MPs slam IBA gag on Loach

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WE WISH to express our grave concern at the continuing refusal of the Independent Broadcasting Authority to permit the showing of Ken Loach's films, Questions of Leadership. We believe the demands for cuts, insertions, and revised formats are an insidious and highly dangerous form of censorship.

Ken Loach is a distinguished British film-maker with a long record of fine productions: Cathy Come Home, The Big Flame, Days of Hope, Kes, The Price of Coal, Looks and Smiles, and The Red and the Blue among others.

Interference of the kind to which he is being subjected is always intolerable, but it is doubly so in this case because in Questions of Leadership Ken Loach's rare talents enable ordinary rank-and-file trade unionists to speak for themselves about the real questions of democracy, accountability, and power in our society.

We fear that it is precisely because the films do this with great success that such strenuous efforts are being made to prevent them from being broadcast.

Bob Clay MP, Margaret Beckett MP, Max Madden MP Ernie Roberts MP, Joan Maynard MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Mark Fisher MP PRESS shift away from arts and social science teaching towards courses which suit the needs of industry.

But NAB also wants an increase in student numbers, and therefore a reduction in standards and resources available per student.

There is a long-running argument in NUS about NAB -whether to urge LEAs to pull out or "stay in and fight"

NAB is a tool of the Tories which has shown minimal - if any - independence. Under this government any central body which organises public sector higher education is bound to be geared up to making cuts.

It cannot be reformed or its members convinced to change their minds.

Pulling LEAs out of NAB won't be achieved by student pressure: not even by a centrally organised student campaign.

It demands a campaign inside trade unions and Labour Parties and winning the argument against talking to the Tories.

Unfortunately, pulling out of NAB won't stop either the central cuts or the reduction in "top-up' money from councils. But it will certainly be a step on the way to organising a united student and trade union fightback.

In the November 4 issue SA explained their difference from SO on this in terms of ''the need of not isolating [the hard left] from those, who voted for