The executive of the National and Local (NALGO) voted last Sunday 35-28 to drop all action over the union's London Weighting Claim.
This follows a recommendation from the witite collar union local government negotiators, the National Joint Council Staff Side, who accepted a deal offered by the employors a week ago. This deal only commits the employers to negotiabion on 1 July on London Weighting after the puhlication of the Pay Board ment if the report allows it, and the opening of negotiations on the union's National Pay Claim.
NALGO% Headers' have laid the ground for ping the strike action in London. Even the thecat of a nationil osertime ban and oneFirst sight of this deaf came up. The berno crats have not yet set a date for the tum thes they hape to do next Friday (l4 Fune). The reason for chis delay is that several branch delegates do NALGO annual conferenes, being held the weck at Brighten, will be putting forward an emergracy motion calling on the conterenor to reject any recurn to werk by those local Red Weekly rent and electricity workers nowon strike. The burgaucrats will want to foet out whether to loud a rapid retreat or play for a Bite nore time, CONDUCE TOL DEEN TRASHE betrays the same indecioreness and hesitancy win wich way naw orgarised the cam raign, Although there are still many packets of militancy in the various localities involved in the London struggle, even sED shugE: was Forced back, then in still no effective organisatine capabike of overcoming the frig mentation of the action, The action committee, set up from the Islington-organised mesting a week ago, met again last Jiriday but mainly somerned itself with the emergency mole la the conterence, not an ominbing and spreading the strikes. Sewral branches are arganising a demonstration st Brighien Rut the lack of an all-Londen arganising free will limit the effect of chis.
Time is ruaning out. To defeat the execulive's sell-cat, not only must the ms conference reject the emplower deal, but also, mare imporcantly, militants in Landon and the post uf the country must fight for the most effective answer to the employers and the Labour Government widespread and escalating strike action for both claims ALAN BENNET
The role of the IMG in building the Irish solidarity movement in Britain was recognised at last Friday's funeral proonsion when representatives of the IMC Labour's Northern Ireland Minister Merlyn Rees, while firmly rejecting the various quack remedies offered in the Commons last week, did not manage to answer this question.
In fact, one of the reasons for holding the debate so soon after the collapse of the Northern Ireland Executive was probably that no-one could expect a clear answer, and the awesome vacuum which is left could more easily be hidden. It was also an attempt to counter the open split in the Labour Party over troop withdrawal, and rescue Tory-Labour bipartisanship', by making the Government's position clear.
One sentence from Rees's speech is especially significant: "The Government of the province had been in the hands of one political party for fifty years, and there had developed...a fundamental spit between two communities one perpetually in government, and one politically excluded.
MIDDLE CLASS
from the Cameron Report into the October 1968 riot in Derry, which first warned the British Government that the Civil Rights movement represented a powerful new political force and that they had better try to do a deal with the catholic middle class to head it off.
Of course the view that the divisions in the North of Ireland stem from a lack of access to Governmental powers by catholics is facile. The Tory Government found It expedient, from the summer of 1970, to concentrate on smashing catholic resistance. They hoped in this way to eliminate the Republican challenge, minimise protestant opposition, and keep the Army from being caught in the cross-fire from both sides of the divide.
But the successful resistance of the catholics forced Westminster to move towards power-sharing without ensuring the support of the protestants, although they did not let up on the military campaign against the catholics.
So it was not just five months of power-sharing which collapsed, but a strategy going back over five years. Small wonder that the best Rees could come up with last week was This is taken, almost word for word, four months of direct rule.
Four months is not an arbitrary period, it takes the Government through to September, and probably the threshold of a general election. By which time Labour will hope to have a neatly packaged solution to offer the voters.
This solution must give some perspective for a pull-out of the troops, How seriously Rees takes this can be judged trom the fact that the prosent garrison is being since Operation Motorman in July 1972, about this "solution'. The claims of so mutually contradictory that it is to suffer a military defeat.
take would be to try to make an ac"Ulsterisation" of the war could ed method-'Croppy" [catholic | lie down'. Not only could the British still flying over Belfast City Hall. sometime allies in the SDIP and the were asked to take their turn in carrying the coffin of hunger striker Michael Gaughan through the streets of Kilburn.
the loyalist revolt.
run down to 15,000, the lowest figure PREDICTION No precise prediction can be made the various interest groups are by now tion. impossible to satisfy all of them. But the principle objectives will be to get as many of the troops as possible out as fast as possible, without appearing The most likely direction they will commodation with the loyalists. The achieve stability by the old and trustArmy march out with drums beating. but they would leave the Union Jack No doubt British imperialism's Free State Goveroment would squcal with protest but Westminster found them useless in stopping the IRA, and a positive hindrance in dealing with So come September, Rees will probably propose something which looks like a variation on Sunningdale, but which restores a good-sized lump of the protestant ascendancy In responding, the IRA will see no reason to alter the basic concept of their strategy, They know that they cannot defeat the British Army militarily, but they can disrupt British imperialism's timetable for stabilisaThe Army is caught in a scissors the longer it stays, the more urgently it needs to get out. The Republicans hope to force the British Government into paying a price for getting out, which would dismantle imperialist domination over Ireland to such an extent that a united and independent Ireland can be established.
INADEQUATE
Revolutionary Marxists will consider this strategy inadequate because it does not tackle the native class interests in Ireland, which are linked with British Imperialism: does not link BOB PURDIE the working class struggle in the South with the catholic resistance in the North; and does not prepare for the class confrontation with native capitalism which will become more and more important as British imperialism is less able to intervene directly in Nevertheless if it is possible for the IRA to disrupt a British deal, this will open up new possibilities for the development of the struggle and their fight must continue to have our solidarity For revolutionaries in Britain effective solidarity means stepping up the pressure for withdrawal of the troops.
The collapse of Sunningdale has put this demand at the centre of the political stage. If by the end of the summer the Troops Out Movement is large und growing, with support at every level of the Labour Party and trade unions, the Government's room for manoeuvre will be drastic. ally limited. And the TOM's opposition to the repressive actions of the security forces will be seen as a 'stabin-the-back", and contribute to demoralisation in the Army.
The cask and time-scale is clear. Let us proceed with all possible speed