Health Workers Prepare to Combat Cutbacks

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Staff at two more London hospitals have taken steps to resist the vicious series of cuts planned by the Kensington, Westminster and Chelsea Area Health Authority.

At a mass meeting held on Thursday at St. Stephen's Hospital in Chelsea, 300 workers pledged to resist the planned closure of six wards at the hospital.

They voted unanimously to continue working at the hospital and to refuse to remove patients and equipment from the threatened wards.

Earlier in the week, similar resolutions were passed at a mass meeting at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, and both hospitals have elected Hospital Defence Committees to coordinate resistance to the cutbacks.

Despite these moves, which reflect the growing militancy of health workers in the area, the AHA has already begun to implement the programme of cuts decided at their last meeting.

On the day before the meeting, which took place on 26 July, instructions were issued for the removal of patients from ward 3 at St. Mary's, Harrow Road.

The patients were removed by unsuspecting hospital porters and only afterwards was it announced that the ward was to be closed.

A mass meeting was called for the following Monday, where angry hospital staff agreed unanimously not to remove a single patient from a ward, no matter what the reason given for the removal, until they were assured that the ward would not be closed.

It is obvious that the author¡ties will sink to the lowest level of lies and deceit implement the cuts.

Health workers in the area should follow the example of St. Mary's by treating any instruction to remove patients from wards with suspicion-even if it is described as a temporary measure for "redecoration of the ward"

Although preparations for the defence of wards and hospitals are going ahead, it is obvious that the AHA will continue to make cutbacks using all the underhand methods at their disposal.

They have the monopoly of information and resources at hand which enable them to be always one step ahead of the resistance of hospital workers, and they already have plans to stop renewing junior doctors' contracts-the tactic which led to the removal of patients from the EGA.

The AHA will stop at nothing to carry through their policies and as the example of L'ambeth, Lewisham and Southwark AHA has shown even if they voted not to make cuts, then the Tory government would sack them and organise cutbacks from a regional level.

As well as continuing to prepare for occupation and defensive action, health workers must link this to building for a campaign of strike action by all London health and public sector workers in defence of every health facility in the Westminster area.

This will be particularly important in the fight to save Athlone House recovery unit and St. Columba's terminal hospital both of which are due for complete closure in the very near future.

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