Hull-a case study

Scan page 9

By the end of 1986 Hull's Labour controlled council intends to close 37 schools. There will be 450 less teaching jobs than the council originally planned for, threatening their no-redundancy £250,000 is going to be cut from the allowance for furniture, cleaning and school equipment. The wages for non-teaching staff will be frozen at a maximum of 75% of the pay scale instead of the present 80% maximum. Even the buildings are to be kept at one degree centigrade cooler to save 5% of the heating bill. Humberside College is to lose £600,000 of the council's contribuHull council want to revert to "neighbourhood" 11-16 schools which would stop students from the inner city sharing a school with students from the "katy" suburbs. 'Chalkface" . the Socialist Teachers Alliance bulletin for Humberside argues that going back to neighbourhood schools would be a "tailor-made eleven plus set-up for any future Tory administration" with the inner city schools becoming the secondary moderns as resources are directes the better BY the end of 1986 Hull's 450 less teaching jobs than agrement with the NUT.

tion to its budget.

schools in the suburbs. cuts affect nursery schools

Scan page 10

Socialist Organiser no.165 February 9 1984 Page 10 —Our HistoryThe Minneapolis Teamsters strike, 1934 IN THE early 1930s, the narrowly craft based organisations, which dominated the American trade union movement, were losing members rapidly. This was due partly to the Depression but also to the inability of these unions (organised by the American Federation of Labour) to organise effectively in the basic, mass-production sections of American industry.

The Minneapolis Teamsters were one of three groups that started the revolt in 1934 and paved the way for industrial unionism. The others were the Electric Autr:-Lite workers in Toledo, Ohio, and the West Coast dockers.

In three hard-fought strikes between February and August 1934, the General Drivers Lucal (branch) 574 won union recognition, first from the coal merchants and then from most other transport concerns.

In the course of the strikes, car-loads of pickets toured the streets, stopping any scab trucks they found. A picket despatcher at the strike headquarters could rush reinforcements to any picket line where. there was trouble. A canteen was established so that pickets did not have to go home to eat; and a temporary hospital was established to prevent injured strikers being arrested at the regular hospitals.

• Daily paper A Women's Auxiliary was formed which staffed the strike headquarters, and throughout the later part of the strike the drivers published a four-page daily paper, 'The Organiser".

Minneapolis was at that time notoriously anti-union town, and the bosses' organisation -the Citizens Alliance - organised a number of attempts to beat down the pickets by brute force. When that failed, the polier turned to cold-blooded tion of splitting up the membership and expelling the militants.

He reckoned without the base which Local 574 had built for itself in the labour movement around it. His various attempts to isolate the Trotskyist leadership of the drivers failed completely and the alternative branch that he set up - Lucal 500 - never had more than a few dozen members. Even when the AFL president William Green sent a special representative to Minneapolis he was unable to break the strength of the drivers' union.

Afier 18 months Tobin gave up and they were reinstated, as Lucal 544, on terms that were, in effect though not on paper, a complete victory over the bureaucracy.

Despite continued swiping from Tobin, an organising drive was launched which culminated in the creation of an 11-state Area Contract for long distance drivers, signed in August 1938. This campaign alone recruited 200,000 members to the IBT, compared with a total membership of 80,000 in 1933, and put the Teamsters on the road to becoming America's largest Unemployed From the start, the Trotskyists recognised the need to unite the struggles of employed and unemployed workers.

Many of thé employed had joined the picket lines and fought alongside the drivers during the 1934 strikes. Afterwards an auxiliary section of the union with its own offices and regular meetings was formed to organise the unemployed. It fought a series of battles with the city relief authorities and the managers of federal 'make work" projects — to such effect that Minneapulis soon had the highest relief rates in the country.

When a fascist organisation, the Silver Shirts, tried to organise in the city, Lucal 544 established a Union Defence Guard which drilled regularly and prepared to deal with any fascist attacks. The one attempt of the fascists to hold a rally in Minneapolis was called off when the Defence Guard occupied the hall where the meeting was to be held.

After that they had to seek other towns, where the workers were not so well organised.

Through must of the period alter 1934, the lucal union published a weekly paper, ''The Nurthwest Organiser" , which played an important role in the organising drives of the late 1930s.

Imperialist war

But as well as dealing with everyday trade union matters, the NWO right from 1937 was warning of the danger of a new imperialist war. It denounced the course the Roosevelt administration was taking which led towards US participation in the slaughter.

The paper argued that war would come about as the capitalists of different countries sought tu get a bigger share of the world market and that. the workers had no interest in such a Left: pickets clash Left: pickets with police.

As "Northwest Organiser"

put it, 'J.P. Morgan (a leading banker) has a gun. He just returned from a sojourn in Scotland where he wis shooting grouse. If he wants to defend his investments, let him take his gun and fight for them. But don't let him try to force us to fight for him. And don't let him try to lie about any fake 'war for democracy'."

But by 1940 the tide was turning against Lucal 544. The great organising drives of the mid1930s had largely come to an end, and the government's war preparations were being stepped up. The majority of the trade union leaders, and especially Tobin, were lining up to support Ruosevelt, despite the hostility of many of their members.

Tobin tried to impose dictatorial powers over the Minneapolis Teamsters. Under these circumstances, a mass meeting of 4,000 members voted in June 1941 to go over to the alternative trade union federation, the CIO, where a section of the leauership around United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis was oppused to Ruosevelt.

But the CIO leadership would not sanction the national organising drive among transport workers that could have created a mass revolt against Tobin and his jackboot methods. Instead they were left to the tender mercies of Tobin's hired thugs, who signed "sweetheart" contracts with the employers and furced the workers to pay dues to the IBT - often at gunpoint.

At the same time, the FBI was preparing to frame up 29 people, including the entire leadership of Local 544 and several of the national leaders of the Socialist Workers Party. The Party's national secretary, James P. Cannon, was among them.

They were charged with conspiring to overthrow the government and advocating such an overthrow by force and