented and costed; but the "consultation" as a whole was satisfac tory because of the number of meetings held. Quantity, but not quality
In reply to the parents' the difficulty of getting hold of information Socialist Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986. Page 22
schools:
Judge puts Labour Group
"top of the class"
By MATTHEW JONES on the schools and the closures he had the excellent documentation counter arguments to the Council (all of wheh the Council then ignored!).
The case has its political lessons, besides the obvious one about the nature of the capitalist courts. There is also the comparison of the politics of a highly paid state functionary and Coventry's Labour(?) Council. If he had ruled in favour of St Michael's I could have been said that he showed more concern for Coventry's people than the Labour Group As it is, Coventry's Labour Group has shown that it has roughly the same degree of socialist politics as a High Court Judge!
The School Action Group: which together with NUPE and the NUT make up the Coventyry Campaign Against School Closures, are determined to fight on. On Tuesday October 8, 45 people attended a Campaign meeting. This is roughly the same number who came to the first meeting on March 19,
After 7 months people who were new to political action at the start have learnt a lot about the methods of the Council and the action needed to combat them. The meeting decided to drop the court action and mount a political campaign against
Council including occupations necesary.
The real key to success in this campaign lies in a joint fight by Action Groups, the Labour Party and the Council unions. With the government's privatisation plans in the offing, all jobs are at risk.
and the have already delegated representatives to rest of the Council unions should do the same. A mobilising campaign should be started to inform every union member of the situation and ask for a vote for strike action against school closures and against privatisation.
Whether this will happen or not is another question. The attitude of most of the manual unions varies over sweetheart deals with management over redundancies.
On- the teaching and clerical side besides NUT and NUPE, NAS/UWT has problems with its national leadership and NALGO's local leadership can't carry its membership against the management. The next 6 months will see whether we succeed. *Brent case: Brought and won by Brent parents against Brent Council for trying to close two comprehensives without proper consultation.