Now to get the Tories out!

Workers Press no. 1048, 14 April 1973 · scan pages 2, 3

Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.

completely Thursday's gove rnment was repudi ated in last local government Labour swept to power in the Greater London Council winning 57 seats to the Tories' 32. On the new Inner London Education Authority, Labour has 40 places and the Tories have seven.

One seat won by Labour was Carshalton - which is Home Secretary Robert Carr's constituency in the next General Election.

The Tories were crushed in all six of the big new provincial conurbations. In not one of them did they win even half the number of seats that went to Labour. Their biggest defeat was in south • Yorkshire, where they took only 13 seats compared to Labour's 82.

Labour won greater Manchester by 69 seats to the Tories' 23, Merseyside by 53 to 26, Tyne and Wear by 74 to 26, west Yorkshire by 51 BY JACK GALE 25, and west Midlands by 74 to 26.

In addition, Labour defeated the Tories in the non-metropolitan counties of Northumberland, Cumbria, Cleveland, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Gwent, west Glamorgan and south Glamorgan.

SWEPT OUT

These results indicate that in a General Election the Heath government would be swept out of office. In London, for example, the Tories won control by 65-35 seats in 1970 shortly before Heath got his parliamentary majority of 43 seats over Labour.

The reversal of that London vote alone points to a Labour majority of at least 40 seats if a General Election were held now. The provincial votes indicate a much greater Labour majority.

But Heath has no intention of holding an election. The Tories will cling to office as long as they possibly can, while their attacks on workers' living standards and basic rights will be intensified.

It is only the cowardice Labour and trade union leaders which permits this.

This week's election results are a powerful endorsement of the Socialist Labour League's demand to force the trade union leaders to call a General Strike to create the conditions for making the Tory government resign.

They give the lie to the trade union leaders who have persistently claimed that such strike action would strengthen the Tories.

The hospital workers are still in battle. Since the last General Election, miners, dockers, gasmen, teachers, municipal workers, civil servants, builders, engineers and railwaymen have also been on strike.

BACK

Saturday