TWO-AND-A-HALF-HOURS - that's how long it took the 60,000 strong demonstration against the cuts just move out of Hyde Park last Wednesday. Prominent were the contingents of 12,000 NUPE members, 4,000 NALGO members, 5,000 CPSA members, 3,000 NUT members, and 15,000 students.
There can now be no doubting the massive opposition to cuts amongst workers in the public sector, and their willingness to fight back. Many members of NALGO and NUPE had gone on strike to be on the march, despite their leaders' failure to make an outright call for such action.
-his was tne most impressive mass action of the workers movement against the policies of the Labour Government that we have seen so far. But the demonstration also showed the weakness of the movement against the cuts. For although there were contingents from the Kent and South Wales miners, the docks and the AUEW, unions from outside the public sector were mostly conspicuous by their absence.
CALL The call of the Labour Party National Executive Committee for support for the demonstration only resulted in 28 Labour Party and Young Socialist banners on the march, and the call of the AUEW resulted in far less. No real moomsauon was undertaken by either executive. It was no wonder, when the seriousness of the AUEW and the Labour Party leadership in opposing the cuts had been put to the test and shown to be lacking, that workers at the rally at the end of the march shouted down Tribunite Norman Atkinson, the new treasurer of the Labour Party.
That is also why Alan Fisher of NUPE was greeted by such loud applause at the Central Hall rally. It was NUPE which moved the resolution passed at the Labour Party conference opposing the cuts, and it was the public sector unions, and particularly NUPE, which had given the lead in building the demonstration that day. But despite the popularity which Fisher achieved with his militant calls for the nationalisation of the banks at that meeting, he was in reality marching that 60,000 strong army to the top of the hill only to march it back down again.
declaration put to the rally Central Hall showed what Fisher's leadership really amounted to. CHar IrOm mass action for socialist policies, such as the nationalisation of the banks and the opening of the books, it called for unity around TUC policies - import controls to shelter capitalist industry, and planning agreements with the capitalists, all within the framework of the Social Contract.
That is why the 'left' leaders of the public sector unions are calling for the Government to change its course'. They want to try to persuade Callaghan that the cuts are too severe, whilst accepting that the working class must pay for the crisis through the Social Contract.
'Got the message, Jim?" was the headline of the Morning Star the next day, AFTER 17 NOVEMBER
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echoing the words of these lefts. Unfor- JUN STURE