Coventry's farce

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LAST Thursday, 27 August, Coventry Council carried out its 'referendum'. . The choice that was put before the electorate was whether the council should increase rates or make public spending cuts worth £2.2 million.

From the outset, the Labour council made it clear that it would not be bound by the verdict.

•Some cuts were already being implemented the referendum.

It was obviously just an expensive way (costing £90,000) to legitimise the council's decision to cut services.

Flouting local Labour Party policy, which is to oppose all cuts and rate rises, these Labour Tories have only demonstrated their desire to follow Heseltine's directives to the hilt.

The exercise turned out to be a total farce. There was only a 25% turnout, and the Labour leaders announced that despite the outcome of the referendum (88% in favour of cuts), rate rises were inevitable.

Choice Local bosses had campaigned to get workers to vote against rate rises. Jaguar management sent out a circular to all its workers saying "The choice is simple. If you vote for an increase you could well be voting yourself or a colleague out of a job.

«Vote no and urge your friends and neighbours to do the same."

An urgent and principled fight within the public sector unions and the Labour Party is of paramount importance. The three main public sector unions strongly opposed the referendum and NUPE has threatened industrial action.

Only joint union action, prepared for all out strikes and occupations to defend jobs, can protect working class living • standards and expose the role of these Labour misleaders.

The fight must also be taken up in the Labour Party to kick out those leaders not prepared to fight the government policies.

The Coventry Labour Left actively campaigned for a boycott of the referendum. It must now mount a campaign against all cuts and rate rises and support and help coordinate industrial action within the labour movement as a whole.

Pyushi Kotecha role.

Well, I think that the leadership can continue to be provided by those members of the Labour Group. It does make it harder to give leadership when you have voted in favour of cuts, albeit to save £10 million or £5 million worth of services.

Apathy

Nevertheless, I believe it's a position which working class people can understand.

It's a question of judgement about the political and economic situation, and I would describe the situation at the moment as one of resigned apathy.

The Regional Labour Party policy is for no cuts. 18 councillors voted against that position. Do you think that people who are prepared to say at panel interviews that they will follow RLP policy, then change. their minds and follow their individual policy whatever that may be, have any right to remain on the Regional Labour Party's list of approved candidates?

We were informed that a "no cuts" position would be illegal. So it seems to me that to suggest that the councillors should be removed from the panel would be flying in the face of conference policy, which has always said that Labour councillors should not be asked to break the law.

Unless the Labour Party nationally agrees that councillors should be mandated to break the law, then there would seem to me to be very little argument locally for removing councillors who аге only carrying out national policy.

Removed

If 18 members were removed from the panel, then it would just be a six week job of appealing to the National Executive and being reinstated. Whether or not that's a valuable exercise is a matter for debate.

If that sounds a bit weak and retormist, then I don't think it is, it's a matter of wondering how useful it is to throw folk off the panel when they're just going to be reinstated again.

Lessons

English councils are going to find themselves in almost exactly the same position, what would you suggest are the lessons to be drawn from Lothian Region for them?

They have a stronger initial position than we were in.

They've just had a round of elections and many stood Without going into detail on the old rates rise question they also stood on a policy of supplementary rates rises and received amassive mandate for that in advance.

So the central government will find it hard to justify moving in under the guise of protecting ratepayers.

But nevertheless there will be an attempt to restrict public expenditure via legal means. The lesson that can be learned from up here is that links have to be built with the public service unions at grass roots level and the industrial wing of the trade union movement. An understanding has to be developed among industrial workers of the value of public services and they have to realise that unless they're prepared to give more than token paper support to the defence of these services, they will be nibbled away of chopped to death.

Organise

Labour councillors should now be encouraging the public sector unions to organise workplace meetings, getting speakers at trades councils and going around branches of industrial unions and public service unions.

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Thursday 3 September 1981 Page i

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on a platform of massive expansion of public services.