caused by the dustcart drivers strike.
negligence.
The gutter press, cagerly spreading the scandal of the wicked dustcart drivers, has no space to spare for the Inside story on the nest of corruption that festers in the City Chambers. Not is there any mention of the Labour Government's slashing of social expenditure, which caused the strike in the first place.
The troops are not in Glasgow to clear up the garbage -their commanding officer has stated that, even at full complement, working their present 13 hour day, they could only: clear the present backlog by August. The troops are in Glasgow to break the strike as quickly as possible in order to defend the social contract at its last ditch. That means knocking out the weakest section corpor ation workers- while creating conf usion and playing on some workers backwardness over the health hazGRAFT The pious Labour "representatives of the workers of Glasgow have little to learn in the department of craft, corruption and dirty tricks. As thi article was being written, one of their number, John Mclespie, was being deposited in the cells of the City Police A Division to await trial on charges of fiddling expenses for meetings never attended to the tune of 12,000!
Last year, in the city with the worst bousing in Western Europe, the Direct Labour Department built 347 houses - the figure caused such an uproar that a semi-public investgation had to be carried out Coun ailor Dick Dynes, the head of the Department, blamed firstly incom petent management, and then drunkenness and absenteeism among the workforce!
Dynes knew damn well what the real problem was. Most housebuilding i given to private contractors. A good example of whst results is the Knightswood conversions site. There the standards ol the contractors, Laidlaw's, were so atrocious that after a nine-month unionisation struggle in which every steward had been sacked at least six times and the convenor 23 times, the Corpor ation fired Laidlaw's and promptly engaped —another private contractor. The result? - houses built in January 1975-8; bouses built an February Only last month, Dynes and Labour Senior Magistrate Gordon Kane were the centre of another graft scandal which was promptly hushed up by a Labour Party investigationchaired by Dick Dynes!
The conversion of 2.500 houses in a working class part of Glasgow recently cost 28,000 per house from a contractor who was hired for the job without su much as putting in a tender. And, of course, If you're looking for a pub licence or planning permission in Glasgow, it's just one of the facts of life that you'd better befriend a Labour councillor, and the higher up the better.
Bureaucrats retreat (cont. from p.l).
21 March to the Dawsholm incinerator. This gave only two days notice for a demonstration which was for shop stewards only, specifically excluding all political groups! Reidford allowed no other motions and no discussion, and then cleared uff to talk to the press"
Given a single day in which to tum the demonstration from a token protest into a mass demonstration, the drivers and electricians did their level best The drivers distributed 50,000 Jeaflets and toured factories Red Weekly 27 March 1975 Page 6 BACKING UP THE LABOUR SCABS as they sent in their strike-breaking troops has been an hysterical press campaign about the "health hazard"
Every newspaper has carried its front page photo of rats among the rubbish. The papers do not point out that the samne rats are a constant feature of tenement life in many parts of Glasgow, due to Corporation The city's education system has been reduced to a complete shambles. Schools are closed down because they are falling apart and can't possibly get the finance needed for répains. Lanarkshire Education Committee stated last November that they needed to spend it maintaining ex isring standards as much as has been allocated to education expenditure for the whole of Scotiand Yet Dynes can still survey this catalogue of disasters and his own contemptible record and orchestrate a panic campaign about the 'health hazard he and his crontes have cre ated.
CORRUPTION The combination of the Housing Finance. Act and local government reorganisation means that local authorities room for manoeuvre is cut right down and new housing must be financed from the rent account. In Glasgow, where cheap rented housing can no longer be subsidised, and where the problems of housing are completely tied into the network of corruption, the result is a massive threat to Labour's clectoral dominance from the Scottish National Party.
The shock loss of Labour's 15,000 majority in Govan to the SNP in the 1973 by election was reversed only by the allocation made by the trade unions of eighteen fully manned cars to the campaign in February 1974. Labour was therefore only just bailed out by the bureaucracy. when Coun cillor James Cannell, head of the Establishment Committee (which is res ponsible for negotiations with the striking drivers, stood for the Strathclyde Regional Council in the rocksolid Labour ward of Calton/ Daimarnock in a by-election hell during the strike, the SNP slashed Labour's maority from 3,500 to 79.
PROTECT PRIVILEGES The Labour Party is prepared to take some knocks at the ballot box as long as it can maintain its grip and its privileges. That involves outright defence of the social contract because it cannot afford major breaches of the contract which the Government can no longer finance. The Labour Corporation can only explain away the chaos and decay of Glusgow's social services - essentially created by its own corruptinn and Govertment cuts in social expenditure by slandering the city's 20,000 corpor ation workers.
The trude union burenucracy has thrown all its efforts into diverting the workers movemeot from 9 ton frontation with these vicious and corrupt detenders of the social con tract. Ironically February's Trades Council meeting was held in the City Chambers for the first time. This was hailed as a great steg forward in relations with the Corpor ation! The fawning of the Trades Council leaders in February has become an only too apt expression of their failure in March.
calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops. It was these efforts that mobilised over a thousand trade unionists on Lhe Friday morning Meanwhile the arory had very clearly got the message from the dirty work of the bureaucracy. On Friday they returned to the incinerators as Reidford and company switched the destination of the demonstration to the City Chambers.
Most marchers set off unaware Lat the army was once again using the incinerators. Meanwhile, ReitACCORDING TO the first speaker ut the emergency meeting of Glasgow Trades Council, the worst thing about the presence of troops in the city was that the troops were doing the job that should he done by dustmen'. But, unfortunately, the real problem is not a little one of dem arcation.
The real probiem is the presence in Glasgow of a thousand strikebreaking troops, troops who've been trained in the destruction of workers" rights for six years in Northern IreTorry drivers drove right through the social contract and won their t40 per week demand. At the same time, lorry drivers in Northern Ireland were out on strike. But the Scottish drivers made a specific exemption for *essential supplies to go throught to British troops, and scabs wete given the go-ahead which culminated in Last November, West of Scotland Wing class base.
CONFERENCE to beat up civilians, bow Lo tear-cas crowds, how to Impuse curfews, how to spy on workers communities. It has carried out mass internment, assassination campaigns, and even tried out Brigadier Frank Kitson's favourite tactic, the limited mass These methods have failed to defeat the Irish people in their struggle to determine their own future, but they have prepared the Army for the repression of thie Bricish working cinss. Kitson and his ilk -the counter-insurgency merchants -not only understand that, they pizaned it. When Labour organises scabbing with strike-breaking troops, it plays right into Kitson's hands.
The failure of the British working class to oppose their rulers' war on Ireland has in turn encouraged the most reactionary clements in British politics. The fascists of the National Front have seized on the Irish issue in their atterapts to divide the work ing class, and the racist demagogue Powell has moved into the Loyalist camp in his attempt to build a workHowever, for more and more militant workers the Irish war can no longer be ignored. The presence of troops on the streets of Glasgow drives that point home as sharply as anything could. The Glasgow ING's call for a conference of the labour movement on Ireland, already sponsured by seven Labour councillors and by shop stewards in three of the city's major plants, has been spread in the last week by the dis tribution of hundreds of copies of the bulletin of the Preparatory Committee, freized Now The conference, whose speakers include Labour MP for Gowan, Harry Selby, takes place on Saturday 19 April Further details and copies of the Bulletin and Preparatory Committee appeal are available from the Committee's Secretary, veteran Clydeside revolutionary, Harry MeShine, at the following address:
Harry McShane, T.U. Conference Preparatory Committee, 31 Balbeg Photo: JOHN SURROCK Report Despite the bureaucracy's saboruge, however, the electricians and dustcurt drivers can still win. At the time of writing the Labour hucks of the Corporation have come out very hard against a Laverpool type settle ment'. Councillor Dick Dynes, head of the Labour Group on the Corpo ration, has declared that they will not be blackmailed into a position that opens lhe floodgates for more than 20.000 other manual workers einployed hy the Corporation of The demand of the electricians and drivers for a West of Scotland