DURING THE same week that Neil Kinnock launched his unprincipled attack on Liverpool councillors fighting to defend the city's public sector jobs and services, the New Statesman published an article which explained in the starkest of terms Just deprived Merseyside really is. 'The EEC has bestowed on Merseyside classification as the most deprived region in Northern Europe,' it said.
'ONly Calabria, Sardinia and Sicily come lower in the table. Tees Street in Birkenhead merits a blue plaque of its own. With not one householder working it is officially the most deprived street in Europe.
This is the description of a city at which Labour leader Kinnock decided to aim all his fire — at the very ume wnen tre cyes or everyone in unis country were directed towards the party in its week of annual conference.
His speech was no mistake, no tactical error. It was deliberately designed to wall off, to illegitimise, that section of the party which is prepared to act to defend the working class against the concerted onslaught of a determined Tory government.
In so doing, he deliberately conflated three questions. First, and infinitely the most important, the need to defend a city at the far limits of its overstretched resources against an attack designed crush it. Second, the issue of what tactics will best build the mass support among Liverpool's population and the labour movement as a whole needed to withstand those attacks. Third - and for Kinnock the raison d'etre of the speech the issue of branding a section of the party and of the whole movement as outside and beyond the legitimate aspirations Labour, as "mindless agitators' who use the plight of Britain's poor to pursue their own political ends.
Whilst aimed at one section of the the newspaper - the attack itself stretched far beyond the boundaries of that current. It encompassed the miners, black people, women, the Campaign Group of MPs: all those, in short who have proved over the last 18 months that they are ready and willing to take the action necessary to defend those in have now walked out of the joint shop stewards committee.
NATHE and NUPE have all taken a position against the issue of redundannotices. Together with UCATT (who have taken no position on the notices), they have walked out of the JSSC. That puts over half of the counciworkrorce oursde us onl consultative structures: 17,000 its 29,000 workers are unrepresented now on this body. In addition both the NUT and NATHE are proposing court action against the redundancy notices. Lesson Where has Liverpool council gone so wrong? Last week's edition of Militant explained the council case in some detail. It sald. SWEETeCSIS brought to a head in September, when it became obvious that the council would run out of cash by the end of the year. The Public Works Loan Board, the body used normally by councils to acquire loans for current expenditure would not give loans to the council, unless it issues letters to its workforce announcing the fact that the money would run outs in other technically giving redundancy.
"There is no facility in local authoritv contracts "lay off" employees. The legal position of the council, therefore, was such that it has tu issue 90-day "redundancy letters' to all its employees. were prepared to do this, not in any way in an attempt to sack even one of its 30,000-odd workers, but only as a means of paying wages for a further three months. It was seen as a tactic. (original emphasis)
of The three-page article goes on to explain the unions' indefinite strike call and its failure to win support. Then, failing to recognise the divisive nature of such a 'tactic', Militant tries to exonerate councillors by laying the blame It is