Many workers identify civil servants only as the "faceless bureaucrats" whose red tape holds back their hopes of decent wages and living standards. But tens of thousands of clerical and ancillary workers, with an average take-home pay of £30 a week, are now lining up at the top of the queue for cuts and redundancies.
Heder s cuts mvoIe a reducton or £ 140 million in spending on the departmens or mre cvi senice wier aems ter punc services-whicn will slash tne scope and standard of the latter. Forty thousand jobs-9 per cent of present total staffing- are to be lost in redundancies anu mauwd waswate —recruent cuc Dacks-over une next two years.
David Hall, research officer for the Society of Civil and Public Servants, estimates that the end result of the White Paper cuts in civil service emplovment will be a 6 per cent increase in overall national unemployment levels. Among under25s, this figure almost doubles; among women workers, it trebles.
For some months now, top level deparmental surveys have been carried out in the civil service, without any consultation with the unions involved. The surveys will provide the Cabinet with a guide to the best means of implementing cuts of 5, 10, or 15 per cent. Yet faced with such blatant provocation, the response of we umon readers nas ony gien more Dower to newey sanm.
The SCPS conference earlier this year gave support to Healey's pav policy by 5,509 to 4,196. The General Secretary of ne avi bence mornas aSsure0Na ional Staff Side that he will draw the line only at compulsory redundancy". At the conference of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation, Callaghan (himself a former IRSF bureaucrat) was given pride of place to assure delegates that cuts and redundancies would proceed as planned.
As for the 220,000-strong Civil and rubic services Association, despite a firm mandate from this year's conference to take action against 'any form of policies which mean unemployment, public expenditure cuts and a reduction of living snearas. me uno s feces neda nasty nanonal ballot in order to get on the hook. Angry members lobbied a meeting of the union's DHSS Section Executive last week to demand strike action, and there is now talk by the Executive of a one-cay sike.
But such action will appear to members only as a spectre of the betrayal of the 1973 strike without a clear campaign to build support and a clear date for action. All that is clear at the moment is mat aus commitment wul nave to be fought for from the ranks in the branches of all civil service unions.
Supporters of Red Weekly in the civil service unions met recently to co-ordinate their activities, and will be producing a regular bulletin. For information write to: R. Dennis, 97 Caledonian Rd, London N1. to work or had settled to a particular project often found it difficult to concentrate because of the noise and constant movement of other children', then this is hardly an argument in favour of strapping kids to their desks, but for building bigger, better designed schools, and more of them!
Yes indeed, children must be equipped with basic tools themselves, and to understand basic mathematics. But it isn't progressive' teaching methods which stop that.
"Too much freedom"? These words are the cue for just about every reactionary who has an axe to grind in education today.
son, leading opponent of Tyndale among Tory MPs and Fleet Street hacks. What they want to show is that 'standards are threatened' in schools by progressives like Ellis and Brian Haddow. But what they mean are the standards of the minority of pupils who attend grammar and direct grant schools and other preserves of class privilege. 'Back to the 11-Plus", they cry. of teachers? If 'children who wanted •une
ACTION Red Weekly 29 July 1976 Labour Party 3