[SANDWELL BRANCH LABOUR PARTY Speakers: Alex Lyon MP…]

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SANDWELL BRANCH LABOUR PARTY Speakers: Alex Lyon MP, Muhammed Idrish, Phil Rose (Prospective City Council Candidate) Febraury 11th, 7.30 pm, Rookery Road School in Otabs Norrincan The friend was worried when he saw Colin enter Stoke Newington police station. Colin was black, and the station is notorious in the area for racist cops.

But he can hardly have expected what happened next. The police say that they heard a shot and found Colin lying dead, his head blown to bits by a shotgun fired through his mouth.

Killed

Their story is that he had killed himself and was prosuicidal signs.

Responded

The Stoke Newington cops have responded with characteristic brutality to repeated demonstrations of the local black community outside the police station, condemning the cops and demanding a- public inquiry. 22 were arrested on Saturday 24th, and 27 at previous protests.

A Roach Family support committee has been formed, and local Labour councillors have pledged their support.

are in the right. shows that from January 1 the government is picking on black people one by one through the Nationality Act..

A speaker from the Asian Youth Movement linked other sexist and racist deportations happening up and down the country. They are holding a national demonstration against racism and police harassment in Shetheld on February 12.

Following on from the demonstration the Action Committee is organising lobby of Parliament. NALGO's national conference in June will be asked to take up the case of Bengali social worker Muhammed Idrish. He is a member of the union's Dr. Barnardo's branch and is being threatened with deportation because his marriage, to a British-born woman, has broken down, although they are not yet divorced or even legally separated.

The branch has agreed to send in a conference resolution demanding that NALGO fights for his right to stay. They have elected him as their conference delegate and have promised to pay his airfair from Bangladesh if he has been deported by then! Will the union leadership be preparcu lu str a umy titt- Aranarad to man a Autor alan tod confarano dalanta teu comerence uciegalt txcluded by the immigration laws?

We don't need to wait till June to find out. Pressure should be put on Geoffrey Drain and the National Executive to take a stand against the deportation right now. His branch, which organises Dr. Barnado's workers nationally, is asking the union's London district committee for support. Militants in the West Midlands are also taking the issue up.

The 'Muhammed Idrish Defence Campaign' stress that the fight is not just over one individual but about racism and the immigration laws.

Support for the campaign has been recieved from more than 20 Labour MPs, the Indian and Bangladeshi Workers Associations, Sheffield and Rotherham City Councils, several union and Labour Party branches and the community and Race Relations Unit of the British Council of Churches.

Next moves in the campaign include a delegation to İdrish's MP, Peter Snape, on February 4, and resolutions to Birmingham Trades Council and other union bodies. Idrish will be speaking at a public meeting in Handsworth on February 11, called as part of Sandwell branch Labour Party's campaign against the immigration laws.

Despite a £125 donation participation.

Where ballots are held, rules must be tightened up to stamp out ballot rigging by officials at branch, regional and national level.

And the careerists and opportunists who currently sponge off the workers' movement should • be squeezed out by reducing the pay of full time officials to the average wage of the members they are elected to represent.

Passive

Similarly the question of strike action requires not a passive postal poll of atomised, individual members, but the holding of mass workplace meetings, a clear lead from convenors and national officials, and in this way a collective show of opinion for what must be a collective class response to Tory/management attacks. The control of disputes must be in the hands of elected strike committees, and decisions taken by mass meetings, not by General Secretaries.

When it comes to the unions' link to the Labour Party we can most clearly see the Tory plan to drive a wedge between workplace struggles and "political' questions.

The campaign against 'contracting -in' must include • a combined struggle both inside the Labour Party itself - to ensure that it adopts and publicly, presents policies from NALGO and £5 from Sandwell. Labour Party the campaign still urgently needs more money. We expect a decision from the Home Office adjudicator in the next few weeks and we may have to try legal action to delay the deportation while the campaign is being built in the Labour Movement and in the community.

That will be mighty expensive! Donations and affiliations (£5 organisations, £1 individuals) should be sent to Barry Lovejoy (address below).

If you want to help build the campaign come along to our regular meetings every Wednesday at 7.30 pm at the Shaheed Udham Singh Centre, 346 Soho Rd., Handsworth, or contact:

Barry Lovejoy, 30, Antrobus Rd., Handsworth, Birmingham: 21, or Graham Reid, 62, Bedminster Parade, Bristol 3 (0272-667933) or phone Ahsan 021-551 1846.

PUBLIC MEETING AGAINST THE IMMIGRATION LAWS which will attract and hold che allegiance of workers -and in the unions Affiliated union branches must ensure their delegates attend the local GMCs and should discuss the policies the union is taking into the Labour Party at local anc national level, and ensure that they reilect the interests and demands of their members.

This can be facilitated by redoubling the fight for the establishment of workplace branches of the Labour Party - which themselves are then entitled to send delegates directly to local General Management Committees.

And of course the other issue to be confronted is the democratisation of the block vote of the unions - to prise the political decisions on key Labour Party issues out of the hands of the top union bureaucrats and ensure that the voice of the rank and file is that which decides.

Seriously to fight Tebbit is thereføre to embark on an all-round fight to democratise the labour movement as a whole, and gear it up for the struggles to come.

It is because this means an onslaught on the power and privilege of the bureaucracy that we can expect a half-cock, mealy-mouthed campaign trom the TUC and Labour leaders to this projected third phase of anti-union legislation.