The Scottish students started the wave of occupations now sweeping Britain. Sixty percent of those leaving Scottish colleges of education this year expect to be unemployed. Students there have realised that they cannot be a special case and that only a campaign which opposes all the aspects of the Government's policies can succeed. Change Teacher training college students are not usually considered to be very militant. They are younger than other students in general, and based in their home town in many instances. But I don't think that it's surprising that you get such a tremendous level of militancy when the effects of the economic crisis and the Labour Government's policies are so obvious.
We expect that the same process that has swept Scotland will also pick up in brain, students in the Scottish colleges realise that they have to take up the whole range of the Government's policies. The support we have got from students in other sorts of colleges and the trade unions is testimony to this.
Support has come first of all from the unions inside the college. We have set up joint committees on the basis of solidarity with the students. We received a very big welcome when we went how the campaign has spread around the miners clubs, and we have also leafleted local factories.
We were obviously looking for a response from the teachers. The Educational Institute of Scotland is the largest union covering 45,000 teachers. They have been under great pressure from their members and the teacher training students who are associate members to give instructions not to teach any class with more than 33 pupils, operate no cover, and give full union rights to unemployed teachers The Executive has now refused to call for strike action in support of the students' demands, but we are quite confident that rank and file action will be well to the fore. 26 May The occupations had an effect on the actions taken on 26 May. Before the students took action the only initiatives planned were in Glasgow. But they have resulted. in further action in Aberdeen and Edinburgh.
We have used the occupation as an organising centre. We make that possible by encouraging democratic running of the occupation, electing an occupation committee, calling mass meetings of all the occupiers to discuss policy, and putting that policy we have an action committee the various colleges occupying.
Interest since the occupations have started-knocking on the head the argument of the right wing that The massive surge of activity has presidents and one secretary of student unions. These people retused to accept the mass meeting decision to occupy.
by surprise. Initially the only was a protest day of action. But we were tired of this approach.
The occupations which are going on now are new, because first of all we think we can win our demands, and secondly we know that if we continue to win the sort of support we have been getting from the working class we will win our demands. all unemployed and activist teachers in the Lothian region to discuss coordinated action in the East of Scotland. On the all-Scotland level composed of representatives from Interest in the NUS has soared general meetings are undemocratic.
resulted in the resignation of two The CP dominated Broad Left leadership of the NUS were taken response they could come up with and the Tories.
Students meet to discuss the way forward in occupied Southlands College and parents.
Lobby Recall TUC The wave of occupations sweeping through Britain's teacher training colleges has dramatically highlighted the continuing willingness of workers and students to fight in defence of their living standards and jobs against the policies of the Labour Government — if they are given a lead.
What a splendid contrast it makes to the half-hearted attempts to mobilise action in the weeks leading up to the national day of action against unemployment on 26 May. Because the main instigators of 26 May, the Communist Party, saw all their old 'left' friends in the trade union bureaucracy running to hide behind the coat-tails of Jones and Murray, they refused to carry out any serious mobilisation in the factories and pits in opposition to these misleaders.
The special TUC conference to discuss the Healey deal on 16 June is now only a few weeks away. The right has already scored significant victories in the run up to the vote on the pay deal, with the decision of the National Committee of the Amalgamated Engineering Union to support the deal. The most important resistance has come from several smaller white collar unions and miners in Scotland, Wales, Yorkshire and Lancashire UNITE OPPOSITION The urgent task is to bring these groups of workers together into united opposition and action against the deal. The first step towards this is a massive campaign for a 'no' vote in the miners' ballot and a lobby of the recall TUC in London on 16 June. Militants should also be preparing for a mass lobby of the annual Trades Union Congress in September.
The danger of allowing the Tory policies of this Government to go unchallenged on the basis of the demagogic argument that to do otherwise is to bring down the Government is having dangerous repercussions. Not only have the Tories swept home in the local elections, but Labour votes have been attracted by the populist rhetorie of the fascist right - which seems to offer a 'radical' solution to the crisis.
In every struggle which breaks out the question of the existing leadership of the working class is posed. Those like the Communist Party who argue that it is possible to change the policies of the present Government without an open fight against Jones and Scanion, Callaghan and Healey, and their supporters at every level of the labour movement condemn themselves to meaningless protests in advance.
REMOVE RIGHT WING So long as these leaders retain the whip hand inside the unions and Labour Party, they will continue to be able to force through their rightwing policies. Only by simultaneously fighting against these bureaucrats and for alternative policies can an answer be given to those workers who trail along behind the right wing because they fear the return of Thatcher It is possible to fight Labour's anti-working class policies and maintain a Labour Government, but only through a systematic fight to remove the bureaucratic misleaders. That is the message to be got across on 16 June and in every sector of the labour movement. No deal with Healey! local bus depot to discuss with bus workers taking action against cuts in schedules; and a meeting in the college of activists from the colleges, teachers, and omer trade unionists.
Teachers from seven schools in the area have already been in action on the cuts in South London.
Wandsworth NUT called a lobby last Friday of Labour MP Ernest Perry.
One of the schools, St. Boniface, has already seen a successful fight against staff reductions involving both pupils Photo: CHRIS DAVIES (Report)
The leadership of the National Union of Teachers have tried to stamp on local action against the cuts through a new disciplinary code. But teacher waung students are now on the move and teachers willingness to fight is Their coordinated rank and file action to reduce class sizes and get a guaranteed job for all unemployed teachers (including those still at College) can give the campaign to reverse all the social spending cuts a maSsIVe DOOsE