Strike ca Barking CUtS

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BARKING and Dage tham Council has forced its Education Committee to plan cuts of £2.7 million from the education budget over the next two years. With last year's £1.2 million cuts, this constitutes the largest proportional cut in education spending in the country.

The Education Committee have themselves admitted that there are no grounds in terms of falling rolls for these cuts and that the education of children in the borough is certain to suffer.

Clubs

The borough is likely to lose some 150 teaching jobs in schools. 200 'dinner ladies' are to go, 10 Further Education jobs will be lost, and 15 nursery assistants and five youth clubs will disappear.

Most mind-boggling of all is the plan to cut the educational 'unit of the borough's Assessment Centre. Unless the council plans not to educate children in this unit at all, they will have to go to local junior and secondary schools, adding further problems to an already overworked school system.

Protest

Teachers in the borough are officially operating cover action and have withdrawn goodwill as a protest against past and future cuts. Children have been sent home in some comprehensives, but the effect on primaries, where no cover could be devastating, has been minimal. the issues behind the strike workers at Rolls Royce, whole hog and come out on A 200-strong march on a council meeting signified the start of an alliance between the NUT, parents and other workers in schools, notably those in NUPE. In some schools, joint union groups have been set up and a borough-wide inter-union committee has been set up to organise opposition to the cuts among the borough's workers.

All this sounds very hopeful. The seeds of an effective campaign have been sewn, but it is widely felt in the schools that the "action' being taken is totally inadequate.

Unlikely

The local NUT Association has proposed 'rolling strikes' as an alternative; this would result in the orchestrated . closing of schools in rotation. The NUT Action Committee, on past form, are very unlikely to back this.

Since these cuts seem to be the largest in the country, it is up to them to make a test case of Barking and act now to coordinate a campaign of industrial action which will close schools and bring home to the council, parents and children alike the opposition of workers in schools to their plans for the next two years.

Workers in Barking and Dagenham often forget that their employer is supposed to be a Labour Authority. 'Socialist' councillors are carrying out government policy without a whimper of protest.

Unified