rising to 48% for the years 1983/4. In reality, of course, this figure is even worse since it doesn't take into account the damaging rate of inflation.
What it will mean is simply the elimination of local government housing programmes - already a tact in many areas - and a drastic increase in homeless families & slum dwellings.
* EDUCATION Carlile's decision to lop 10% off education by 1983/4 reveals the same depressing story. State education, as we know it, is being destroyed before our eyes.
Overcrowded inner city classes, overworked teachers in inadequately staffed and crumbling buildings, inadequate resources (such as textbooks) all of these are, even now,becoming.commonplace. For Carlile and his ilk, of course, this is hardly important. The children who 'matter' can be sent to fee-paying schools where they will not be affected by such problems.
* HEALTH At the last budget, to show how concerned they are with ordinary what will happen to such redundant teachers - and nurses, civil servants and others? They will be expected to join the mounting dole queues, of course.
At the same time as ripping into services and jobs, however, the Tories intend injecting a massive 17% into defence spending. As David Dimbleby recently put it on TV, they are pouring money into defence to 'protect' the status quo from the upheav. als produced by their cuts in other areas!
RESPONSE Thatcher's attack has, of course, sparked off a vigourous protest from the Shadow Cabinet which has condemned it as 'vicious' and 'uncalled for. They are no doubt aware of the groundswell of opposition rising among the rank-and-file which - nationwide - has led to the setting up of committees and campaigns to stop the cuts being steamrollered through. Regional 'days of action' have been called: individual unions have taken strike action; campaigns - such as that against the break up of ILEA - have been set up and individual hospitald have stop the cuts going through.
POTENTIAL jobs and services to act on behalf of those they say they represent.
NO CUTS IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR!
NO REDUNDANCIES -FOR THE 35 HOUR WEEK!
The Labour leaders cannot be allowed, however, to get away with their toothless threats against the Tories combined with a masterful inactivity. They have to be forced now - as Ted Knight explained at the recent one-day conference - to lead a real fighting campaign to Such a campaign could begin to draw together the various struggles that have emerged -against the break-up of ILEA, against cut-backs in nursery provisions, against hospital closures - into a national fight to halt the Tories in their tracks.
This wouldn't mean that these