'Red Flag' chorus in Clay Cross as auditor opens case

HOUSEWIVES sang the 'Red Flag' at Clay Cross town hall as the Tories began the second stage of their investig councillors defying the rent increase laws.

Angry council house tenants packed the council chamber of this small Derbyshire community which has refused to surrender to the government Housing Finance Act and charge the working class higher rents. Earlier housewives chanted 'Heath Out' and sang filed into the town hall where district auditor Charles Lacey began his investigation of the housing accounts.

The demonstrators draped an anti-Tory banner behind his seat and tenants paraded with placards supporting the Il councillors who will not implement the Act.

People stood on ledges and sat on tables while others climbed into the chamber through • open windows. Eventually the auditor was surrounded by tenants and the councillors were lost in a sea of bodies and TV cameras.

These scenes, the most extraordinary ever witnessed at Clay Cross town hall, show the massive and determined support every Labour council would have got from the working class if they had stood firm in opposition to the Housing Finance Act.

Instead only a tiny handful like Clay Cross are still resisting, but getting massive backing for their principles and courage.

The Clay Cross auditor has been given direct instructions' from the Tory government to find out how much money has been lost by the council's failure to charge higher rents and also to see if the councillors are personally responsible for the deficit.

When the hearing eventually got under way, Tom Swain, Labour MP for North East Derbyshire, representing the councillors, said that the £6,985 figure arrived at by the auditor was 'hypothetical' and 'would not stand up in law'.

He added: 'It is an intelligent guess and no more, suggesting, therefore, that the audit as conducted was invalid.

Swain contended that the £1,000 deducted by the auditor for rent rebates was only 'an estimate' because tenants had not been consulted.

At the end of Swain's speech -punctuated by cheers from the tenants-he declared:

'On this basis we cannot accept the findings of yourself or a higher court He asked for amonth's adjournment and the appointment of a Housing Commissioner by the government.

But auditor Charles Laceywho was occassionally jeered-ruled that Swain's arguments were wrong.

I am fully satisfied I am right in law, he said. 'My decision is my decision. I'm not told what to do by the Secretary of State and I have never met the Housing Commissioner.' Lacey added that there were many precedents in law for using estimates when making an extraordinary audit.

Later Mr Swain told the auditor that none of the councillors had legal excuses for refusing to implement the Act.

The auditor refused a request for a one month adjournment and said he would reach his decision within ten days.

SIX LONDON dockers have been summoned to appear before the Transport and General Workers' Union finance and general purposes committee next Wednesday. following scenes by angry lobbyists who invaded Transport House when the national delegates called off the docks strike. Two of the Pentonville Five Cornelius Clancy and Tony Merrick are among those summoned.

Pet coin ta Stere one Street, SW4 7UG.

Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU), 180b Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UG. Merthyr Tydfil resistance begins to wane MERTHYR TYDFIL'S opposition to the Tory rent Act is almost certain to collapse after a meeting of the housing committee today.

Tory housing commissioner Geraint Walters, who took responsibility in the borough after the council refused to implement the legislation, rePressure for national gas action on pay East Greenwich workers returning the plant alter their meeting yesterday pass half-empty gasometers. NATIONWIDE industrial action against the Tory block on pay negotiations was called for yesterday by leaders of the 600 gasworkers at East Greenwich.

With 500 others at Croydon, the East Greenwich gasworkers have been working to rule and banning overtime for just over a week.

Now • the shop stewards want their fellow workers all over the country to follow suit with official union backing.

Their call for action came fter a two-hour mass meeting in the gasworkers' sports club, near the East Greenwich works.

Stewards called the meeting The Clay yester (centre) i tion i and their boisterous IAN vealed on Wednesday that rent rises in 1973 would average only 55p.

Now an emergency meeting of the housing committee has been called to discuss the new position.

Committee chairman Tal Lloyd said yesterday there may have been • some misunderafter a wave of anger swept the works following Tuesday's statement on the unions' 'substantial' pay claim by Minister for Industry, Tom Boardman.

Boardman told union chiefs there would be no reply to the claim until after the government had produced firm guidelines on phase two of its pay-control legislation.

The meeting heard bitter attacks both on Boardman and Tory premier Edward Heath's original December 15 directive blocking negotiations.

'We have been trying Cross auditor Charles Lacey s surrounded by local tenants banners during yesterday's demonstration.

standing of the council's posi'Our opposition was total, he said. 'We told the Secretary of State for Wales that we were disposed to talk to him about a level of rent increases appropriate to Merthyr.

The increases announced duct our action within the limits of safety to the general public', • Ted Green, General and Municipal Workers' Union convenor, told Workers Press after the meeting. 'But Boardman's statement shows that the government is not concerned about safety. So this is an aspect we have had to organize to take care of ourselves.' jimmy Aldridge, stewards' deplored Boardman's statement as 'highly provocative'. He wa ; convinced Monday's delegate conference would h ave to national call action.

FUND

JANUARY FUND £51.60 STEP UP CAMPAIGN TODAY LET'S MAKE a really great effort over the next few days to give a boost to January's Fund. So far you, dear readers, have collected {51.60. But following the great success of December's Fund, we are determined not just to raise our £1,750 target, but to try and reach a record total.

We are sure we can do it. Hardly a day goes by without more sections of trade unionists joining the battle to defend their wages. On prices, rents and the anti-union laws, the fight is coming to a head with the Tory government.

More than ever the issue remains to force this government to resign. Workers Press Is, therefore, more decisive than ever. Our paper must give a political lead to all those taking up the fight today.

Help us with a very special effort for our January Fund. Add a bit extra if you can. Post all your donations immediately to:

January Appeal Fund 186a Clapham High Street London, SW4 7UG this week are slightly above what we had in mind. But perhaps we shall look at them more rationally than we have done before and perhaps we shall accept it.

"The importance of accepting is that there is still the manner in which the 55p rise is applied to be decided and some of us are of the opinion that it will be better to do this ourselves.