CLAY CROSS ON THE BOIL

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THE CLAY CROSS issue is on the boil again. The High Court has insist: ed that the ex-Clay Cross councillors pay surcharges totalling nearly 27000 — plus interest at 7961 This is the price they are being asked to pay for not implementing the Housing Finance Act when the Tories were in office.

But the ex-councillors, several of whom are unemployed, have all transferred their possessions to their next of kin. So it is now up to the District Auditor to decide how the charges can be enforced.

The Labour Government is playing its customaty role. Many other councals foce similar penalties for non-implementation. But as David Skinner, one of the ex-councilions, puts it: "Anthony Crosland (Environ ment Sccretar is prepared to sit on councillors thrown on the slag heap."

One of the possible outcomes of the High Court decison is that the surcharge will eventually be paid by some mysterious donor' as was the case when the ALEW were fined for contempt in May.

Some of the Labour lefts" will be arguing tor the surcharge to be paid out of Labour Party funds or some such source. But so far not a murmur has been heard from Transport House FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY The case with which the Government brushes aside the decisions of the Labour Party conference in this way raises many important questions for the whole of the labour move ment. While it is true that the Government should stick by conference decisions as another disqualitied councillor, David Nuttall, says, the Clay Cross struggle goes beyond the important ismes of Labour Party democracy.

The fight for democracy within the Labour Party and within the trade unions is the plank on which the labour movement must fight for the Labour Government to be responsible to and accountable to the working class.

After all, it is only the strength of the labour movement that can actually implement any Labour prop ramme which goes against the interests of the ruling class It is therefore the right of the labour movement to decide upon that programme and to use its weight to stop the Labour Government scabbing as it is now doing on the ex-Clay Cross councill1307Nobody but the ruling class would benefit from the surcharge being paid "anonymously" or out of Labour Party or trade union funds. The strength of the trade union movement must be used to get all the penalties arising out of the Housing Finance Act scrapped.

The TUC Congress in September should be the arena where the trade programme for the next Lahour Government, and the means by which such a programme can be implemented - relying not on the size of a majority in the House of Commons but on the strength of the working class in the factories.

One such task would be to force the Labour Government now to back the struggles of those councillors who defied the Housing Finance Act - not turn and attack them, NICK ADAMS The defiant ex-councillors of Clay Cross rally behind their banner after one of the court hearings