Civil servants need new leaders!

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And last week the management threatened our unions (all of whom have made the dispute official) with lawsuits if they continue to black a scab version of Time Out scheduled for September.

The staff are on low strike pay (currently averaging about £25 a week), but are determined to fight on, buoyed up by hundreds supportive letters and contributions and the success of our free 12-page strike paper (with added news and entertainment listings) called 'Not.. (formerly 'Not Time Out' until a court order erased two offending words from the logo). * Donations, messages, and requests for speakers c/o Helen Mackintosh, NUJ Magazine Branch, Acorn House, 314 Grays Inn Road, London WC1, ог 01-580 7617. AS PREDICTED in last week's Socialist Organiser, the civil service unions have voted to end the longest-running national dispute since 1926, and resume work from August 3rd.

All-out The only union to show a majority in favour of all-out action was the IRSF, the tax workers' union.

fight, is an indication of how much the rank and file in the Inland Revenue have learnt from the 1981 pay campaign.

The IRSF will clearly never be the same again, and members must now fight for a leadership in the union that is capable of winning the next battle.

The votes to accept the 7½ % in the CPSA and the SCPS were disappointing, and there should be no glossing over the fact that they have opened up the civil service unions to a further major onslaught from the Tories.

Failure

The reasons for the votes going the way they did are largely to do with the failure of the Council of Civil Service Unions leadership to campaign for an all-out strike from an early point in the struggle. This meant that five months after the fight began, the vast majority of members had only been involved in raising strike levies and supporting defensive protest actions.

Political

As emphasised in the special Socialist Organiser civil service supplement, it was the failure of the COCSU leaders to achieve any political understanding of the Thatcher government that created the conditions for this defeat.

Arbitration

Ken Thomas, general secretary of the CPSA, told members as voting began, "The EC strongly believes that this offer represents the best that can be achieved as far as a promise for arbitration in 1982 and a committee of inquiry for 1983 are concerned"

The costs of the campaign have been high on both sides. The nine unions have paid out in the region of £10 million. The Government has lost well over £150 million in irrecoverable tax losses and benefit overpayments. Hidden And Tory plans to tax unemployment benefit from next April, a und various other such plar 1s, have been set back many months:

But for Thatcher no price was too high for beating down the civil service unions. The fight must now be on to halt the next round of spending cuts and staff reductions.

Government figures issued last week showed just how far the process of hidden cuts has already gone. The civil service wages bill has been massively below Government estimates for the last years 14.3% below year, and 8.4% in I 1980.

Workloads

At the same time the reduction in staff has been matched by a huge increase in the demands on departments like the DHSS and Department of : Employment. Many branches of these services can no longer cope with the increased workloads.

The lessons of the 1981 pay campaign and the fighting spirit that sustained it despite its misleadership must now be directed to reverse these cuts. five last 19-7

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This vote, after 20 weeks of being in the thick of the