Unemployed organise in Hull

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Contact the Hull Unemployed Fightback Group c/o Janet Devrell, 24 Albany Street, Spring Bank, Hull or ORGANISED! against the base of the trade union movement, and that there has to be a political and an industrial response.

The Campaign Group can help by working with the Broad Lefts of the trade unions; showing by practical action where we stand; and, above all, by saying to activists in the Party that their job is to strengthen the local industrial ties.

That means development of workplace branches; and the Party showing itself to be active on the picket lines whenever a dispute breaks out.

We have had some discussion about developing the work of the Campaign Group further. The most important idea is that we will promote fringe meetings at the Labour Party regional conferences and the major trade union conferences this year. Campaign Group speakers will set out what we see as the political agenda.

We are also working quite hard to try to make the PLP more into a body that is prepared to carry out Party policy and campaign on it, rather than set its own agenda and its own policies.

There has been talk of a conference called by the Campaign Group, but there has been no decision yet.

I hope there will be soon, but so far we have spert most of our time dealing with current industrial disputes.

The Campaign Group has also issued a statement opposing the witch-hunt, condemning the expulsion of Militant supporters and calling for their reinstatement.

I think it is completely incompatible to have an active, campaigning socialist Party which at the same time is expelling sucialists from its own ranks. Our support for the campaign the main issues in the next nine months, leading up to the TUC and Labour Party conferences, will include expanding demrcracy within the Party, and making the Parliarentary leadership genuinely accountable to the rest of the Party.

I also think it will include a clearer economic policy for an incoming Labour government. If we don't have a clearer economic policy for challenging the control and ownership of the economy, then the next Labour government is going to be elected with all the contradictions of past Labour governments.

I think that is an area where people must concentrate in policy making.

The Campaign Group is developing ideas from an understanding of the problems of previous Labour governments, but so far there have been no statements prepared on it.

I hope the Campaign Group will prepare statements on particular policy issues, but so far we are concentrating more on campaigning and active woik within the movement.

One other point. I would like to emphasise most strongly that, once a local Party gets involved in local campaigning, it must stay with it, and make sure it links the issues all the time.

There is a tremendous thirst for political leadership, a tremendous thirst for political activity that I've never known before - despite, or because of, the very large Tory majority in Parliament.

So the message has to be -campaign, not in a detensive way, but in an aggressive way, to defend working class living standards and improve the welfare services.

Providing we're always demanding, rather than just defending, then we'll be well on the way to taking power.

LAST week 12,500 people applied for 60 menial jobs at the West Midlands Airport. Last year a fake benefit office

provided the base for the mass arrest of 200 homeless claimants in Oxford. Mass unemployment and state poverty have magnified to a scale not seen since the last down-turn in the economy -the dark days of the 1930s. • When ser against this background, the much-heralded recovery' of economic forecasts seems a world away. Industrial decline has in fact taken root in this country. Whole regions have been industrial graveyards over the last few years. Hull and Humberside have been among the areas hardest hit, as factories and firms have pulled out and the great staple industries have gone into decline.

In the country as a whole, unemployment has stabilised at around 3½ million. Though each single digit represents a person who has lost their livelihood, even the present totals must be matched against increasing numbers of people actually disappearing from the registers. The YTS has absorbed many jobless school-leavers on low levels of benefit. New counting methods have discouraged people from signing at the Job Centres. And dole investigators have persuaded people to sign off. The 'Oxfraud' incident was just one example of how far benefit harassment can go.

The effort to reduce the unemployment figures has been coupled with a commitment to phone 448554.

cutting the benefits and clamping down on the rights of the unemployed. A Tory MP, Matthew Parris from West Derbyshire was re-assured recently that the unemployed do not live a life of luxury and leisure, after having to surive for only one week on the single flatrate benefit of £26.80.

Faced with this climate of cutbacks, clampdowns and hostility, some of Britain's unemployed are beginning to fight back. Amongst the ranks of the unwaged, a voice is growing that refuses to submit to the 'natural consequences' of economic experiments.

As part of a nationwide movement of unemployed people, a group was formed in Hull to fight tor the interests and defend the rights of the unwaged locally.

Collective

The Hull Unemployed Fightback Group aims to provide a basis siselle ive mon intend.

Winter ests of the unemployed with those in work. It offers self-help support and advice to its members, and acts as a campaigning • forum around unemployment in Hull.

The HUFG is currently drawing attention to the DHSS ruling which classed claimants who live in shared accommodation as "joint-householders'. When the rules changed last November it meant that thousands of people lost benefit through being incorrectly classified. The HUFG believes that by informing claimants of their rights, many will be encouraged to make appeals for a review of their circumstances.

Get Name

Further campaigns are planned around the touring dole hit-squads and the cheap labour YTS.

The Hull Unemployed Fightback Group is actively countering the media image of the unemployed as passive, resigned to their fate. "If you push people too far, they will eventually start to defend themselves", said a HUFG spokesperson, Ms Janet Devrell, "and the sooner that happens the better." As part of a wider movement, the unwaged are showing themselves to be ready to fight back against long-term unemployment, benefit cuts and government harassment.

Become á supporter of the Socialist Organiser Alliance - groups are established in most large towns. We ask £1.50 month minimum (20p unwagod) contri: lution from supporters.

I want to bacome a Socialist Organiser supporter/ I want more inforination.

Address:

Send to Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8 8PL..

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Socialist Organiser no. 166 February 16 1984 Page 5