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The last month has seen a flurry of protest actions against the cuts in Edinburgh. On November 17th, trade union delegations joined 1500 students in a demonstration coinciding with the 60,000-strong London march. A conference organised for the following Saturday by the Lothian Federation of Trades Councils was attended by 120 delegates from public sector unions. It discussed the latest round of savings" proposed by Lothian Region Council, and organised the first of a series of lobbies of Council meetings.
But despite this intense protest activity no movement yet appears to be emerging capable of throwing back the cuts. As Labour Councillor Sandy Ross pointed out at the conference, the cuts cannot be isolated from unemployment or the wage freeze. They are all part of the Social Contract. Protest marches will amount to little while their leadership is busy upholding the pivot of the policies which underline the cuts - the Social Contract.
And in all the protests, one question went a-begging. What would all these thousands out on the streets do back in their hospitals schools and offices to defend collapsing services?
All that was forthcoming at the Edinburgh Conference was a lauding of the turnout on the 17th, the umpteenth call to lobby MPs and a call for import controls. Missing was any talk of strike action against the cuts and the policies which cause them.
The demand for import controis is only a subtler variation on the kind of policies put forward by Fred Forres-
ter who spoke for the EIS. He was repeatediy attacked for calling for redundancies elsewhere in the public sector so education could be spared from the excesses of the cuts. But import controls, apart from being no less unrealistic, are just another way of passing the economic buck - only, in this case, onto workers overseas.
Having proposed import controls so enthusiastically, large numbers of Communist Party members present were clearly embarrassed when various Labour Councillors and union officials in the party started to demand the immediate storming of the "commanding heights of the economy through willy-nilly nationalisations. But the rhetoric of these Labour Lefts and their friends in "Militant. although grand to listen to, was somewhat lacking in content. Once again workers were being asked to go home and wait
for yet another solution imposed by someone else.
Those marching against the cuts the Wednesday before had a better idea about how to fight for nationalisation. As they marched past the headquarters of the Bank of Scotland, the chant went up for the opening of its books, as a first step to nationalisation. A sharp contrast to Tony Benn, who has already agreed that the next election manifesto should omit the Labour Party conference decision to nationalise the banks.
It was left to George Kerevan, a local teacher militant on the Federation of Trades Councils Anti-cuts committee and a member of North Edinburgh SLP, to call for an alliance of public sector unions against the cuts. His demand for strike action in the event of even one redundancy put the union leaders and all their rhetoric right on the spot.
Kerevan called for those opposing the cuts to demand that Labour Party Councillors, who form a majority on the Lothian Regional Council, implement Party conference policy and vote against any cuts in services.
If the cuts are to be reversed, this will require the broad unity of all those hit by the government's austerity programme, Success will depend on spreading the realisation that opposing the cuts means opposing the whole Social Contract, And it will take more than windy rhetoric and calls for import controls.
CHRIS BAMBERY