ON February 5 Karolyn Kerry, a veteran leading member of the American Socialist Workers Party, died of an unexpected heart attack in San Diego, California. She was 70 years old.
Coming from a poor Southern background, Kerry was deeply affected by the depression and joined the Trotskyist movement in 1934.
In nose days tne movement was subject to Stalinist goon attacks and Kerry, an enthusiastic seller of the Trotskyist press, would take an umbrella to defend herself selling on the watertront or outside union meetings.
She was involved in a series of union organising drives in California: unionising waitresses in San Francisco, building support for maritime and ship-building workers and initiating a women's auxiliary to help fight the bosses, being involved in the agricultural workers' struggles and organising fish cannery workers.
During World War II, when many party ieaders were jailed, Kerry and her husband Tom began full-time work for the party in New York. rouen une aneum vears or une Cold War and witch-hunt they were part or the unsnakeadle core of the Trotskyist movement.
Karolyn Kerry subsequently managed swr election campaigns. or ganised promotion for the Trotskyist Pathfinder Press and was business Karolyn Kerry in 1974 manager for the SWP weekly paper Militant.
Over the last 20 years she drew particular inspiration from the rise of the Black struggle, the Cuban revolution and the women's liberation IT SAMAR COM AS ATA AA A GET Socialist Action extends its most and friends of Karolyn Kerry and to the SWP in the loss of this meticulous and determined battler for humanity's free, socialist future. of the rate support grant.
passed on from central government to the local authorities.
mine how the money should be spent.
But not only has the grant been savagely cut, so that there is £158 million less paid out than three years ago. It is now based on an esvices cost.
that a greater proportion of it must be used to prop up the forces of "law and order". control the anger expressed by workers as they get to see what is happening to their jobs and services.
to find any dodges. which have avoided making cuts face an impossible situation.
his vicious plans to punish councils that don't play ball. ers" who avoid making the proposed cutbacks of 5.6 percent face furONE of the first acts of the Tories when they took power nearly two years ago was to give huge tax concessions to the rich. higher earnings, the wealthy took to the bank up to £100 extra per week.
Tory strategists ever since have set out to get working people to pay for people. those increases. One direct result of This means that: these tax cuts is Heseltine's slashing all spending cuts.
This grant - traditionally worth nearly half of all local spending - is had been taking place.
This has always left local councils free to deter- ready been stopped in some areas.
at risk.
timate of what local authorities' serIt is also coupled with the demand - presumably to Wing over 21 years?
Nor are Labour councils expected Those councils Last Christmas Heseltine revealed "High spend- decent home."
CAMDEN The full meaning of these actions While Tory boroughs like which could lead each councillor to have backed down.
CRIMINAL Over the past two years, the rates Lambeth.
thrown on the dole.
FIGHT? soaking other workers.
Because of their ing on the Tory cuts to working * housing takes up 75 percent of There is a stop to the small building programme that * services to old people are threatened. Domiciliary services have al* the young are to have less nurseries than ever before and school budgeting is tightening.
* services to the handicapped are * and all this means that at a time of 2½ million out of work, thousands more jobs will disappear.
In two Midlands councils alone, 900 jobs seem likely to be axed.
Is it surprising that Shelter, the campaign for the homeless, predic: council house waiting lists stretchAs Shelter's Neil Mcintosh says "We are already well on our way to the shortage of half a million predicted by the Select Committee on the Environment... these shameful statistics will mean an effective end to millions of people's hopes for a The London Borough of Camden at first sought to challenge the cuts. According to the distict auditor, Camden Council awarded its National Union of Public Employees manual workers an increase "so excessive as to be unreasonable in rupt. law". The increase actually raised wages to f60 per week.
Under threat of High Court action, paying £60,000, the councillors They have an nounced a package of spending cuts amounting to 813 million. Rents The fact that the Tories have been able to move in and exploit this discontent is a clear condemnation of the council's policies.
Trying to bail out one sector of workers by making others pay through the nose has only succeeded in splitting the working people of It has played into the hands of Heseltine and the local Tories who are saying the only way forward is to ensure cuts are made and workers By floating the idea that rate increases are the answer, however, Knight has also turned council workers against rate-payers.
He has made it appear that the only way the services can be maintained and their jobs protected is by This is why so few workers turned out on the "week of action" called Ior b! Lambeth council. Only UNITY? inio unions our the four - the T&GWL and the NALGO - stopp.
Why. indeed. bother co S