Manchester Councillors expelled

Scan page 2

repeal of the Police Bill • A united Ireland. Repeal иго г'етотню от i errorism Act, ban plastic bullets • A socialist foreign policy sting Ets acon move.

informal deats. End the witch-hunt • A Labour government that carries out Labour conference decisions.

Contact: Mandy Moore/ Andy Harris (joint secretaries), c/o 28 Middle Lane, London N8. Affiliation fee: £3 individuals, £5 organisations. AS a result of voting against the 88p a week council house rent increases, 27 Labour councillors in Manchester have now been expelled from the Labour Group. A letter from the National Agent David Hughes, dated March 10 but only received by us on the 22nd, delivered the sentence.

"I bet of your action in = Mart 2. 1983. 1 teeth the the Labour Group Whip tom you as of now."

There is no time limit to the expulsions, which is normally the case, so in theory some of us could be out for years. That might be what this present NEC want. By doing that and only readmitting a few at a time they could insure a right wing majority in the Group for years to comc.

It is vital that, constituencies and district parties send resolutions to the NEC condemning this abuse of the rules and demanding our reinstatement. If they get away with this in Manchester then there's nothing to stop them doing the same in other parts of the country where there is a strong left wing on the council.

For our part. we are considering an appeal to the National Conference this year. That's the only sense lett open to as nos. NorNEC, but in our case the court of appeal has already delivered the sentence.

In the meantime, while all this was going on the Group leadership • managed to force through their fifth cuts budget in succession. They needed two attempts to do it, though, because the left voted against _at the first budget meeting. With the Tories and Liberals also voting against it was Pete 'side defeated, the only time this has ever happened in Manchester.

We voted against because although the cuts weren't as severe as in previous years, they were stil cuts and therefore against Party policy and the manifesto we stood on. As well as the 88p rent rises, there was a cut of £1.8 million in committee budgets, and almost £7 million was removed from the repairs programme. Ine budget had not been drawn up in consultation "it the Party and as far as we 8213 C002.Dd I wasn't a Labour budget.

In the end the right ming got it through because the pressure put on the councillors who voted against proved too strong. We even had the historic sight of the council union leaders and assorted full-time officials actually lobbying a Labour Group meeting. The pity is that they didn't do that four years ago instead of trying to keep up the cosy pact they've had with successive group leaders.

The problem was that they saw the issue purely in terms of whether their members would get paid if the budget continued to get voted down. That, and the implied threat of the right to do a deal with the Tories which would have led the compulsory redundancies, meant that the very people who should have been our allies were against us.

When we met shortly before the second budget meeting the minority who were in favour of abstaining including the one Militant supporter on the council, had become the majority. Although five of us still thought we should stick it out and vote against, that wouldn't have been enough to affect the result. We didn't want to be _completely isolated for no purpose, so we went along with the majority and abstained.

Scan page 3

OCCUPATION OWIN Workers at Timex in Dundee are occupying to stop redundancies. "We all feel much stronger now we're doing BOTH THE March Labour Party National Executive (NEC) meeting and the Organisation SubCommittee on Monday 11th voted overwhelmingly to defer the three resolutions on their agenda dealing with the witch-hunt.

The 'official' reason was "impending legal action' - but in fact Militant say that while they have not dropped their court action, they are not going to push it.

By ing support for such a stand).

It was against this background that the third Labour Against something", , one of them said. Socialist Organiser no.127 April 14 1983 Page WW VAIU

----- pull-quotes -----

ists Victory