Lothian: demand support!
Socialist Organiser1981 1981-08-06Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 13 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 13
BY THE TIME Socialist Organiser reaches its readers, the Tories will have started bankrupting Lothian Council - unless there has been a last-minute climbdown.
Thursday 6th is the deadline day for the Tories to start imposing £47 million penalties on the 'overspending' Labour Region.
Money will stop coming in, the council's credit will dry up, and within weeks commissioners could be sent in by the Tories to take over. The required cuts could massacre some 15,000 jobs.
Unions in Lothian are ready to fight this attack with strike action, though under the influence of full-time officials they have scheduled selective rather than all-out strike as soon as there are any cuts or job losses.
The action needs to be spread outside Lothian, especially through the TGWU, which is committed by its last conference to support anti-cuts Labour councils with strike action. If Lothian goes under, it will be a green light for Tory attacks everywhere.
A petition calling for a national conference to plan industrial action has been circulated by Socialist Organiser and signed by Ted Knight, Ken Livingstone, many other activists, and six Lothian Region coun-