A selective report

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The assault on all things liberal and "wasteful" continues as the National Advisory Board sets out to stop polytechnics offering the want polys to go back to teaching mechanical engineering and drop the 'academic' non-vocational arts and social science courses.

Last year Sir Keith Joseph chewed over the idea of reducing the number of social science graduates admitted onto teacher training courses. What use is a social science graduate in an infants school, he but some colleges listened to him and the papers carried a story about qualified applicants being turned down because they were social science outh on YIS are going to spend time in FEs. They amount to 80,000 full time students. Jot surprisingly NATHE (the union for FE and Poly lecturers) has bought YTS. As YTS gets underway, Doo A recent survey in the Financial Times gives some picture of the dramatic rise of Japanese foreign investment in recent years.

In the 1960s Japan had an insignificant share of world total foreign investment. By 1980 it had risen to be the capitalist world's fourth-ranking foreign investor, behind the US, the UK, and the Netherlands. But the biggest rise in Japanese overseas investment has come since 1981.

Japanese investment in the US and Western Europe has expanded graduates. THE, National Executive Committee (NEC) report to the 1983 Labour Party conference contains a full four pages on the NEC's own attempts to witchhunt socialists out of the Party and then blames Labour's "severe defeat" in the election on its "reputation for disunity and for internal strife"

The account of the NEC's expulsion of the five Militant editorial board members covers little of the tortuous wriggling the NEC went through. It blames Militant for the fact that it all took so long and that the NEC couldn't show the evidence. If only Militant had not gone to court, they could have been got rid of so quickly!

The report mentions that •the constituency parties .to which the excluded members had belonged... were requested to remove their names from the pressure is starting to grow on lecturers.

by Bloxam John membership records", but not that two of the three CLPs involved are still refusing to do it.

Hornsey CLP is cited as having "refused to accept" the NEC's decision to keep Tariq Ali out. The report says that now, 21 months later, 'the procedure to expel Mr Ali from membership has been initiated by the NEC The NEC wants Conference to endorse this, and "also their suspension of Manchester Wythenshawe CLP.

Both Hornsey and Wythenshawe will be challenging the NEC.

Much is omitted: the attacks on Peter Tatchell; the decision to pulp the Bermondsey by-election leaflet; the attempt to ban Militant from Party premises and functions; and of Stan Crooke.

The NEC's manoeuvre to stop reselections after boundary reorganisations, and to prevent Ken Livingstone being chosen as Labour candidate in Brent East, is reported like this: "the NEC... used its powers under the Constitution to propose a shortened procedure for the reallocation of candidates"

There is hardly a word on the rank and file resistance to the witeh-hunt. "Not all non-affiliated groups of Labour Party members have applied for registration", the Report says, coyly.

'In the circumstances.. the National Executive Committee decided not to pursue organisations which failed to register".

That rank and file resistance can continue to push back the witch-hunt. But it's not beaten yet. traditional FE, to enabie progressive work to be done oppressed young people.

Nevertheless, there are several reasons why conflicts are likely to develop over YTS within FE in the near future.

First, colleges will be competing with other aencies for YTS work. To lower costs, college principals (many of them NATPHE members) will attack lecturers' conditions of service. Already, Kinnock: supporting the witch-hunt?