Hundreds strike to back Bethnal Green work-in

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casualty ward is threat- rally was a jubilant one, At a rally in Whitechapel 'Labour councillor about the those fighting to defend the need to 'stand up and fight' health service heard a re- and from a representative affirmation of the hospital of the Tower Hamlets Joint KEEP NEED Bethnal OUR January this year. Early days in the struggle to save Bethnal Green hospital.

Several hundred London hospital workers struck work on Friday 30 June to march in solidarity with their brothers and sisters at Bethnal Green nospital, wiltie the tha ened with closure.

HOSPITAL CUTS KILL workers' determination to continue working at their hospital.

The action being taken now amounts to occupation with an elected action committee to ensure defence.

Jubilant

The atmosphere at the with left' speeches from a 5100 Green Hospita Shop Stewards Committee.

None of those who spoke however drew attention to the out-and-out refusal of the trade union bureaucracy in the health service to mobilise the membership for the programme of total strike action and occupation necessary to fight the government's health service cuts.

Pride of place was reserved for local left' Labour MP lan Mikardo, who affixed blame for the situation on. the Regional Health authority!

He diplomatically avoided mention of his own role, and that of fellow members of the parliamentary "Tribune' group, in voting time and time again for the policies of Callaghan and his coalitionist friendspolicies which have brought the health service to the brink of collapse.

'Unaware'

Indeed, Mikardo went further, saying that the Minister responsible, Ennals, had been 'unaware' of the situation, that the plans for imminent closure of the casualty department had been countermanded, and that he had arranged for a deputation to see Ennals personally.

Such cynical manoeuvres, coming from people who bear criminal responsibility for the attacks on the health service, should be treated with total mistrust by hospital workers, as should Ennals' temporary 'reprieves' Inquiry The fight must be intensified against the trade union and Labour misleaders for strike action to impose a socialist policy to defend the health service against capitalism's attacks.

The action committee should take steps to launch an inquiry into the finances

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nt strategy of protec- round' five years ago.

industrialised farce. While the canitali Two events last week, both of them small enough in themselves, highlighted the way in which the existing capitalist world trade system could be toppled like a line of dominoes.

At the start of the week the Greek government announced that it was unilaterally going to restrict imports from Japan (Japanese exports to Greece are ten times as much as Greek exports to Japan).

Then at the end of the week the Greek capitalists were offered a forcible dose of their own medicine when the EEC Commission threatened to impose restrictions on Greek textile imports (especially of T shirts to Britain) unless Greece "voluntarily" limited them.

Such moves as these towards •rotectionism are occurrin, every day throughout the capitalist world.

The moves by the EEC against Greece lan associated territory of the EEC) were part of a series of protectionist adopt a joint tion against t imports from the 'newly countries"

It is no doubt statements like this which led the representatives of 35 "developing" countries in the current round of world trade talks in Geneva to demand a special session of the talks to take account of their interests.

These talks, which have been going on for five years, have become known as the 'Tokyo round' of tariff negotiations.

Their professed aim is to agree a programme of tariff reductions between the main industrialised capitalist countries to follow the reductions of the so-called 'Kennedy round' five years ago.

These talks have become a These talks have become farce. While the capitalist negotiators sit in Geneva talking of freer trade, the governments they represent have been engaged in a more and more ferocious trade war in which tariffs and restrictions and "voluntary" export cuts have been growing.

It now seems quite impossible that the Tokyo Round of negotiations-due to conclude July 15 before the "economic summit" of the main capitalist powers-can result in anything other than a few vacuous statements of principle.

It is possible that the talks may reach complete breakdown -in which case the trade war PHOTO: Andrew Wiard. Report Lungrun. and the economic slump which result from the capitalist crisis will take a new sharp turn for the worse.

Even if an apparent "agree. ment" is reached in Geneva in the next two weeks there is little chance that it will be ratified.

In the US Congress demands for more protectionism are growing every day.

And they are constantly backed up by propaganda from both capitalists and union Last week Goorge Meany, president of the AFL-CIO and Murray Finlay, president of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Union issued a joint statement with the bosses-the head of the Dupont company and the president of the American Textile Manufacturing Institute.

They joined forces to call for textiles to be excluded from George Meany the Geneva tariff reduction talks and for more protectionist measures to be applied against Pag imports to the USA.

This statement shows clearly that import controls, far from being à "socialist" policy as Tribunites and the Communist Party claim in Britain, are the age-old unprincipled policy of class-collaboration and chauvinism.

Work sharing

Jobs will be preserved and won not by the workers in each country joining a nationalist economic war on the same side as their bosses (which is what Meaney, Tribune and the CP want) but through the fight against the capitalists in all countries for work sharing on full pay to save jobs, for public works programmes to create them and, wherever these measures are refused, for nationalisation of industry and banks without compensation under workers' management.

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PHOTO: Mark Rusher. IFL DANGER COPEN

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