Solidarity with E.european Workers

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The Scottish Tenants Organisation and the Glasgow Council of Tenants have done nothing to maintain and build on the initial anger and determination to win that tenants clearly showed. The number of tenants on rent strike has greatly decreased, leaving those still fighting in an even weaker position.

Glasgow District Council has wisely chosen this as the best time to try to smash the tenants completely. Their tactic has been to pick out a few isolated individuals and "advise" them that they must quickly pay their arrears or else!

Warning As far as we know, ory two tenants in Cambuslang have received these warning letters. One tenant panicked and immediately paid up but the other has made it clear she won't be paying without a fight.

She contacted her local tenants' association and the 3) Agreement that in the event of anyone getting will pay all legal. asts.

VGC OUSE Rent strikers protest 1972 upside down to sharpen the conflict and inject the badly needs. THE East European Solidarity Campaign has agreed to contribute a column to Socialist Organiser. In this first article, VLADIMIR DERER explains the aims and activity of the campaign.

THE East European Solidarity Campaign (EESC) was founded in 1978 by members of the Labour Party, Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party, and individuals in the labour movement.

It gives priority to campaigns on behalf of victims of totalitarian oppression in Eastern Europe and the USSR, and to providing labour movement organisations with information about such oppression.

Currently it focusses attention on the events in Poland and the persecution of Czech Chartists and Soviet dissidents.

The following greetings telegram was sent in the name of the EESC to the First Congress of the free Polish trade union:

"We send warmest greetings and congratulations to NSZ Solidarity on its first anniversary and. first congress. Your struggle for working class rights and for democratic rights - for the right of all the Polish people has inspired socialists and trade unionists in Britain.

"We condemn the international campaign of vilification and threats against Solidarity. We also deplore the fact that Solidarity has been forced to struggle every inch of the way to defend the gains of the GdanskSzczecin-Jastrebie agreement.

"We consider that the Polish workers have opened new horizons for the working class and socialist movements throughout Europe.

Learn 'We in the EESC and in 'Labour Focus on Eastern Europe' are doing what we can to bring the message of Solidarity to the Brith labour and trade union movement. We have much to learn from you.

Just before the House of Commons went into recess, the EESC's honorary officers Philip Whitehead MP and Eric Heffer MP collected 64 signatures among Labour MPs for a petition to the Czech government asking that the current criminal proceedings against 19 supporters of Charter 77 be evicted from other estates for rent arrears have been rehoused there. The result has been that the poorest and most deprived tenants have ended up there.' It appears that Lambeth Council have no other plans for tackling poverty and deprivation apart from moving it elsewhere - and knocking down the flats. Sounds a bit like vandalism to me.. stopped.

The EESC's latest bulletin urges CLPs to protest against the fraternal delegate. status given to the representatives of the Communist Parties of the USSR, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, invited to the Labour Party conference.

The EESC's fringe meeting at this year's Labour Party conference will be addressed by Jacek Kuron, a leading member of the Polish Workers Defence Committee (KOR). It will be held on Monday 28 September at 7.30 pm at the Hotel Metropole, County Suite.

Further information can be obtained from EESC Convenor, Vladimir Derer, 10 Park Drive, London NW11.

You always knew it was the case, but it's good to get statistical confirmation.

An analysis in 'Sociological Quarterly' shows that other things being equal, whites have 18% more chance of getting probation than blacks. And young and unemployed people are more likely to get prison sentences for the same offences than older, employed people.

You don't have to look far to see the logic of this. A prison sentence places a question mark over person's whole future, but if you're young, black and unemployed you've got no future to look forward to anyway• And it certainly does keep them off the streets.

there's plenty other receptions to go to.

And he was proved right. The booze flowed by the bathload at the binge to celebrate the election of his assistant general secretary, Muriel Turner, to one of the women's seats on the General Council.

The question is, who paid for it? Santa Claus?