Last week local government workers from the Greater London Council and several London boroughs picketed County Hall to protest against threatened cuts in Greater London services and staffing. The picket, organised by GLC NALGO and the 70 Group of the Staff Association, was not supported by the leadersi ip of The cuts in housing, health, education and the social services will occupy much of the debate at Blackpool this week. Nearly all the resolutions tabled on this issue call for an end to the cuts and the restoration of those already made. What is singularly lacking, however, is any strategy for fighting them. Instead there are endless pleas for the Wilson Government to end their evil ways and behave like good socialists - a little like asking a tiger to give up meat.
The sort of problems that whole areas face is highlighted by the situation in Newham, East London, once the happy hunting ground of red-spotter Reg Prentice. The rundown of 'unprofitable' industry, like the docks and refinthe Staff Association, who are refusing to campaign against the cutbacks despite representing the majority of GLC workers ing of raw materials, now coincides with a Government programme of massive cuts in the welfare services, to produce a social crisis as deep in Newham as anywhere in England: a housing waiting list that requires a 20 per cent increase in the number of council houses; an infant mortality rate that is the highest in England; a permanent education crisis; and unemployment which runs at four times the average for the South-East. The impact of all this is doubled by the Healey measures.
What makes Newham different from many areas, however, is that here the local trade unions, the Labour Party and various left organisations have started to do something about it. On 21 September they called a conference on the theme Newham: Prosperity or Decline'. Despite the fact that it was a Sunday meeting more than 200 people turned up. ence, addressed by Tribune MP lan Mikardo and leading 'Bennite' theoretician Stuart Holland, demanded ment in Newham, and supported the 1973 Labour Programme for Industry, complete with planning agreements.
As speakers from the International Marxist Group pointed out, while the implementation of this programme would be a step forward for the working class, it remains abstract since it doesn't give any lead on hou to fight unemredundancies.
The confer- contract like the plague.
full employment, new invest- CLP by kicking out Prentice - Wilson and Healey: for a massive programme of socially useful public works drawn up by the labour movement and financed by the Government; against unemployment, for nationalisation without compensation and under workers' control of all firms creating In Newham the first step has been taken in this direction by the local conference - althou gh it wrongly avoided the question of the social A steering committee has been elected among whose members are rerepresentatives of the Newham North-East which gave a lead to the working class and also the IMG.
Committees like this are undoubtedly the first sign of organised united action against the policies of Wilson. By extending their basis to include delegates from all working class organisations and fighting for policies which defend the working class against the crisis, they can help mobilise the working class to defeat the cuts and remove the Wilson leadership.