Waltham Forest Case Con: More than a Magazine

1. Pete Feldon - outline • Local group – Waltham Forest • More than a magazine • Conferences • Newsletters from the Editorial Collective • How and why Case Con ended.

2. My Case Con chronology • Attended first conference – November 1972 • Waltham Forest Case Con firmly established by the time I qualified in September 1973 • Became a member of Editorial Collective in November 1973, and remained a member until it folded in 1977.

3. Waltham Forest Case Con • Extracts from broadsheets – May 1973 to May 1974 • No 1 was mostly information e.g. Homeless Action Campaign, Welfare Rights Stall. Also noted discussion at local meeting about “the possibility of radical casework” • No 2 included concerns about “anomalies in paystructure... in relation to other boroughs”. Reported on a meeting to introduce Intermediate Treatment. • No 4 mentions the NALGO Action Group National Conference, the London Weighting claim and a demo to support the local Family Squatting Association • No 7 included a report of a discussion in the local group on mental illness and noted the scores of Welfare United! • No 9 - local group discussed “The Trick Cycle of Deprivation”, concerns about social work provision in the local mental hospital, also delays in moving a team out its temporary accommodation in a swimming pool.

4. More than a magazine • Conferences: • deciding on policy • electing EC • learning from each other. • Regional Convenors – activity coordination • Communication from the EC: • conference decisions • magazine plans • news of local groups and campaigns • thoughts on the way forward.

5. Conferences – April 1972 (London) • Programme • Limitations and possibilities of radical social work • The Seebohm Factory • Residential work • Workshops: • voluntary workers, • NALGO • students • Probation • Held biennially until May 1976?

6. EC Newsletter - November 1972 • Notes nine magazines have been produced at 3 monthly intervals • Rebuts New Society’s comment : “One gets the feeling that Case Con has perhaps said all it can say in the first edition” • Circulation of 4,500 • Notes well attended conferences and growth of local groups, commenting “through them or through the E.C. we have been able to intervene in, and in some cases initiate, political action in the social services” • “Our activities and growth could only have taken place in a situation of sharpening political and industrial conflict” • States main function of the ‘journal’ is “analysis of social work ideology and practice, discussion of legislation, developing our own theory” • Calls for regional and national coordination of local groups.

7. EC Newsletter - March 1973 – regional convenors meet • Discussion paper from the ‘South region of Case Con’ on “how regional organisation is to develop and on what lines”, including statements such as “it is possible for social workers to take power from the management strata above them” • Evaluation of “the barricades in Islington”, noted that “most groups felt there was a local situation… which could be used as a stepping off point for a pamphlet, public meeting, resolution to NALGO, etc” • Standby dispute – “CASE CON demands: • A realistic offer in terms of money plus time in lieu • Private telephones to be provided for all on stand-by duty”.

8. EC Newsletter - June 1973 • 15 sides of foolscap • Regional reports from NE, NW, Midlands, East Anglia, Southern, SW & South Wales, Scotland and London • Mentions for: • Union of the Physically Impaired which aims to “oppose all forms of segregation and oppression of the disabled” • Red Rat - “alternative therapy” • Stuff the System – “alternative forms of learning and development” • “Survival kit for single mothers” produced by Mothers in Action.

9. Conference – November 1973 • No presentations - plenaries and small groups including Women in Social Work, Shop Stewards Committees and Homelessness • Noted “same conflicts and difficulties”: • “Is Case Con an action group planning and carrying out national and local campaigns on various fundamental issues? • OR is Case Con an educative, politicising forum for preparing social workers to move toward trade union involvement and political commitment?” • Resolutions included: • “magazine to devote more attention to specific practical issues” • Revive the London NALGO SW’s Co-ordinating Committee • “consider tactics towards BASW’s latest moves towards professionalisation”.

10. Conference – May 1974 (Edinburgh) • Conference report: • “strong feeling.. that we’ve become a static group of old lags” • “we need to… start posing ALTERNATIVE ways of working and dealing with clients” • Call for magazine to “sharper and more relevant… The women’s issue… was a beginning to analysing our position in society and the relation of that to our daily work”.

11. Final EC Newsletter - June 1974 • “production of Course Con and the CC17 (Training Issue)… should be a vital first step towards delineating what a radical social worker does which differentiates us from our colleagues” • Now that there is a manifesto “we know what we think, now we have to analyse what we do” • Included a reminder for people to send in their supporters fee of 50p.

12. Conference – November 1975 (London) • Title: • ‘The Welfare State under attack - time to fight back!’ • Supporting article in the magazine stated: • “Case Con’s function must lie more and more in the area of providing a forum for isolated individuals and organised groups to meet, to politicize the former, to undermine the professional clap-trap that abounds on social work circles and introduce all social workers to rank and file trade union activity”.

13. Conference – May 1976 (Sheffield) • The main session was “Social Workers and Trade Unions” • Report appears in Issue 23 (the Trade Union Issue) • Decisions: • “conferences would cease to be held on a six monthly basis, and that they would now be held from time-to-time, as required” • Agreed that there would be a continued focus on “the channeling of socialist ideas on social work to readers of the magazine” and in addition the EC should “intervene much more consistently in the social work media” • EC now free to “decide on the subject for each issue as opposed to being bound by conference” • Noted that “the form of organisation… dates back to when Case-Con was an embryonic rank-and-file social workers organisation… (which) is no longer appropriate”.

14. Editorial from the Trade Union Issue (23) – Summer 1976 • Case Con’s role: • “it is an organiser of opinion which cannot substitute itself for the nitty-gritty of campaigning in a trade union” • “Getting the arguments together... to wage the propaganda campaign... for when the cuts really start to bite” • Context: • “We all know that the capitalist system is in crisis and that the task facing militants is monumental” • About the content: • “written almost entirely by social workers who are active in the trade union movement… based on their hard-won experiences”.

15. The hoped for transition to Public Con • Editorial from final issue (Autumn 1977): • The objectives stated in the first issue “have been explored and in some measure achieved” i.e. “developing a radical critique of social work practice and training, and creating an organisation capable of translating this critique into action” • “Many of the earlier critical planks of Case Con are now generally accepted by a large number of social workers” • “Increasingly social workers are seeing themselves as local government workers… where fighting for better conditions and a better service are both seen as struggles to be fought for through trade union activity” • “… the editorial collective has more and more cast its critical eye beyond the boundaries of social work. Now is the time to launch out in a new direction” • The proposed ‘Public Con’ aimed to be a magazine that would “provide a framework for the development of Socialist ideas” for Welfare State workers • There was a poor response to the call for 100 foundation subscriptions and for people to form a new editorial collective.

16. The End