Labour supporters in Lambeth don't want to take that chance. Faced with a supplementary rate increase of £4 a week and a mammoth 49.4 percent increase in April, Labour supporters are becoming easy prey to the Tories.
A startling example of this was shown last month. In an area with a high percentage of Blacks and manual workers, a demonstration called by the pro-Tory Lambeth Ratepayers Association was so large that 300 went to an overflou meeting outside the Town Hall.
At a time when the racist Nationality Bill is passing through Parliament. many Black people were attracted to a Tory demonstration wearing badges such as "Ted Knight Out".
The point is, it is not just the affluent businesses who are under attack from rate rises. Ordinary working people are having to pay huge increases with less capacity to do so.
If tax concessions for the rich led to cuts in the Rate Support Grant, it is workers, through their rates and rents, who are being asked to pay up. The Tory attacks on workers' living standards are being carried out by Labour councillors.
FIGHTBACK Putting the rates up doesn't challenge the basic assumption that working people must shoulder the burden of the crisis. Socialists argue, however, that workers should not be made to pay for a crisis not of their making.
You cannot fight the cuts and threatened redundancies by making Peter pay Paul. Asking council tenants to prop up council workers is self-defeating.
A council which defends its services without rate rises can cleariy show who is making the cuts. If commissioners try to take over, they are clearly seen as Tory commissioners implementing Tory cuts for a Tory government.
Winning local tenants and trade unionists to mass action against the commissioners would unite workers against the real enemy, on clear class lines.
In the long term, the only sure way to defend our services is to kick out the Tories. happen so long as workers are confused by their own party leaders.
Labour and trade union leaders have to build a struggle against the Tory cuts without raising the rates. Until workers and tenants are won to such a struggle, there is no longterm solution.
Heseltine's cuts coupled with Labour rate rises can actually lead to demoralisation among Labour ranks and allow Tories the opportunity to pretend that - with workers - they cratic rights and control over the economy.
eastwice.
local governor.
PARASITES a 150-page long report.
ernment property for their own use; constructing summer villas instead of cars to the secret police instead of to Solidarity, put it: resignation we are demanding did not parasites."
SUPPORT - on February 9 - a further 300.000 factories were brought to a standstill.
demanded the dismissal of Stanislaw This cannot lot live years. Iner aiso called tor the conversion oị an Interior Ministry sanitorium into a public hospital Similar struggles have burst out in Walbrzych, in the heart of the Silesian coal-mining region, and in the southeastern city of Rzesnow.
ANARCHY?
Although the government has been forced to give way on many issues Bielsko-Biala • rearguard action.
THE Polish bureaucrats are finding it ever more difficult to suppress the demands of workers and peasants for demoNo sooner do they patch up ar. agreement with striking workers in one part of the country than strikes break out On February 6, for example, an elevenday strike occurred in Bielsko-Biala, a textile manufacturing plant in southern Poland. Over 200,000 workers struck in protest against the corruption of the The governor, his aides, the chief of police and other officials were accused in The charges included: taking over govbuilding houses for workers; allocating doctors; and giving out coupons for the purchase of cars as favours and bribes.
As Lech Walesa, a central leader of "The officials whose look after the workers' interests. They weren't public servants at all, but social political opposition."
Hardly had that strike been won when struck in the region around Jelania Gore. CHALLENGE Protesting corruption of the bureaucrats wno rule the country, an estimated 450 The strikers - backed by sondarity -society, Closek, who had been the local CP boss decision-making. dismissing, for example, the governor of WORSE - it is fighting a desperate Discussion at Lenin Shipyards last August Threatening the use of Soviet troops if Solidarity goes "too far", they have denounced its leaders as "instigators" out ho chanenge Ine socianst basis of society As CP leader Stanislaw Kania recently "We cannot ignore, let alone accept, the fact that, under the direction not of the workers but of instigators, Solidarity is being steered in the direction of This line has been echoed by Moscow, which has accused Solidarity of creating "chaos and anarchy"
Such accusations are, of course, nothing more unan stainist double-talk. Kania knows only too well that Solidaritv is no out to challenge the socialist basis of It is merely saying that the country's economic and social problems should be freely discussed and decided upon demodicamy. I is merely trying to transiorn Poland into a real workers' democracy.
ine bureaucrats understand onlv toc well, however. that such a struggle challenges head-on their repressive rule and the privileges they gain from their mono poly over the political and economic What has worried them still more is the fact that Solidarity's bold stance has What the Guardian is saying is crystal drawn wider layers of the population into fighting their repressive rule. Already, Rural Solidarity - representing over 350,000 farmers - has demanded recogPolish students have been drawn into a month-long sit-in to demand the right to form a union and to have a say in the country's education policy.
Moreover, this upsurge has even begun to penetrate the ranks of the Communist Party itself. More and more rank-and-file CP members are identifying with the demands of Solidarity. At a recent Executive Committee meeting, a document was submitted calling for "the broad masses' right to free expression" to be "guaranteed in law and in fact".
MA.UEL V KES While the Stalinist leaders may twis and turn. they are finding it ever mize Iticult to deal with this growing opposition.
1 nell bureaucratic manoeuvres . backed up with threats of Soviet intervention - are not likely to curb the nave grown as the! have seen the poure: they can wield.
As Solidarity enters into ever more struggles for democratic rights, more and more workers will realise that the only way to achieve socialst democracv is to sweep away the parasitic caste which masquerades as socialist.