Lively bulletin for unemployed

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The bulletin produced by the National Unemployed Workers' Movement is a lively publication, reflecting the experiences of several local groups.

They have been fighting for the right to exist and organise against the attacks on the unemployed, not only from the Thatcher government, but also the attempts by the TUC to limit and curtail the autonomous and militant development of the organised unemployed.

Whilst in a few areas the unemployed have managed to maintain their right to join a union, in most areas they have met indifference and obstructiveness from the local and national trade union bureauIn the face of ile dead weight of bureaucratic inertia land hostility in some cases), many unemployed groups have been forced into organising themselves in unemployed action groups and even unemployed unions.

For the 'crime' of not waiting until the established trade unions pull their finger out on recruitment of the unemployed, these local unemployed unions have been pompously and hypocritically witch-hunted in the TUC's bulletin for unemployed centres.

In an article in the NUWM bulletin by the South Shields Unemployed Union answering this slander, the following important point is made:

•'The unemployed cannot wait for the TUC leaders to organise the unemployed, for this will not stop the savage attacks on benefits by the government, they have no choice but to combine to defend themselves... It is not those unemployed that form themselves into a union that are the 'splitters' but it is the TUC leaders who are trying to split the unemployed and employed; they are trying to split the unemployed and the employed. They are trying to stop the unemployed from being organised as a militant part of the working class movement, just as happened in the 1920's and 30' In addition to a report of the NUWM unionisation rights campaign there is a useful analysis of the Rayner Report.

Copies at 10p each are available from NUWM. THE strike in Barking is over. The action followed plans to cut 159 jobs over the year April 1982 to April 1983, announced by Barking and Dagenham Council in January.

At the time, teachers were already involved in nocover action as a response to LOUISE O'CONNOR reports the loss of 80 jobs in September last year - although we had won on 23 redundancies in that round.

Therefore, the new proKT deliveries of oil, food, bricks, equipment, and maintenance work to our schools.

The strike committee comprised the local committee and the representatives from each school. It was subdivided into groups responsible for publicity, school liaison, contacting other trade unions and Labour Party wards, tinance, in some schools - and a national levy was not organised because they felt that the strike could be ended without testing national support.

After a series of very long meetings with the Council, the Executive told us that the curriculum was protected, a working party was being set up to renegotiate

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illr BUTLER- Barking Council Chief