Liverpool NALGO draws the line

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Liverpool City "THERE ale very few council services that can't be privatised. Our members are coming to realise this, and that a line has got to be drawn somewhere.

Since last week Liverpool VALGO members have been blacking work on the Liberal controlled council's plans to privatise refuse collection and housing management.

Similar action is being taken in Birmingham against moves by the Tory council there to get bids from private companies to take over refuse collection.

Sack Birmingham council has threatened to sack the VALGO members. Liverpool counci has made no response yet, but Pete Cresswell says: "If they try sacking anyone, we'll have an immediate mass meeting of our 5,000 members in work time to decide on strike action."

40 NUPE members have already been on strike for four weeks in Liverpool, against moves by the council to privatise the cleaning of the city centre market. They are picketing the market, but encugh lorries are crossing the picket line to keep the market going.

The executive of the council Joint Shop Stewards' Committee called a mass meeting to discuss all-out !THERE is a grim irony in the fact that the closure of tree foundries in the central of Scotland should arur SO soon after the Tories' Falklands foray.

For while the Tories were ia empting to re-live the gunBoat diplomacy of the heyda of British imperialism, le stagnation of latter day Brtish capitalism was finally aking its toll of firms that med their rise to its expanOn Thursday 5 August, * closures of Jones and Campbell (Larbert) and eith and • Wellstood Bunny bridge) were arounced, involving Bother 70 job losses in an rea that has already witessed a disastrous rise in employment in recent pars.

It was Smith and Well Hood who made the stoves ned by Florence Nightinat Balaciava, and by cott and Shackleton on deir expeditions.

Drop But the closure of these no foundries was only a hop in the ocean comired with the announcecat made three days earlier receivers had been ed in to the Carron Iron tarks (Falkirk).

As every Scottish schoolNALGO branch secretary at Council, spoke to Socialist action in support of the 40 NUPE members. They felt the attendance was not sufficient to go ahead with action.

"But, says Pete Cresswell, "the market is only the beginning. The council plans to move on to much largetscale privatisation, and that will mean redundancies.

"The proposal to privatise housing management is an innovation. It has never been done before. The council want to do a trial with two large estates. They have already had a lot of inquiries from property management companies and estate agents.

"Our members are becoming more aware of the issues, and more determined.

child knows, Carron was the birthplace of the Scottish Industrial Revolution.

Carron's contributed rather more to Wellington's victory at Waterloo than did the playing fields of Eton, by supplying the British Army's cannons, and Nelson had Carron cannons fitted to his flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar.

James Watt went for the cylinders for his steam engines to Carron's. The foundry was also immortalised in a ditty penned by Robert Burns in an adjacent pub, after the foundry's security police had refused to let him make a Sunday afternoon visit to the foundry.

Unique

In a truly unique moment, Scottish national ists will have clutched British Empire nostalgics in an embrace of mutual despair and wept into eachother's hankies in hearing of the bankruptcy of Carron's.

In the early years of the century the foundry switched from production of cannons to bathroom appliances, and grew to become one of the leading manufacturers in this branch of industry. But then the recession pulled the plug on the company's profits.

The company responded the time-honoured fashion NIIDE

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