NALGO votes for a fight

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NALGO members working • for the GLC and the Metropolitan Authorities, which the Tories plan to scrap, intend to fight the government on the issue.

The NALGO members concerned voted overwhelmingly — in a ballot whose results were announced at the end of December - that they will not cooperate in the dismantling of the authorities.

The Executive has sent out a letter instructing NALGO members not to cooperate.

NALGO thus gives a lead to all other unions involved directly or indirectly and whose cooperation is essential to the successful Tory reorganisation and centralisation of local government. The message is: Don't go along - stand up to them.

This decision is also a welldeserved slap in the face for all those self-serving local government "lefts" who say that NALGO isn't a "real union" They say this, of course, because NALGO members defend themselves, as trade unionists should, against their employer, even when the boss is a council run by 'leftists' who have themselves ceased to be militants and sunk into the role of mere bureaucratic local government administrators.

The planned action by NALGO members to frustrate, sabotage and prevent the carrying out of government policy for local government will plainly be illegal under the existing anti-union laws. If NALGO won't defy the law then it can't carry out this policy.

NALGO was a vigorous defender of the NGA - until Black Wednesday, when its four TUC General Council representatives divided two for Murray and two for the NGA and defiance of the Then just before Xmas, the Executive went Murrayite. It passed a resolution that NALGO would continue to support the NGA - provided this did not involve NALGO members in "positive breaches of the law."

But when they oppose the government's plans for local government, NALGO members will themselves come smack up against the law.

They must be prepared defy it - and if necessary defy the union's leaders.

Preparation must start