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I want to become a Socialist Organser supporter/ I want more information.

Send to Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8 8PL. partly to a variety of specialist boards with representatives from these lower-tier councils.

The May 1985 local elections will be cancelled, and for 1985-. 6, the authorities will be run by a special transitional arrangement. For the first three years central government will have direct control over the budgets, rates, and staff numbers under the new arrangements.

LABOUR AND THE LOCAL AUTHORITY CUTS.

The official Labour Party leadership line on these meas ures has been predictable: to protest; to talk vaguely about resistance and fighting back; but explicitly to exclude confrontation with central government, and thus to leave Labour councils in the role of humane for not so humane) administrators of the Tory measures.

The leadership of the TUC and the local authority unions in particular has gone along with Knight in Lambeth - had already levied big rate rises, but if pressed would presumably have replied that these were just a very short-term expedient.

As late as January 1979, Mike Davis, soon to become one of the theorists of the rate-rises strategy, could write in SO:

Already, some London boroughs are choosing to raise rates in order to maintain services. But •.. socialist councillors' first task is to mount a massive campaign with all working class and community organisations ... A refusal to pay interest charges, together with a big campaign of agitation, could force the government either to step in with the necessary finance or face serious industrial action from trade unionists." - In June 1979 SO called a 225-strong conference in London on Labour and local government. A document for the con4½% package of cuts in Lambeth.

A revolt by the rank and file of the Lambeth Labour Parties forced Knight to revoke these cuts and launch a campaign of agitation. Despite the council's record, this campaign got an excellent response, with demonstrations, days of strike action, and two well-attended national conferences.

Shaky basis

But the political basis of the campaign was shaky from the start. Socialist Organiser in November 1980 commented on the statement drafted for the first national conference:

•The statement hinges the whole cuts fight on a general strike by council workers in January 1981. The unvoiced let-out clause is that if the unions do. not meet this arbitrary deadline, then the Labour councils will go Workers Revolutionary Party, who cynically provided a 'theoretical' justification for the capitulations. (This was later extended to the launching of the WRP-connected Labour Herald. At the Labour Party special conference at Wembley in early 1981, Labour Herald sellers could be observed making their support for rate rises their main selling pitch). And as the leftist councillors adapted themselves to the limits of established local government, so in turn other leftists adapted themselves to the limits of the councillors.

In the summer of 1980 a substantial grouping of such leftists hived off from Socialist Organiser to launch. London Labour Briefing.

In Lothian, a ' 'no cuts' decla*. ation by the regional Labour council met a fate similar to Lambeth's. The key role, there; however, was played by the trade union bureaucracy. At the

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156, November