Priests let loose on Scots jobless

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' 'The management committee consists of the Community Minister, the local Church of Scotland Minister, a representative of the Social Work Department, two local teachers, and a trade union representative. The users are not represented on the committee.

• The management committee has representatives from the trades council, the District Council, Welfare Rights and the Marriage Guidance Council ... the centre users are not represented on the committee.

•The District Committee has a majority on the management committee and an official of the council is responsible for running the centre - many decisions which would be made by the centre workers have to be referred to him."

•'The management committee has representatives from the Trades Council, the Regional Council, the Manpower Services Commission. The users are not represented on the committee .. The main activity of the centre appears to be an Unemployed Workers Sailing Club. There are plans to purchase dingies and to build a larger boat. Most of the energies of the centre appear to be concentrated on this."

''The management committee has representatives from ... a wide range of local groups including the Rotary Club and the Police. The users are not represented on the Committee."

The above quotes do not refer to centres for drug users, searching for ways to mend a While Scottish union bureaucrats hold back on organising the unemployed, the churches and other antipolitical groupings are moving in, reports Dan Hook. broken marriage, in need of moral support from the Church, seeking reintegration into society through useful recreational activities and constantly under the careful scrutiny of the police to prevent any moral relapse.

They refer to various Scottish Unemployed Workers Centres (UWCs) included in the 22 surveyed by the Industrial Studies Section of Dunfermeline Technical College for a recently produced report commissioned by the Scottish TUC.

Save for those with a penchant for bland reports about even blander UWCs, the report makes pretty grim reading. Every page is an indictment of the STUC for its failure to back up the UWCs, every page an expose of the low level, if not complete absence, of real campaigning by the UWCs.

Funding of the centres by trade unions is virtually nonexistent. Most of the funding comes from Regional/District Council grants and the MSC, with all its consequent restrictions on activities permitted for the UWCs. Only one centre, in Aberdeen, was mainly funded by union contributions.

And the full-time staff in the centres too are virtually always MSC-funded as well. Moreover, whilst staff had given up a lot of time to do welfare rights courses ete to provide advice for the unemployed on their "benefits" they had not been chosen for their campaigning abilities, nor given any training in respect.

Management committees of the UWCs, as the above quotes illustrate, often did not contain any representatives of the unemployed themselves. And when they did, it was unclear whether or not they were in a nominal majority over councillors, priests, police, marriage guidance councillors, etc.

The UWCs are used to a disproportionately high extent by the male unemployed. "Because of the activities provided in the centres, the vast majority of users of recreational facilities are young men in the 16-25 age group," states the report.

Specific examples are Aberdeen I''the recreational facilities... are used by a group of some 20 or so young men. ").

In only one case is reference made to a UWC (Dalkeith) running a creche.

On the question of campaigning, six of the 22 centres surveyed do not carry out any campaigning at all, nor is there any encouragement from the centre staff to do so. And for the other sixteen, campaigning was a very low priority and came in a lowkey approach.

Most had been involved in some form of campaigning for concessionary fares and concessionary admission fees to recreational facilities. Nine of the centres had also been involved in national union campaigns.

But, as the report points out, "in most of them this meant little more than informing those using the centre of the activities encouragin to participate ... there was a strong impression that in most centres only a very small number of users became involved because of their contacts with the centre. Most would have been involved in any case because they were already active in the community."

Youth

Another particularly marked theme in the report is that of the lack of support from the trade unions for the UWCs. This manifests itself both in the lack of union funding for the centres and also in 'the almost complete lack of support for the centres from full time officials and senior lay officials of individual unions."

As a remedy for the malaise suffered by UCWs, the report advocates recognition by sponsoring bodies of campaigning as a legitimate activity for UWCs; involving campaigning abilities as a criterium for the selection of staff; and more trade union involvements.

But what the report really fails to get to grips with - and hardly surprisingly, given who commissioned it — is the extent to which the union bureaucracy itself is concerned to stifle any campaigning by UWCs.

The clearest current example of this is the way in which the Communist Party-controlled Glasgow Federation of UWCs was instrumental in splitting the Castlemilk Unemployed Workers' Group and then expelled the group which wanted to campaign land had the majority of members) whilst handing over control of the Castlemilk UWC to a minority, non-campaigning group.

More trade union support is certainly needed for UWCs. At the same time though, the demand for increased support must be coupled with a campaign to free the UWCs from the deadly grip of the STUC bureaucracy land priests, police, marriage guidance councillors, etc).

Campaign for Gay Rights To join or affiliate, write to Chris Richardson, 21 Devonshire Promenade, Lenton, Nottingham NG7 2DS. £5 for individuals, or for affiliated organisations, per 1000 members; £2 low-waged individuals, £1 unwaged.

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Socialist Organiser, 8 December 1983 Page