Right Wing Stall on Anc Manchester Cuts

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MANCHESTER faces a huge crisis over this year' council budget. Heseltine has told the counci that the most îney can spend in the next inancial year will be £230 million. Just to keep the services at the same level as 11st year will mean spending between £260 and £270 To meet Heseltine's target the council must therefore have to make £30140 million cuts, or put the rates up by around 40%, or combine cuts and rate rises added to a rent increase of 12.50 a week.

Over the last two years the leadership of the Labour Group surrendered to every demand that the Tories have made, in the hope that better times would come along. Some hope!

Now they have caved in completely. They have iorced through proposals for = £2.50 a week rent rise, a 12° rate rise and cuts that *il mean up to 4,000 council workers getting the sack.

The council unions içadership has, been scarcely, setter. Up till now they have had a deal with Labour Group leader Norman Morris: no compulsory redundancies and we'll support you.

This pact has led to 4,000 jobs going in the last three years through voluntary redundancy, jobs that unemployed youth in the city so desperately need.

Now the town hall unions, having got down on their knees, are about to get kicked in the teeth. In a vain attempt to avoid compulsory redundancies, Roger Jones, secretary of the Town Hall branch of NALGO, has put forward his own package of cuts, voluntary redundancies, natural wastage, rate rises and rent rises.

But Morris contemptuously dismissed this.

A city Labour Party meeting on Sunday January 24 called for the Labour Group to introduce a balanced budget, based on a rate increase in line with inflation, but to declare 1le Party's opposition to cuts and rent increases and to defer any decision on them. Then after the May council éléctions campaign to' oppose cuts should be ted.

The resolution was weak: it didn't actually call or the cuts to be rejected, nerely to be delayed, and it didn't commit anyone to vote against them.

Growing

So by the end of Tuesday's Group meeting the City Party position wasn't worth the paper it was written on. And to make matters worse, Norman Morris could go on television crowing that they had in fact carried out Party policy. "Why, weren't we asked to produce a balanced budget with a 12% rates increase?"

An amendment was put to the resolution by Socialist Organiser supporters which would have committed the Party to calling on the Labour Group to refuse to make any cuts or declare redundancies, to fill all vacancies, to freeze rents and rates and to mount a massive campaign in the working class in Manchester to win support for this policy.

The amendment was overwhelmingly" defeated.

with only about ten delegates voting for it. It seems that most people at the meeting weren't prepared to vote for anything that would be illegal or that would lead to a clear break with the right wing majority of the Labour Group. They were obvously worried about the possible implications on the May elections.

This was sheer evasion. There is no legal way out of the crisis that doesn't involve working people making huge sacrifices, and any strategy that doesn't involve complete surrender is bound to lead to trouble with the right wing.

Quiet life This could have some adverse effect on the elections but one thing's for sure, it Labour go into the election having to detenu cuts and sackings, we'll get slaughtered. City Party delegates will have to make up their minds what it is they want a quict life in the Party or a light against the Torie « PETE KEENLYSIDI January NEC.

Bishop's Stortford or no Bishop's Stortford, the NEC voted down by 13 votes to 7 a proposal from Les Huckfield that the Party chairperson be authorised to find some mutually acceptable agreement with Southwark. • Judith Hart was sent to De CRECHE: Available.

28 Middle Lane, London N8.

Coventry

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