Heseltine's Hatchet Job on Councils Photo: John Harris Hanos Off 110a9

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record is amazing: four bills in two years; two bills withdrawn; three major changes in intention; and a grant system that is not merely complex beyond belief but contradictory in purposes."

In addition to this, there have been separate measures for Scotland, and further legislation may be GOOD intentions, and even sincere attempts to use the council chamber to serve the interests of workers and of tenants, will fall flat unless they are backed up by organisation.

That's one of the lessons of the failures of left-wing councils like Lambeth, Lothian and the GLC.

Left-wing councillors and rank-and-file Labour and trade union activists need to get organised, to create an active force making sure that the labour movement holds councillors to account, and that the movement mobilises to fight cuts whatever the councillors do.

Many local Labour Left caucuses have started to do this work.

As Jeremy Corbyn reports elsewhere in this supplement, Target 82 has been organising in London, and over 100 council candidates have signed a declaration that: «Where threats of legal action - including surcharges - are made we on the way to amend Section 137 of the 1972 Local Government Act.

This is the record:

*In June 1979, Heseltine cut the Rate Support Grant (RSG) by 3%.

*Later in 1979, he put the Local Government Planning and Land Bill before Parliament. It had to be withannounce in advance that we will not tolerate these as reasons for abandoning our manifesto commitments; instead we will as necessary defy not only the rulings of the District Auditor but also the whole undemocratic system of rule by elected judges."

Link

In Bradford, for example, there have also been efforts to link the Left. A declaration by Labour councillors and candidates calling for a 'defiant anti-cuts campaign' has brought forward a witchhunt from the right wing.

The Labour Group leadership is proposing expulsion from the group of the three councillors who backed the declaration, but left wing activists are confident of hundreds of signatures to a petition opposing this before the District Labour Party meeting on April 6.

The statement urged "the Labour Group to adopt a position of No cuts, no rent increases and no rate increas, and turn to the trade unions and tenants' associadrawn because didn't like it.

*In 1980 Heseltine called upon councils to cut their expenditure to a level 2% below that of 1978/9, and further slashed the RSG.

*In September 1980 Heseltine produced his first 'hit-list' of 14 councils tions for supporting action.

Barry Turner, a signatory to the declaration and a Socialist Organiser supporter, has also put out a mass leaflet in the Bradford Moor ward, where he is the Labour candidate, dissociating from the Labour council's rent and rate increases.

"Vote for a policy of no rises: no rent rises, no rate Bradford Moor Labour Barry Turner (thirteen of them Labour) who were threatened with additional RSC cuts as punishment for "highspending"

*Also in 1980, the Local Government Planning and Land Bill re-appeared as 'Number Two'. This subsequently became law and provided:

- retrospective authorisation of the 'hit-list'.

-a new system of grant-related expenditure assessments (GREA), allowing Heseltine to tell local authorities how much money they ought to be spending.

- automatic penalties for councils spending above these 'threshold' levels.

-fixed limits on capital spending.

Grant

-a new system which reduced the grant for each extra pound of spending in areas with high rateable values (mostly in London).

*In 1981, the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act became law, giving George Younger, the Scottish Secretary, even more draconian powers north of the border. The Act allows him to impose any spending cuts on any council to any level he thinks reasonable. This was the Act that was used against Lothian.

*In England and Wales in 1981, Heseltine set a new spending target 5.6% below 1978-9 expenditure levels. The new GREA formula was inadequate for this purpose, and in June 1981, he announced a further 'hit list" , which led to many councils imposing supplementary rates in October 1981.

*By November, 1981, Heseltine was facing the prublem that he could not penalise some authorities any further as they had no RSC left to be withdrawn. Therefore, he introduced the Local Government Finance Bill 1981 which arbitrarily assessed what each council would spend, and required authorities with a budget above the Tories' cash limit to raise a supplementary rate from which industrial and commercial ratepayers would receive large-scale protection.

This supplementary rate was to be, subject to a referendum in which Heseltine set the question. He would then decide himself what cuts to make if the referendum went against the local authority.

In the face of a humiliating rebellion from both Tory councils and his own backbenchers, the Bill was speedily withdrawn.

*The Bill was replaced, as happened in 1980, with Mark Two. This time, Heseltine sought to outlaw supplementary rates completely, and • to take even wider discretionary powers to cut councils' grants at any time during the year. It also gives retrospective legality to the £400 million Heseltine had already taken away from councils in 1981 for "high spending"

But even at the second attempt at this bill, he still ran into trouble, and the 'super hold-back' clause, allowing Heseltine to impose grant penalties on individual councils halfway through a financial year was dropped.

*The Tories then introduced amendments in february 1982 to allow the super hold-back to still be applied to categories of authorities and have made the GLC and the ILEA, for instance, separate categories. the 'super holdback' can also be applied to individual authorities subsequent years.

*Just so that Scotland did not feel left out, the duties; the Labour movement has a duty to those who are prepared to fight now and we must demand that the next Labour government retrospectively indemnifies them against all penalties and debarments imposed under Heseltine's legislation and by the Tory courts.

Honouring our manifesto commitments and protecting working people does appear to be criminal under tory law. The next Labour government cannot allow that law to stand.

We are told by Labour's leaders that retrospective legislation "sets a dangerous precedent" . The truth is that the precedent has been set - the tories have introduced retrospective legislation over Zimbabwe, on closed shop dismissals and local government cuts.

It seems to me that what Labour needs is to set a few more 'dangerous precedents' Spread We're offering bundles of five each week for £1 post free, and bundles of 10 for £1.75 post free.

That's £12 for three months for bundles of 5, and £21 for bundles of ten.

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From: Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8. Please make cheques payable to Socialist Organiser.

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riteback Solidarity and socialism in Irish st ruggle Brutality Liam Mellows: saw the Irish liberation fight as part of AS A regular reader and sometimes contributor to your excellent and progressive paper, I was very interested in the article by the PRO, Republican prisoners, Hull Prison (18.3.82).

I know that conditions are even worse in lots of cases, than he describes. I am sure that he is aware of the terrible conditions in some of the Free State prisons, and the methods the Special Branch use in getting confessions.

For sheer brutality and torture, they are much worse than any northern, or British torture squads.

There was the case of the three Tipperary men, who were framed for conspiracy, one of whom tried to commit suicide by jumping from an upstairs window, barely missing being impaled on iron railings underneath. They were duly convicted, but after a couple of years inside were released without any explanation.

free Then you had the so-called train robbers convicted. But at their appeal, We invite readers to send us their letters, up to a usual maximum length of 400 words.

Send to.

Socialist Organiser, c/o 28, Middle Lane, London N8. their counsel and refused to have anything more to do with the proceedings.

They were found guilty in their absence and sentenced to death on June 9, 1976. The Irish Times wrote an article criticising the trial and verdict and they were heavily fined for contempt. Hibernia Review was threatened with sequestration for publishing correspondence.

I arrived in Dublin from Coventry on Friday 29 October 1976 for the appeal against the death sentence, which was to start on 1 November. I met my sister, (Noel's mother) and his father, and they took me to Mountjoy Prison to see Marie, who had sought permission for the visit from the Governor, but wasn't allowed to see her.

On November 2 I went to the Ministry of Justice, and was still refused permission.

When the Supreme Court opened, Noel's counsel told the presiding judge that if his clients were not allowed in Court, as their lives were on the line, he was to drop the appeal. The judge told him that he had to carry on regardless of the Murrays' wishes.

The real reason the A FEW words in self-defence: Comrades Regan and O'Shea (letters, Socialist Organiser no.78) confuse solidarity with the Catholic community and the Republican movement against our own government and its forces, with "political [emphasis added] solidarity with those forces conducting the struggle"

The distinction is fundamental.

I am not in political solidarity with the Provos and the IRSP. Though in the last decade I have written dozens of articles to explain and justify to the British labour movement the Catholic revolt and the Republican military campaign that grew out of it, I have never been in political solidarity with the Republicans.

Supported

I have supported the Northern Ireland Catholics and the war of the Republi cans against the imperialist government of the country l live in from a standpoint radically different from theirs, that of international socialism - of which the socialist republicanism of Connolly and Mellows is a According to my basic political standpoint, much that the Republicans did (and didn't do) was inadequate, misguided, wrong, counterproductive, and sometimes monstrous ffor example, various bombings _ in Belfast in 1972. in Birmingham in 1974 said so in print at the time).

Politically

The problem, as I argued in Socialist Organiser, is that the Republicans are politically incapable of breaking out of the impasse in Northern Ireland: they are a major part of the political problem in I eland, not the sululion.

Central and dominant in the view of the Republicans is military action. That, as James Connolly noted long ago, is what defines them whatever 'final' social goals and programmes they talk about.

Pointed Socially and politically they are not revolutionaries - despite what the rank and file, especially those in the North, want. This is never more clear than when they venture into Southern politics, as they did without benefit of the hunger strike in the recent elections.

The only way we can do anything to begin to change this is to point it out, explain it, criticise the Republican leadership, and draw oul the logic of what they do (and fail to do). In this way, by criticism, we can try to help Republican militants go forward politically out of the blind alley they are now in.

Partition

The main responsibility for the Northern Ireland situation is that of the British government, which pursues a policy of trying to beat the Catholics into accepting the undemocratic partition of Ireland. For this reason, we must support the Republicans against that government.

But the notion of O'Shea and Regan that we owe them political solidarity is something else again. It would mean boycotting our own politics and mimicing and playing the chameleon to those of the Republicinternational socialism ans' - except for strictly 'constructive' and 'comradely' criticism.

Can one criticise populist Republican fundamentals (as shown in action during the election) without being 'negative' and 'unconstructive'? I don't think so.

inappropriate 'Comradely' criticism of the IRSP's call for support in most areas for Fianna Fail would be very inappropriate politically. Sectarianism has nothing to do with it: it is the criticism of a revolutionary petty bourgeois nationalist movement from a' radically different political and class standpoint.

The approach self-boycott that the comrades demand of me would, if generalised, cripple us politically in face of any force, anywhere, which is leading a political/military struggle against imperialism — no matter how inadequate, alien, blind or bankrupt. You won't find support for that approach in Marx, Lenin or Connolly!

Following Marx, Lenin coined the slogan for how to relate to revolutionary nationalists: 'strike together, march separately'. That was James Connolly's approach to the revolutionary nationalists in 1916, too. Politically we march separately, even though we have a common enemy -the British government in Northern Ireland.

And I wrote about the Repubiicans in Southern Irish politics. Did I write a Thursday 1 April false or true account their politics there?

Perhaps they think criticisms like mine will undermine sympathy for the Republicans?

But we can't base a campaign in support of the Republicans against our own government on political lies about them, and we shouldn't -base it on political support for them.

Problems

The quotations the comrades cite say: 'don't use criticism as a cop-out from support for the Republicans against our own government' (as Militant does and as the SWP and SLL then did). I haven't done that. Socialist Organiser doesn't do that In fact the quoted pamphlet contained highly critical comments on the Kepublicans (space rules out quoting them), and the assessment that their political limitations were one of the great problems that the Irish working class had to solve.

That said, it is nevertheless true that there has been a certain shift in my attitude. The articles I have written on the Irish struggle in the last decade were written from a standpoint independent of Republicanism, and many of them carried criticism of the Republican movement, overlaid with justification of their fight against British imperialism.

I now wish that I had also spelled out the criticisms and the socialist-republican alternative more clearly and insistently. That might have helped some Republicans to understand why the whole Northern Ireland Catholic movement is in an impasse, and thus helped them to prepare to carve a road out of it.

It is still our responsibility to explain the justice of the Catholic and Republic-

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