NORTHERN TUC OFFERS FIGHT-BACK

TRADE UNIONS CALL FOR ACTION AGAINST CUTS
Under the title 'Northern Region Public Service Alliance', Northern Region Trades Union Congress has held a series of meetings across the North East and Cumbria to decide how to respond to the Government's planned spending cuts.


Although union-led, it is hoped to involve members of social and community groups such as Pensioners' Associations, residents' groups and special area voluntary organisations (health, environment, nature conservation, etc) whose very existence is now under threat.


At a meeting held at the Castle Hotel, Bassenthwaite, Cumbria at 5.30pm on Friday 6th August, assembled members of various Cumbria Trades Unions agreed the county be divided up into three zones: Cumbria North to cover Carlisle and Penrith; Cumbria Central to cover the west coast (Workington down to Millom) and Cumbria South to cover Furness and Kendal.


North Cumbria has already announced campaign meetings to be held but all remains quiet in Cumbria Central and Cumbria South (with the exception that Barrow & Furness Pensioners' Association has agreed to hold a meeting to determine what direct action is possible to support the National Pensioners' Convention demonstration in the capital in October).


Very recently, 50 jobs were lost at the Telephone Directory Call Centre in Barrow. The pharmaceutical company, Welcome Glaxo Smith Klein, at Ulverston is to enforce 100 compulsory redundancies.  Job losses of this kind are not simply 'losses'.  The work these jobs did has been eliminated and they will never arise again to offer occupational opportunities.


And for the people of Furness, that distant thunder draws ever closer. They, like the rest of the population of Britain, freely vote for a barbaric system of 'Profit before people' then wonder why things get a bit tough for them.  They appear to be incapable of grasping the fundamental truth that history is made by the people, not by kings and queens or prime ministers and generals.  


A better society can only be established by the will and actions of masses of people united in their determination to strive for it - even willing to risk their lives for its achievement.  That level of political enlightenment and commitment does not yet exist in today's Britain; which is why we are now in such a hell of a mess.