[TIT: GENERAL Picket at Queen Mary's Hospital, Hackney…]
Socialist Press1979 1979-02-14Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 12 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 12
TIT: GENERAL Picket at Queen Mary's Hospital, Hackney Road, London Published by Folrose Ltd. for the Workers Socialist League, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR Printed by Anvil Printers Ltd., London. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office.
paroxysms of blue-faced frenzy.
Determined to ensure that every other group of public sector workers remains low paid, the media has thrown its full weight behind every strikebreaking move made by local authorities, hospital management or the government.
Westminster Council's decision to bring in hugely expensive contract labour to scab on the dustmen's strike was hailed as a major step forward: and well-heeled anti-union middle class volunteers" have been herded into hospitals to offer their strikebreaking services.
Selective
Despite this the public sector union bureaucrats stand doggedly by their dangerous half-hearted strategy of only calling "selective" strike action, and continue to water down the £60/35 hour week claim.
The use of scab labour under the pretence of "saving lives" and the need for all-out strikes in hospitals and every public service if the full claim is to be won poses sharply the question of workers control of emergency services.
The Workers Socialist League • has consistently argued that such emergency services must be run and controlled by strike committees, building links wherever possible with the local labour movement and with the unions in supplies and contractor firms. PHOTO: Andrew Wiard. Report L'ow pay demonstration in Fivernonl There must be a clear policy that all cover is at once withdrawn if scab labour is used.
There are signs that in several areas this policy is being adopted. At both the Westminster and St. Mary's W9 hospitals in London, the Esso tanker drivers TGWU branch' has agreed with hospital workers that hospital shop stewards should monitor oil levels, and that they should be the ones to authorise necessary supplies.
And at the Royal Free and some other hospitals, dustmen's strike leaders have agreed that refuse will be collected only when hospital stewards declare it necessary for health reasons.
These moves, themselves small but essential beginnings of workers' control of the public services, must be extended and developed alongside the fight for all-out strike action.
Councils of action
And the public sector pay fight must be strengthened by the fight in each area for the establishment of united strike committees.
Local labour movement bodies must be called upon to send delegates to form councils of action which will strengthen picket lines, forge links with other trade uninne nasminiler итоно, alu, provide a political arena within which a political alternative to the sabotage and betrayal of Fisher and other union leaders can be argued out.
Such strike committees and councils of action must also put down firm demands that t, those Labour "left-wingers" who claim to oppose Callaghan now take up a fight for an emergency Labour Party conference to remove him and his right wing cabinet and to adopt a socialist manifesto for the General Election.
For workers at this stage to demand that their left' leaders put their words into practice is the quickest and most effective way of exposing their completely fraudulent character, and recognising the need for a new, revolutionary leadership to be built.
----- pull-quotes -----
NUPE ® LOW PAID INOWCALLED MAUDALS By URDUR PA SEFTON HOSPITAl