What the Tories plan

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ment: 'Your Council Under Attack'. 45p plus postage from LRD, 78 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HF.

THIS new Labour Research pamphlet summarises the Tory government' s latest moves against local services and local democracy.

Rale-capping: a White Paper, 'Rates' ', outlines policies to be legislated in summer 1984. The Government will acquire powers to set maximum levels of spending and rates for individual councils, as from April 1985.

The White Paper also proests of our class. poses to pui a statutory duiy on councils to consult local business people befure fixing their rates. This proposal gives bosses and bankers a trigger for central government action against their back on its heels. local council. Abolition of the metropolitan itself. authorities: another White Paper, 'Streamlining the Cities' proposes to scrap the Greater London Council and the other metropolitan authorities (West Midlands, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear) as from May 1985.

In 1985-6 these authorities' functions will be run by transitional committees drawn from the district councils. From April 1986 the functions will be either divided up among a miscellany lines. of joint boards and quangos. or transferred to the district councils.

For the first three years, bright points. 1985-8, central government will have direct control over the budgets, rates, and staff num. bers.

Public transport: the courts have already blocked the GLC's cheap fares, and the government has legislated itself powers to regulate the level of subsidy to local public transport.

With the abolition of the metropolitan authorities and the GLC, the government proposes movements. that public transport in these areas should be run by joint buards or (in London) by a corporation directly under central government.

The LRD pamphlet does not struggles. pretend to give a strategy for fighting back, only information. Yet the way it presents the issues - as a conflict between government 'dogma' anu 'myths' , on the one hand, and all people of good sense, including Tory local councillors and Chambers of Commerce, on the other - could hinder the develupment of an effective strategy.

GLC councillors, in their campaign against abulition, are looking to win support from businesses, professional associations, etc; to pressurise Tory cinht oneson MPs; and to try to swing the vote in the House of Lords. counting any idea of industrial action in the campaign.

There is dogma and myth in government thinking, and there are Tories who oppose the government's plans. But there is also a fundainental class purpose behind the plans: to switch resources away from public services to private enterprise; to bust up the public sector as an area of trade union strength; to eliminate a tier of potential political opposition.

That purpose can be fought effectively only by working-class action.