Tories Against the Tories?

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THE LATEST Tory attacks on local government have not march to power.

won favour with many Tories on local councils:

Although on a national Party members. level it is possible for them to Grant about attacks on overspending' and 'extremists' locally Tories are discovering that it is not as simple as that.

The 'rate-capping' legislation represents an attempt to deprive local authorities of powers they have possessed in one form or another since the Poor Law passed in 1601 in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

Tories in local government may be in favour of cuts, but they would prefer to choose the cuts themselves and not to have them dictated by a national government - even it it is Tory.

For this reason, the Association of County Councils, which is almost exclusively Conservative, has voted to oppose the legislation. They say they are defend'freedom' and local democracy'. • Tories in other local authority associations and in bodies that cover various services have even been prepared to support protests against the August White Paper threatening to enforce cuts in the services of local authorities.

Thatcher another five years of power.

Hostile On the separate issue of the abolition of the GLC, the local Tories are even more hostile to what the government is attempting to do. This is not only because they have high hopes that they could inflict electoral defeat on dominate Britain. the left wing leadership of the GLC.

It is also because they fear that if the functions of the GLC are given to other local authorities this will force up costs - and rates: - even in arcas they control, like outer London boroughs. power for the first time.

ECSTATIC: Liberals stood today not empty and cheered as their charismatic and hedge: leader, Mr. David Steel, told them to forget about preparing for government.

Mr. Stel,, making the keyTuesday, 27th. note closing speech at the Liberal -Assembly, forecast that he would be going to Downing Street within four years. • But he told delegates that he doubted many of them would be coming with him. TOWN HALL ient for the savage cuts being threatened against us. This has been the reason for the setting up of the Association of London Authorities by those Labour authorities who see the need to contront the government more directy.

Parallel

There has been a parallel discussion on the Tory side in the London area. It was notable at the meeting of the Association of Metropolitan Authorities held in Newcastle last week (20-22 September) that only Tories from such places as Croydon and Wandsworth gave much support to the measures being proposed by their Thatcher leadership. People who live in these boroughs know that the desperate efforts to impose Thatcherite spending cuts and privatisation have had horrifying results.

Their children do not get meals at schools, their bins no longer get emptied. The old people and under fives in such places get no facilities at all.

The problem for the Tories is that however much they have succeeded in building a populist campaign against high rates which are basically caused by their policies, however much their press has attacked left wingers in local government, notably Ken Livingstone, the consequences on the ground are unpopular, undemocratic and unlikely to succeed in the way they want.

This may perhaps be the first chink in the armour of the Tory monolith since its second term of office under the extreme right wing leadership that has taken it OVer.

It is an indication however that in order to carry out the policies they presented to the electorate - and those in their 'secret manifesto' like massive cuts in the health service - they will confront massive opposition around which we can fight to eventually engulf them.

Duily Mail EXPRESS res SOCIALIST Organiser recently carried a review of the new book on white enligr workers edited by Richard Hyman and Robert rice ['The New Working Class', Macmillan £7.95].

The book contains much interesting material on white collar workers, some of it from a Marxist viewpoint. There is one big gap, however: it has no overall figures for, or even particular studies of, white collar strikes.

The gap is not easy to fill.

Official government figures give a breakdown of strikes by industry, but not by the occupation of the workers involved.

And this holds not only for Britain, but also for other countries.

SOME information is, however, available from a detailed study done by the Department of Employment on the strike figures for 1966-73.

Strikes per 100,000 Period workers Manual Non-manual 1966-68 12.8 1.1 97-69. 15.2 1.2 58-70 18.8 1.7 69-71 18.8 1.8 70-72 17.8 2.0 71-73 16.7 1.7 Strike 's pe Period worke Manu: Non Mani 1966€ 67-69 68-70 69-71 70-72 71-73 'Non-manual workers' in these tables, include everyone up to managing directors. Still, it seems clearly established that non-manual workers have a much lower strike rate than manual workers.

That's not the end of the story. More on this next week. defence policy but said they could decide on the outcome without personal rancour. This was because his side would win and the need for personal abuse would be diminished.

STOP PRESS: leadership election.

Mr Neil Kinnock denied a