Coventry 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.
Tand the have already delegated representatives to
Wrest 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.
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