Cuts: learning the lessons

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SHE GOES OFF TO A ded rate rises were the answer to cuts. The result: rate rises The | runni Child John O Mahony "SOONER or later we have to recognise that we are losing the arguments in favour of maintaining services at the cost of high rents and rates (emphasis added).

«We are losing because Labour voters simply cannot afford to pay any more. In council homes the length of Britain, Labour councils are being 'blamed for the high rates and rents which are the direct result of Tory policies.

"If the slide is to be halted, Labour must take a This is the balance Chris Mullin draws in last week's Tribune of 27 months of Labour local government since Thatcher was elected.

Socialist Organiser has fallen out with a lot of people on the left because of our refusal to believe that rent and rate rises are an alternative to the Tory cuts, and our advocacy of confrontation as the only realistic option.

Tribune has belatedly arrived at the same conclusion, on the basis of experience.

"The Tories have been very clever in getting Labour councils to do their dirty work for them. In Lambeth the combined rents and rates of the average council tenant will by October have increased from £ 12 to £20 a week in little more than a year... (This is) "because this year alone the Tories have confiscated £14.8 million in cuts and penalties out of a total central government contribution of £55.1 Last year's Local Government Act aimed, via fines and penalties, to prevent local authorities evading the Government's "cuts drive by recouping lost funds through raising rates.

Honour

"As a result the 1982 election will simply be a competition between two -and possibly three - main parties to see which shall have the honour of administering the cuts decreed by central government. Opposition to cuts is no longer an option. Instead the parties will be reduced to arguing that our cuts are more humane than yours'."

The official Labour response has been "frankly pathetic". . The emergence of To organis ing and from the •National Park Sq; Lòndon E2 "progressive" council leaders "has yet to be reflected in a policy of more active resistance"

"Not. only is Labour losing the battle over cuts, it is also getting most of the blame for the consequences. Sooner or later there is going to have to be a confrontation"

Mullin advocates the following strategy for confronting the government.

* Cast-iron Shadow Cabinet guarantees that SUTcharged councillors will be indemnified by an incoming Labour government.

* Labour Local Government Committees must coordinate a mass refusal by Labour councils to either increase rates and rents unreasonably or slash services.

* If the Tories send in FUND Not a bad start to our new monthly fund - £1500 in August, but our target is £2,000 and we must very quickly start achieving that target if we are going to be able to do everything we want with the new weekly paper.

Meanwhile, our thanks to the many SO money, including a 74 year old Labour Party member from Glasgow.

Send us a donation to the September fund and help us make that £2,000 target. The address is Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8. the commissioners, councillors could occupy Town Halls and organise resistance by staff.

But wouldn't.this mean council employees not gettion in which thousands of council employees will lose their jobs for ever anyway. Lothian have already been told to discard up to one third of their workforce"

The problem of course with this strategy is that it gives the central role to Labour Party leaders like Roy Hattersley. While it is right to call on them to take up their responsibilities, the Left - in the first place, Lambeth's Ted Knight -were well-placed to give a lead whatever the Labour front-bench did.

ANDREW WIARD, REPORT Lambeth ('nameil preter cuts — and .SD!' helerı But from Lambeth to Lothian, they have backed down and capitulated, having deluded themselves that by rate rises they could evade central government's decisions while keeping working-class sympathy.

The grim record of the local government Left faced with Thatcher in Mullin's view looks like having an even grimmer ending in Lambeth: barring miracles, he concludes from the two SDP by-election victories in Lambeth, the SDP will win control of Lambeth Council next year!

The left' - they call themselves revolutionaries -should have fought.

There are different kinds of defeat. Had Lambeth tried to stand up to the AS LAMBE ion kaurs. Tories, its struggle would have helped rouse resistance. Even if it then went down before Tory sanctions, the result in terms of the morale of the movement might have been positive.

Instead we had big talk, preposterous and foredoomed rate-rise strategy -capable unfortunately of winning support from sections of the Left, including some Socialist Organiser supporters at the time - and then, after big rate rises, capitulation and cuts.

This was the worst of all kinds of defeat for the Labour left.

It is still possible to win. We should demand that the National Executive Committee adopts Mullin's strategy.

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cong Creche': a basic guide 1 ag creches. 50p plus postage Care Campaign, 17 Victoria

Groups and individual supporters who sent in

ing paid? "The alternative" says Mullin, "is steady attrit-

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