Unemployment in the Walsall area (population 250,000) has doubled in the last 12 months. Engineering and small-scale metal industries are being DATPT001E 10110 2012020 0300213S capital - a recent survey showed that some of the plant had been un use since 1870! The decline of the car industry is a further factor.
The social spending cuts will mean a postponement or me desperately needed new hospital, and a cut of 28 per cent in school books and equipment because no compensation has been made for inflation. The last straw is the likelihood of the closure of the rail-link between Walsall and Birmingham - used by 3,000 people a day.
Action was discussed last week by sixty trade unionists who met to launch a campaign against unemployment and the cuts in the teeth of opposition from the right-wing trade council.
Derailment of the committee seemed The Tory Party love-in with the unions has come to an abrupt end judg. ing by the speech of Shadow Employment Secretary James Prior last weekend. Scots Tories heard him threatening new laws on picketing and a ban on Social Security benefits for stikers.
Just a few months back, the startled press heard Margaret Thatcher • tell a Conservative trade unionists conference of the need to go into the trade unions'. Prior himself spearheaded the drive into the staff union ASTMS, voting in a somewhat bewildered way for Communist Party candidates in local union elections!
What lies at the root of this shift back to traditional controntationist sentiments? Many top Tories, including Thatcher herself, were never really convinced by the need to make concessions to the trade union bureaucracy. WEAKNESS She and others argued that the trade unions were now starting to operate from a position of weakness. The acceptance of an incomes limit of 4½ per cent - for which the Tory leaders would have been crucified two years ago - seemed proof positive of her view.
The irony of the trade union leaders tumbling over one another to accept the pay deal and keep out the Tories is that they provide precisely the conditions for the demise of the Government by attacking the living standards of Labour's electoral base.
The fight for action on 26 May decided on by representatives of six million workers at the National Assembly against Unemployment in March is an uphill one. Workers who feel that the time has come to take firm action not onlv have to confront the open threats of Scanon the cards when local Tribunite MP Geoff Edge addressed the meeting: "The cuts won't be necessary if we control imports. Let's have British jobs for British workers."
This little Englander was waving his Union Jack for a prosperous capitalist Britain - he made no mention of sociallon and Jones but also the cowardice of the left' leaders and the Communist Party, who refused to face up to the anti-working class actions of the TUC General Council top dogs.
The decisions for industrial action on 26 May in Dundee, Glasgow, Sheffield and other industrial centres - partial and fragmented though they are - provide a vital opportunity to group together all those forces who find themselves a fighting minority in the labour The first steps have got to be taken at the local level. mation of action committees can address themselves immediately to the task of making sure that the minority is seen and heard at the special congress of the TUC on 16 FIGHT The demand must go up for those trade union leaders who have been mandated by their union conTerences against the 4½ percent limit to organise all those unions who have a similar position into a fight against it - and its architects and supporters in the trade union movement.
fight by bodies like the Walsall cuts of this Labour Government's policies.
Val Jones opposition in the localities against the vicious triangle of unemployment, cuts and incomes policy will require more than protest action. Unemployment at presents tends to hit workers out of the blue, without time for the preparation of tactics like oceupations and demands that can provide work for all, such as work-sharing without loss of pay.
to turn in increased profits. The demand must go up for the opening of the books to investigate the plans The forsent who, while opposing the cuts, echoed Edge's nationalist sentiments with calls IMG and some Labour Party members met Edge's dangerous ideas head on. The revenue is devoted to the repayment of debt charges was brougnt to the tore. A resolution adopted called on the Labour ough Council to oppose the cuts, demand the restoration of all cuts, the exposure
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leTTIng the Tories