THE ROAD TO DISASTER 26 FEBRUARY The announcement of the largest ever cuts in public expenditure and the creation of 1½ million unemployed shows the burning need to recall the TUC and Labour Party conferences.
There should be no illusions about where this Government is leading the working class. All talk by Benn and the other lefts that their capitulation to Wilson is somehow keeping the Tories out, or that they will be able to pressurise the Government to change its course, is simply lies.
The one thing absolutely guaranteed to ensure the return of the Tories is a Labour Government slashing the welfare state and piling up the largest dole queues since the The result of the Coventry BY-ELECTION The Coventry North-West by-election on 4 March will give the first taste in electoral terms of what the policies of the Wilsoil Government are cosung the working class. In the aftermath of the redundancies in carysier, el and Alred Herbert, the cuts imposed by the local Labour Council, and Healey's latest attacks, losing the seat as the result of a massive abstention by Labour voters must be a real possibility.
This possibility can only be increased by the Labour Party's choice of candidate - Geoffrey Robinson, former troubleshooter for British Leyland and managing director of Jaguar. Even many hardened Labour door-knockers are reluctant to go out and work for Robinson.
Fighting the election on Labour's record is going to be a very difficult story to sen to workers wno are teetna tne effects of that record more sharply all the time. But the lefts are coming to the rescue. The leatured speaker at one of Robinson's mass meetings is to be.... tony benn. No une coule mustrate more clearly the cynical use made of these lefts as a cover for the Wilson leadership. WEEKLY No. 139 PRICE 10p by-election is likely to show that only too clearly.
There is only one way to keep out the Tories. That is to launch the greatest struggle seen for years with the aim of utterly defeating the policies of this Government and The task of socialists in this election is clear. Whilst calling for a Labour vote, they have to use this forum to show that tnere Is an alternative policy to tnat of the Labour Government - a programme of demands on unemployment, inflation and the cuts which can defend workers against the effects of the capitalist crisis.
A second leature of the by-election is the presence of two fascist candidates, Anarew rouname or me Nanona rroni and Kingsley Read of the breakaway National Party. The NF is campaigning for *British Jobs for British Workers' - a clear attempt to use genuine grievances to build support for their divisive, racist DOLCICS It is thus essential that particular effort is given to a campaign to explain the real roots of unemployment in the capitalist crisis and the bankruptcy of Labour's strategy, stressing the need to develop support for an ongoing fight to werend ue rigat to work.
It is this sort of propaganda which the IMG is fighting to tie in to the united front counter-demonstration to the NF march through Coventry this Saturday. removing its supporters from every level of leadership of the labour movement.
Resistance to the policies of the Wilson Government is already beginning to mount. The steel strikes and the struggle at Chrysler's Linwood factory show that there is a willingness to fight. And the Labour Movement Assembly on unemployment called for 27 March is expected to be the largest meeting of labour movement organisations on a single issue since the 1920s.
But the fight back is hamstrung at every level by the decisions foisted on the workers organisations last summer. That is why it is urgent to fight for the recall of the TUC and Labour Party conferences, so that the need to break with the Government's policies is placed squarely before the whole workers movement.
POLICIES If the Labour lefts have plucked up enough courage to get the call for a special conference through the Labour NEC (the result was announced after we went to press), that is a big step forward. But their unwillingness to put up a real fight is known from long experience. An all-out campaign for such a conference to break with the Government and adopt different policies is what is needed above all.
Two roads face the labour moveThe first means following Wilson to disaster. The second requires a fight to defeat this bankrupt leadership and its policies at all levels. Essential first steps in such a campaign will be: * A vote by Labour MPs against the expenditure cuts * Recall the TUC and Labour Party conferences * National industrial action on unemployment and the cuts * The establishment of local action committees in every area following the Labour Movement Assembly. UNEMPLOYMENT Dont give the National conference-13 March Details from: SCPWC, 12 Little Newport Street, London W.C.2 health housing lion hygiene libraries remember?
CRUSADE nev i introcuce Ine same policies with ever so much more socialist rnetori
Two of the three motions voted top of the agenda for the annual conference of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) at Easter call for campaigns against cuts in educational spending and in defence of teachers' jobs.
Healey's proposals to cut education by £1,000 million in the next three years underline the urgent need for teachers and the working class to act now. Fred Jarvis, General Secretary of the NUT, described the Government's decision to introduce the cuts as 'spitting in the face of the TUC". Jarvis, howfor this at the TUC General Council by voting against a proposal tor a special conference of union execthe economy.
ers, no extension of the nursery building programme, retention of old dilapidated schools, 20,000 for students in higher education. etc. Red Weekly 26 February 1976 ever, had already prepared the way 30p by 1980.
utives to discuss unemployment and mOTC.
Healey's proposed cuts will mean larger classes in schools, fewer teachteachers unemployed, fewer places Their really vicious anti-working class nature is highlighted by the The IMG candidates are stressing to proposal to make a 25 per cent increase in school meals charges in September, from 15p to 20p, with the prospect of a further rise to Healey's strategy is clear - throw the burden onto the backs of teachers and make the working class pay And he is not coming up against much resistance from the NUT leadership. Although the latter have reluctantly backed Leicestershire teachers fighting 300 sackings, they have rejected calls for action in Oldham and refuse to launch a national fight around such focuses as the 27 February demonstration against the education cuts. Perhaps they are too busy working on the new anti-democratic discip linary procedures which they hope to see passed at conterence.
Not all teachers have succumbed to this paralysis, however. Militants in London are working to set up a campaign group based on schools which will refuse to cover for absent staff and demand the employment of out-of-work teachers. And the 438 votes (around 15 per cent of those cast) for revolutionary candidate Hilda Kean in the elections for General Secretary of the Inner London Teachers Association show that a growing number of teachers see the need for just such a clear al alternative strategy.
BERNARD REGAN (Candidate for Inner London in NUT Executive elections)
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