Action to stop the cuts
Socialist Press 1980Proofed transcriptionPart of the paper's coverage of the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement conference, Birmingham, 5 July 1980; printed in bold throughout. The conference report is at /articles/new-leaders-needed-to-defeat-tories/.
Transcribed from the scan and read against it word by word: spelling, punctuation and wording are as printed.
“There can be no clearer example of the crisis than 250,000 people homeless on the streets while building workers are on the dole and bricks are stockpiled”, argued Anne Marie Sweeney (Oxfordshire Campaign Against the Cuts).
Introducing a discussion on the fight to halt the Tory onslaught on the public services, she went on to show the scope of the cuts—from school meals to closures of geriatric hospitals; from punitive charges for home helps to cancellation of school crossing patrols.
“Impressive record”
Pointing to the inaction of the union leaders, she quoted from the latest S.E. Region TUC Report. This boasts of the “impressive record” of its Cuts Campaign Committee, which in fact consisted of producing “three bulletins”, holding two conferences and lobbying the Tory Minister of State at the DHSS!
Meanwhile union leaders lifted not a finger to prevent the eviction of the Wandsworth nursery occupation, or the brutal break-up of the work-in at Derbyshire’s Ettwall Hospital.
It is vital to fight for a policy of occupations linked to supporting strike action to stop the cuts, she argued.
A similar theme was taken up by Joe Beckles of St. Mary’s Hospital Defence Committee, West London.
“Patients are workers!” he told the conference.
“People in hospital beds did not just come off flying saucers from Mars. They are people like us in this room”.
It was not a question of “using” patients but fighting for their interests. A determined work-in had meant that St. Columba’s Hospital in London is still open 15 months after its closure deadline.
Jane Atkins of Leicester Nursery Campaign underlined the refusal of union leaders (NALGO) to fight to defend and extend nursery provision.