London councils band her to fight cuts

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him first and ask questions later.

FURTHER effort to begin a defence of local authority the '70g. services against the devastation of the Tories was seen in the foundation on July 5 of the offensive. Association of London AuthorCities.

We were concerned at that time with the need to discuss trade union leader. common problems with other local authorities and with the inadequacy of the established machinery for this purpose, particularly because the London answered in plain and blunt language. Boroughs Association was being used by hard line Tories for reactionary attacks on the GLC international working class:

and on the policies of Labour authorities.

The Association of London Authorities is not a revolutionary organisation. However, its foundation does represent the a mental hospital — that he is insane! fact that many local authorities are finding it increasingly diffiState 'unions'. cult to operate within the parameters set by the past and by the Tories, particularly in the aftermath of the latest £280 ist states except Poland.

million penalties.

working class activity are forbidden. Socialist Organiser supporters will London Campaign Against the 1 Southwark Campaign Working Par five or six decades ago.

THIS meeting recognises that: 1. With the latest measures of the Tory government, Labour local authorities have no option but to confront the government attested fact:

to face:

WELL it's all over now. The nerve-wracking waiting. The down. endless hopes and counterWar divisions. hopes. The appeals for clementhat there is a cy. The counter-appeals for a labour movement in the Stalinist States short sharp shock.

The MPs have paced up and down outside the crucial chamber. They have eaten their last meal (raw steak) and then at the crucial moment at a given signal from the speaker, they crats. walked that last short walk through the lobbies and voted.

We should spare a thought for them, those men (and some women) who take on themselves this onerous task of doing on our been shot down. behalf what we are too squeamWish to do for ourselves - deciding our lives. service to it for countries like Chile.

Hobbies among the most oppressed in the world. In the evenings they go home to their loved ones. They feed the dog. They chat to their families. They have ordinary everyday homely hobbies, like video recording, eating. at spensive restaurants, putting up 'Private, Keep Out!' signs.

To their neighbours they are ordinary men and women, who choose go off to some ill-defined job in the city.

Little do those neighbours MP is a lethal chamber, where the axe can fall on millions every week. That these are the men and women prepared to close Should lis down hospitals, cut unemploy-» ment benefit, put another million or two on the dole.

Of course we all know in our DECIAL heart of hearts that those things have to be done. HOSPITAL That unemployment encourages more people to become unemployed.

That hospitals make the numbers of sick soar. In some states of America where hospitals have beei virtually abolished for the poor serious illness amongst poor people is virtually _ SOUTH LONDA ..unknown - and where it does It will naturally engage in lobbying and discussions. But it will also be a campaigning body and I hope will be able to play its part in and our corner of the battle against the government's schemes to devastate our public sector. be moving this resolution at the 'ute Conference called by the ty on Sunday July 17. or become more or less humane administrators of Tory cuts.

2. While we expose the huge drain of interest charges and demand the nationalisation of happen it doesn't last long.

That pensions mean that more people have to live with old age. It is a fact that before pensions were invented a much higher proportion of the population were younger.

Of course it was well meaning liberals who brought in all these things. Well meaning liberals who got us where we are today.

Socialist Organiser does not shirk its duty. We've heard all the arguments about taking care of the sick' and 'looking after the less well off in society' Far right We've heard those arguments until we are sick of them. If there was not something seriously wrong with these people they would not be sick, or old or handicapped would they?

It is time we stopped thinking all the time about people who are wrong and started thinking a little more about the people who are right. Far right.

Of course the weak-kneed moaners are always ready to make your heart bleed with sob stories about unemployed people with families to support.

They don't talk so much about their victims do they? The ones who are not loafing around all day with nothing to do. The ones who can never forget that they have to get up and go to work.

So we say 'Hurrah' to brave men and women who prepared to do for us what the banks and finance institutions, the immediate demand must be more money from central government to maintain local jobs and services.

3. Confrontation requires action by trade unions and local communities as well as by councils.

4. The job of the labour movement is therefore to prepare the basis for confrontation, by agitation, education and organisation. Labour councillors must see themselves primarily as part of this labour movement effort, rather than as administrators.

The meeting therefore resolves to:

1. Set up a coordinating committee of delegates from CLPs, from Labour Party workplace branches, from council Labour groups, and from trade unions at branch and shop stewards' committee level.

2. To plan a recall conference for December, as councils enter the budget-making process.

3. To urge all local Labour Parties to begin campaigns of:

al Door-to-door canvassing, asking residents to sign letters of protest to the government.

b) Workplace meetings with local authority trade uninists, whose jobs and conditions will be immediately at risk.

c) Meetings on estates, where tenants face the prospect of Duily :: Ikeil EXPRESS Čhır Dailn ürlegraph Stinare not prepared to do for ourselves.

Axe unemployment pay:

Chop expensive hospitals.

Cut the average age at a stroke.

The MPs - worth penny of their rise.

TALKING of the death penalty - which we weren't - one award should go to the super, soaraway Sun for its in-depth probe into 'alternative' deathstyles - Is hanging the best way to kill.

It took the Sun, always one of Britain's staunchest defenders - to point out that for centuries the British people have used the best, most efficient form of execution, the Rope.

The Sun looked frankly at some of the revolting ways that foreigners kill - complete with a Time to Die assessment.

America has some nice touches like three levers to drop the cyanide tablet in the gas chamber. That way none of the three officials can be proved to have killed.

Quickness

But as the Sun pointed out, "Critics say the method is much too slow to be humane." And when you are killing people, doing it quick is obviously the most important thing.

After all we might want to chop your bleeding head off. But further big rent increases. •Such campaigns should be followed up by local conferences of labour movement organisations, community and tenants' groups, to discuss local plans for confrontation.

The coordinating committee should be responsible for circulating information and permitting an exchange of experience.

4. To urge all Labour councils to break from the Tory-dominated associations of councils for the purposes of negotiations on wages and conditions with employees.

5. Within local campaigns, to urge delegates to fight for a perspective of:

a) Refusal by Labour councils to cut. services - that is, a decision by councils to create an unbalanced budget for 1983-4.

b) A call from Labour councils to council workers to follow the officers who refuse to implement an unbalanced budget.

c) A call from Labour councils for rent and rate strikes, backed up by one-day industrial strikes, against cuts budgets imposed by senior council officers in defiance of democratic council decisions.

d) Maximum coordination of such action on a London-wide -basis. let's make sure we don't behave like savages while we do it.

Savages • like those in the Middle East who use a sword -which can bring instant death where the execution is not botched. But in the Sun guide to butchery this too scores low. 'The ceremony, often watched by a baying mob is rated as utterly barbaric."

Likewise the 'vile' garrotte. The firing squad scores low too - but usually because foreigners are pulling the trigger - and we all know foreigners can't shoot straight.

The electric chair "even journalists are invited to watch" , is described as grisly.

Only two methods come out top of the Sun pops. One is the lethal injection where you get to be killed while you are asleep, so it hardly counts. There another nice touch too. 'The victim..: is positioned with his (!) right arm through a hole in a partition so he cannot see the executioner, who watches the operation (!) through a one-way mirror."

The other is good old fashion?

ed British hanging. You will be glad to know that not only is one set of gallows kept in full working order but that "strenuous tests are made in the days leading up to the execution to make sure the gallows are working properly."

On the actual day in question "a high speed routine goes into action to get the ordeal over as quickly as possible.

'Time to Die: Up to 20 minutes for the actual death and the heart to stop beating.

But the condemned person is unconscious a split second after he (that man again) drops through the trap-door."

Of course there are those who claim that Sun readers have been unconscious since a split second after they opened their first copy of the paper. It may not took nice, but I assure you they don't even notice the poison at work.

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council's policy and to 'black' cuts imposed by senior council