Urgent we learn from the March

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TO THE anger of hundreds of lobbyers and many more of the country's 5.5 million disabled people, Tory MPs turned out last Friday to block a Private Member's Bill to outlaw discrimination against the disabled.

Amid claims from Thatcher's "Minister for the Disabled" Tony Newton, that the Bill -sponsored by Labour MP Bob Wareing - would cost £33 million per year to implement, it was voted down in the Commons by 210 votes to 164.

Newton later refused point blank to offer any pledge of Government legislation to replace the defeated Bill, which would have made discrimination against the disabled illegal, and set up a disablement commission, with 50% of its membership drawn from the disabled.

The problems in employment and in daily life which this Bill is designed to combat have intensified massively under the Tory government's public spending cuts - which have eliminated large numbers of jobs in the public sector suited to disabled workers.

And in industry, too, the ruthless drive for speed-up and plant closures has destroyed previous protected areas of employment for disabled workers - forcing those who could stand the pace out onto production lines or out onto the street.

The Wareing Bill would not by any means have tackled all of these problems: but it represented an acknowledgement of the needs of the disabled. And the Tories' categoric refusal to spend a puny £33 million on improving the lives of 5.5 million oppressed people is a fair indicator of the government's attitude to those in need of care and support from the state.

THE issuing of a High Court injunction against Greenpeace protestors blocking the discharge of nuclear waste into the Irish Sea comes after a fortnight of growing publicity for the hazards of the nuclear power Demonstrators who carried a JOHN HARRIS Cumbria coast. Soon afterwards Windscale workers claimed that the level of radioactivity in the waste was higher than had been officially announced.

According to a Guardian report, the amount actually discharged into the sea could be as much as 14 times the amount Nuclear power stations are in reality bomb factories which produce electricity as a by-product. In the USA, where -unlike Britain - the facts can be investigated, it has been shown that over 98% of nuclear waste originates from military rather than civil projects.

It is high time the labour movement took action to shut down the nuclear energy plants until such time as workers' inquiry is satisfied that safe answers have been found to the problems of waste disposal, and that the by-products will not be diverted into weapons production.

Quily Hail EXPRESS This review by Clare printed from Peckham Labour News.

THE DIARY, covering the period May 8 to June 5, was kept by 17-year old Satvinder as an account of this year's People's March for Jobs. An article by Labour Party member Tony Purtill, reprinted from Tribune, appears at the back of the booklet.

The diary describes the day to day progress of the march from Ellesmere Port to London, and there are some good moments: leaving Wolverhampton to the claps and cheers of nurses outside a hospital, and later factory workers, who joined the march; food and entertainment provided by the Indian Workers Association in Walsall; in Leamington Spa a meal in the Sikh Temple.

But these events were overshadowed by disturbing accounts of heavy handed stewarding, infrequent and undemocratic meetings, and above all, constant attempts to silence and even expel marchers.

There was widespread disagreement over which chants and slogans were 'acceptable' to the national organising committee, and there seems to have been a clear intention to keep the march as broadly based and non-party political as possible.

Given the history of the past five years it seems incredible that the connections between monetarism, Thatcherism and unemployment on a massive even know we had arrived until they actually saw us. That's how silent the march was."

Peter Cashman, a Labour Party member expelled from the march on May 15 urged people to raise GMC motions condemning the apolitical nature of the march.

On October 28 the South London Press reported that Harriet Harman had 'slammed' the booklet, and had called for a 'probe' into why it was published.

Actually, she had written to Southwark Council for Voluntary Service, whose Employment Unit had loaned Southwark Unemployed People's Action the money to print it, asking how this fitted into their employment strategy, given their use of public funds.

At the time she had not read the booklet, only seen a flysheet headed, 'How Politics wre kept out of the People's March' Misrepresentation in the press is nothing new for the labour movement, so perhaps we should not overreact when we see headlines like those of october 28: Jobless. March 'Fiasco' Book Slammed By MP. But although the journalist later apologised to Harriet for misrepresenting her, and offered her the right of reply, she declined the offer, and also one from Peckham Labour News to put the record straight on her objections.

It seems to me that the labour movement must now, as a matter of urgency, properly examine the issues raised in this diary, and repeated in Tony Purtill's article as well as in several Trades Council motions, about the organisation of the People's March for Jobs.

Or are we trying to keep politics out of the Labour too?

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Munday of 'Diary of a People's Marcher' is re-