Sidney Charlton Docking is a former chairman of Durham County Council, Robert Hush Urwin is a former member of Durham County and Chester-le-Street Rural Councils, and Matthew Allen has an even more impressive record. He is a former chairman of the old North-East Development Council and the Regional Advisory Planning Committee, a former Durham County alderman and Planning Committee chairman, and a former chairman of Washington Urban Council.
The three Labour councillors are also ex-pupils of former GWU bureaucrat and Labour Party NEC member Andrew Cunninghamfriend of T. Dan Smith, the self-proclaimed architect John Poulson, and Shadow Cabinet minister Reggie Maudling. All these-with the exception of Maudling-are now in jail.
Pickets
The following day the trial began of Gateshead Labour councillor Francis McKenna, who is also charged with fiddling building contracts together with Sussex businessman Cyril Arthur Rance, director of Carlton Contracts Ltd. The judge in this trial is Lord Justice Mais, who sent down the Shrewsbury 2, and it will no doubt be of great interest to the Shrewsbury pickets to see what punishment Mais hands out to these worthies.
Next month the trial begins of yet another Gateshead Labour councillor, Gerard Thomas Herron, who is also charged with fiddling contracts for Carlton Contracts. In the near future seven policemen, two policewomen and another respectable businessman, all from Felling, Gateshead, will go on trial charged with more than 40 offences involving theft, receiving, burglary, etc. The former head of the Co. Durham Police Authority is none other than Andrew Cunningham!
While all these trials have been coming up the scaffolders at T. Dan Smith's prestige project at Eldon Square in Newcastle have been on On Monday 5 May three former Co. Durham Labour councillors were sent for trial accused of receiving payments over a period of 14 years from a local building contractor, Sidney MeCullough, to make sure he got contracts dished out by the local Council. Geoff Ryan 'statement of 14 scaffolders sacked for having a few hours off work. Ten pickets are also due to go for trial. The Eldon Square site is 51% owned by the Labour-controlled Newcastle City Council. The main contractors are a Darlington firm, Leslie's, who sub-contract to McAlpine's-the firm with which the scaffolders are in dispute.
Leslie's is a subsidiary of Bovis (one of whose directors is Sir Keith Joseph, 'law and order caveman of the Tory shadow cabinet and Mrs. Thatcher's most ardent admirer). Bovis unfortunately have a rather bad reputation for tax-fiddling, so they tend to operate under other names nowadavs.
In the early 1960s Leslie's built a large number of multi-storey blocks of flats in Newcastle, mainly under contracts got from T. Dan Smith, then chairman of the Housing Committee. Sixteen of these blocks are now falling down. Yet the City Council has given the lucrative Eldon Square contract to these people who have placed the lives of hundreds of working class families in possible danger.
The Labour Council has had a lot to say about the Eldon Square workers 'holding the public to ransom". It has said nothing about Leslie's endangering workers lives.
Friendly
The Council has of course been extremely friendly to McAlpine's (who recently gave a large donation to the pro-Common Market Keep Britain In Campaign). After all, T. Dan Smith gave McAlpine's the contract for Eldon Square and the Civic Centre (cost £40 m and £5m respectively). McAlpine's also have the contract for the Tyne Bridge House ana built the new Tyne-Wear County Council offices.
INSIDE that the Dan Smith/Poulson case was no isolated case. Corruption is rife throughout the Labour Party in the North East. However, corruption within the Labour Party is by no means limited to the North East. Peter Byrne, former Mayor of Pontefract, was jailed two years ago for corruption; Ronald Dileigh, leader of Northampton Borough Council, is currently awaiting trial along with T. Dan Smith on corruption charges;
expected to face charges following the exposure of their connections with Crudens, for whom T. Dan Smith once worked.
- Here to stay Labour Party. Social democracy —at best the rough edges can be up accepting it along with its dirtier methods-graft and corruption. is to organise to make sure that wing General Secretary, Clive Jeninside and outside the National Health Service. Motions on this issue-which had originally been ment cash injection of £1000 million into the NHS and a united a campaign to be mounted by the From this brief history it' is clear several councillors in Dundee are also Corruption is no accident in the accepts that capitalism is here to stay knocked off. If you don't organise for the overthrow of capitalism, you end more militant policies. The task now these decisions are put into practice.
Despite opposition from its leftkins, the ASTMS Conference went on record to fight private practice both on private patients. moved by IMG members of ASTMSalso called for an immediate Governcampaign for a Workers' Inquiry into CAMPAIGN The NUPE Conference called for The possibility of corruption inside the labour movement Is strengthened by the lack of internal democracy in working class organisations. In the Labour Party this factor has been increased by the decline in its organisational strength over the past decades-many ward organisations are empty shells exercising no control at all over local councillors.
Nor do the trade unions and Labour Party have any control over their supposed representatives in Parliament. Brian Walden, Labour MP for Birmingham Lady wood, recently suggested that the British Leyland plants at Bathgate and Cowley should be closed, throwing tens of thousands of workers and their families on to the dole. Walden receives £5,000 a year to represent betting and gaming interests in the House of Commons-not the interests of his working class voters.
Furthermore Labour MPs have no control over the Labour Cabinet-as recent events on the Common Market referendum have demonstrated. The cies.
VERY SHOR The ASTMS decision on private practice and or an immediate casu injection into the NHS, as well as the demand for a Workers' Inquiry, give important backing to the struggle of all health workers like those members of NUPE who over the last year were to the fore in the nurses pay fight and instituted a series of bans Obviously the Labour Government is not going to welcome any of these deaisions. Nor are they likely to get anything more than a passing nod from the TUC, who are desperately clinging on to the social contract. The Labour Government has no plans for improving the NHS, nor does it intend to come to the aid of the low-paid health workers. In fact, as Healey's Budget makes clear, the social services and workers in the public sector will have to carry the burden of the capitalist crisis if Wilson and company have their way.
DENOUNCED
Clive Jenkins of ASTMS understands that only too well. Although the Union President, Len Wells, had denounced Healey's Budget and its attacks on the working class in his opening speech, Jenkins pulled every trick in the book to get the motions opposing the social contract remitted back to the Union executive TUC, Scottish TUC, Labour Party, Scottish Labour Party, Co-op Party, LYS, and a majority of Labour MPs all voted against the EEC-yet the Labour Government simply ignores this and decide to stay in. Contempt -The attitude of Wilson, Jenkins and company is in no way different from the total contempt for the working class showed by T. Dan Smith. As Smith once put it: "The vote never solved any problem. By the vote you could prove that Beethoven was a footballer.' Without the fight for the overthrow of the capitalist system which necessitates the maximum democracy and involvement inside all the organisations of the labour movement and the accountability of repre sentatives at all levels, then corruption is inevitable and will continue. It is the logical counterpart of the social contract, and the rest of Wilson's anti-working class poliPOUL SON - T. DAN SN PET ORATION DEVELOPMENT MOTTO: SAFE AS HOUSES FLATS FOR SALE Bill 'is the best way to fight inflatio and argued for 'a Five-Year Plan' Jenkins' suggestions are nothing mor than a diversion from the main issue wnich is now to right for a sliding scale of wages; how to oppose redun dancies; and how to fight for nationalisation under workers' conORGANISED Any real programme of nationali sation will not be carried through unless the workers are organised to fight the employers and unless a definite break is made with the Wilson leadership of the Labour Party and its Tory policies.
If members of ASTMS and NUPE are going to put the decisions around the NHS into practice that will mean using the resources of the unions to back the next round of wage claims inside the health servic Furthermore it will mean backing with solidarity action the steps take by health workers to put an embarg on all private practice both inside and outside the NHS The Medical Committee Against Private Practice, which has been campaigning on these demands, is holding a conference this autumn. Members of both ASTMS and NUPI should make sure that their branche regional committees, etc. are repre
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DO YOu THINK WE CAN BLAME IT ON THE UNIONS?