whose interests are opposed to the labour movement as a whole, and more particulariv. parties not based on the organised working class. Marxists work for the broadest unity of the working class, not to 're-shape relations' within it, around sectional interests. -E. PARKE, Finchley.
RED WEEKLY replies:
Comrade Parke starts from the vital necessity or ine unny or me labour movement buenarunity is never an abstract socan and it is obvious unar at certain times the sharpest possible differentiation against the sell-outs of une exisune edoersnio is dosolutery imperative.
For us, unity is not some timeless ment - trade unions, trades councils, Labour Party branches, co-op societies, socialist organisations, cle the cuts, against unemployment, against taline vine standares.
In spite of their right-wing past, Sillars and Robertson of the SLP have declared their intention to vote in the House of Commons against the White Paper or the cuts. This is not to say that we have any more Talin in Jim sullars than In Eric Heffer or Dennis Canavan; but it is to say that any contribution that members of the SLP make to the resistance of the working class to the real - Ine wison negey HonE wine leadersnip - will strenctnen ratner inan weaken working class unity.
held on a wide variety of topics, e.g. lesWhen Healey announced £1,000 million cuts in public expenditure in April 1975 (including £86m from ther cuts tooth and nail'. Now that the Government has announced a further £1,000m off education alone by 1980, the NUT is fumbling around looking for dentures.
cuts has consisted of pressurising local authorities to raise rates if necessary rather than make cuts in education. This not only avoids the real fight against the aDour Love-nen s allacks. DuL CuEs off teacners trom oner secnons or the working class faced with the same problems.
Thus the NUT executive is left to moan in a memorandum to the union s forthcoming national conference: Where.
tribution to the social contract? Yet Fired Jarvis, its representative on the TUC General Council, voted against a motion to call a special conference of union executives on the issue as it might upset the right-wing TOC leadership!
The NUT executive has now found more upsetting things, as teachers all over the country begin to organise independently against the cuts. In London, for instance, a committee of representa place.
The NUT's "strategy' for fighting the and the working class. tives from a number of schools was set up after a meeting called by Quintin Kynaston School NUT. On 20 March it is holding a lobby of the NUT to demand full employment of all teachers, and the implementation of the Inner London Teachers Association policy of full sanctions in all areas where cuts take nsP* hygiene region for the NUT executive. Within one central theme or campaign to ge the NUT to fight all cuts and unemploy ment, we are demanding that the NUT plays a full role in the labour movement fight against the right-wing leaders by calling for a recall TUC conference, supp orting all trade union initiatives such as the 25 April demonstration against the cuts, and affiliating to the Labour Party This also means fighting for real alternatives to defend education, including such demands as:
• the protection of wages and educational spending trougn automatic increases to each rise in the cost of living:
•an end to all debt charges and interest repayments; •for a massive programme of public works including schools, hospitals, etc, providing employment for all.
The IMG will be fighting for the NUT to stop licking the boots of the local authorities and demand instead a trade union investigation into their plans tor education. There must be a struggle to make Labour local authorities place them selves behind the workers movement Through taking up the fight in this way, militants in the NUT can begin to overcome the fragmentation and isolation that many teachers toer
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education), the National Union of Teachers promised to fight any fur
health housing al service: