Whose centres for

Scan page 16

Find Offser (TV). Registered as a nepspaper at the (irO Frank THERE ARE over 170 TUCrecognised unemployed centres in Britain - a network which potentially could be the base for a mass of organising work.

Labour Research magazine published a survey of 90 of them in its February issue. The first unemploye centre, tney report, amalaind snortan started in Newcastle five years ago, under the auspices of the local Trades Council.

But in early 1981 the TUC agreed guidelines for the centres with the government Manpower Services Commission, which has become the major source of funding for the centres. The Gwent centre told Labour Research, "MSC guidelines mean that we cannot now be involved in marches; campaigns, etch, and Bradford said, "MSC monéy hampers political activity"

The MSC has pushed for the management of centres to be in the hands of local authorities and Trades Councils, not the unemployed themselves. And its influence has certainly worked against the centres becoming bases for unemployed workers' associaJ075. On 10 per cent of the = a to Labour ReELE CAme reported E52*:*3 Nonetneless man! centres have done limited campaigning, for example for cheap bus fares for the unemployed. They provide welfare benefits advice and social facilities, and also, in many cases, courses and classes. Some have made special efforts to run women's studies courses or women's groups.

Labour Reascarch also reports that most unemployed centre Corganisers were bitter about offimetal trade union attitudes. "The unemployed feel that unions have Has/ let them down, the same as everyone else" (Bracknell); "The trade union movement does not want to give recognition to the unemployed movement" (Stirling).

A 'national workshop conference' of 150 delegates from TUC unemployed centres was held in London on March 15 - and the delegates had plenty to say from the floor.

- They demanded:

* That the unemployed be represented in the TUC.

* That all unemployed centres staff have the right to participate fully in trade union activities without jeopardising their jobs or the centres funding.

* No government job schemes unless they are 'topped up' to the full trade union rate, and no enforced part-time work.

* Make the centres independent of the MSC, with funding from the TUC and the labour movement generally.

* That the conference be recalled within the next six months with a direct input from the centres both on the platform and the agenda. There should be a series of conferences resulting in the formation of a national campaigning movement of the unemployed, with the election of a national organising committee as the first step towards this.

The TUC was also criticised for not consulting centres over the People's March 83.

The summing up by TUC official Ken Graham was the worst part of the conference. He said it master, hard iob is be elected :: Congress is cs icken him sereral years. But they might be able to let us risit.

The job of the centres stari he said, was to carry out the work as defimed by the management committees. As for funding TUC has no money, only the untions have money, and it's up to them what they spend it on.

Mr Graham said he had no apologies for what he and his colIcagues have done on the MSC, and that they report to the General Council and Congress, not the could not be counted upon to show the same deference to the dictatorial regime in Poland that he showed to the bloody military rulers of Central America on his recent visit there.

But the repeated statements by Archbishop Glemp urging unemployed. moderation from Solidarnose supThe unemployed are organis- porters would suggest that once ing, but they need freedom of again the role of the Church is to organisation and financial com- pressurise rather than overturn mitment from the employed the Stalinist state bureaucracy workers' movement if they are to with which it has happily coexisprogress. ted, and from which it has materiThe future for the centres lies ally benefitted for over 30 years. with the building of a campaign- The recent events should also ing labour movement unemployed remind the British workers' moveorganisation, funded through a ment of the continued need to weekly levy of trade unionists, a support the Polish workers' body that makes no compromise struggle and oppose all links with the dictates of Tebbit and between British union bureaucrats the MSC. and the stooge "unions" of EastThe TUC will not build such ern Europe and the USSR. an organisation, but the conferen- Our common interest is not ce proved that the centres can. with the faceless hatchet-men 'from the bottom up', by linking installed as labour lieutenants of together through such coordinat- Andropov and Jaruzelski but with ing committees as the one on the millions of workers seeking Merseyside. ways and means of organising A responsibility also rests with independently to oust their local Labour councils to help by bureaucratic rulers and seize confunding local centres, without trol of the nationalised economstrings, in conjunction with the ies, opening up the possibility of trade unions. genuine planning and expansion.