Lewisham conference ducks fight on rates

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BETTER child care, women's committee, closer consultation with the workforce, defence of direct labour... These were all policies passed overwhelmingly at Dewisham Local Government Conference.

The Conference is an annual event, where the Labour Group's policies for the Council 'are debated by delegates from branches and affiliated organisaDions.

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They have blacked the transter process and are threatening further sanctions.

Tenants are rightly concerned that this should not be settled out of money allocated for their much-needed repairs. However, the motion from branches on the GLC estates argued that the cost should be put on the rates.

This led to a sharp debate on next year's bodeer. Figures sarmed budger would mean a leas a 35% rate increase, while implementing last May's manifesto would need another 15% increase.

St. Margaret' s ward put in a motion calling for a rates and rents freeze, no cuts in jobs or services, and meeting council workers pay claims, combined with a strategy for mobilising Labour movement resistance to the inevitable Tory attack, and linking up with other Labour councils.

This was the only strategy which could unite working class support and overcome the divisions the Tories have sown in our ranks, because it was the only strategy which did not set one sectional interest against another. It would mean confrontation, but we have to decide whether we want confrontation with the Tories or confrontation within the working class.

S.O. supporter Cheung Siu Ming gave an account of the backlash produced in Lambeth by Ted Knight's zie rite polis. He warned ti i se intic for rate rises this year we would be back voting for cuts next year.

Defeated

The St. Margaret's motion was defeated. Conference passed a resolution calling for rent and rate increases to be kept within the rate of inflation, 'unless the Labour group can show that a greater y Tony Gard increase in the rates is necessary to implement essential parts of the Manifesto' - which it had already shown quite clearly.

The tragedy is that last year's conference called for a no cuts, no rent rise, no rate rise position, though coupled with the dangerously misleading call for resignation and 'majority opposition'.

It declared rate rises no longer politically viable; this must be even more true today. Yet in the last year the Labour Party in Lewisham is supposed to have moved to the Left.

Last year's 'majority oppositionists' have become this year's rate risers. Most of them argue that resistance is not politically realistic because we do not have enough support and the new Council has not been in office long enough.

But as several speakers at Lewisham Labour Left's fringe meeting argued, the retreat has got to stop. We can't keep on saying, •We will try this next year.

Tony Gard

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111, December 1982.