Join Our Fightt Against Tories!

Scan page 10

Returned to office after five years of Labour betrayals, the Tory government has immediately begun wielding a sharpened axe on jobs, conditions and social services. Trade Union rights face imminent legal attack.

Prices are already beginning to rocket upwards.

Plum sectors of state industry will be handed to the Tories' profiteering big business backers; and the pay rises to police and armed forces mark only the prelude to increased state violence against pickets and anti-fascists, and an intensified army crackThe Callaghan Healey leadership has made it clear that it will opppose any perspective other than settling down and meekAnd, though they have once more dusted off their near-forgotten "socialist" speeches, Labour's "left-wing" MPs have continued to duck away from any fight to remove Callaghan.

TuC leaders, too, have set out to establish a basis for collaboration with Thatcher and the Tory cabinet, parallelling tHeir anti working class alliance with Wilson and then Callaghan.

But the working class has experienced and overcome such betrayals before-to topple Heath's union bashing government in 1974, and smash through Callaghan's reactionary Phase 4 of wage controls in a series of monumental pay battles last winter.

These experiences are not dead. They point to the way that jobs, social services and hard-won union rights can be defended But a principled, revolutionary leadership is needed if the Labour traitors, the TUC collaborators and their hangers-on in the Communist Party are to be exposed and pushed aside, and the mass struggles mobilised that can defeat and remove the Such a leadership must fight day in and day out for a programme of transitional demands which, starting from today's conditions and today's consciousness within the working class, lead workers to grasp the necessity for socialist revolution.

And in taking up democratic demands-such as an end to racial and sexual discrimination, it must show the crucial role that must be played by the working class as the only consistently revolutionary class capable of leading the struggle for the And it must fight on an international basis-mobilising solidarity for anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggleswhether in Ireland, in Southern Africa or elsewhere throughout the world, and drawing strength, and political lessons from revolutionary upheavals such as that which ousted the hated This means fighting for the reconstruction of the TrotskyThis method of approach, rejecting any descent to simple trade union militancy, or concessions to any wing of the labour Su sou-acy. is the method fought for by the Workers Socialist -ne-er Jer de a see -dior ciass struggles in Britain. A erx= ere stere Du tovemen, thougt sirong in programme remains smaii in numbers.

down in the accupied North of Ireland.

ly accepting five years of Tory devastation. against renewed Tory attacks.

Tory government. emancipation of mankind.

Shah in Iran.

ist Fourth International.

JOIN US and take forward the struggle for Party, but separately from the existing cuts campaign.

Stalinists throughout London are similarly desperate to divert away from the call by Lambeth Council for a march on Westminster on November 7..

Impetus A march and strike on that day from town halls all over London would give the very impetus to the fight on cuts that the bureaucrats fear.

Instead the Stalinistdominated South East Region TUC is calling for a ET SOCIALIST

Scan page 11

Part of St. Stephens Hospital, Fulham Road, is now under occupation in defiance of a closure ultimatum.

The running down of the Hospital has continued under successive Tory and Labour governments.

In 1972 there were 572 beds in the Hospital. There are now 350, in spite of a waiting list of 934.

UP . HOSPITAL The Oxford demonstration The giant Singer sewing machine corporation has announced the closure of its The proposed closure of the wing would result in the loss of a further 76 beds!

The future of the whole hospital lies in jeopardy in an atmosphere of a Tory government hell-bent on making the working class pay (in blood if necessary) for their economic crisis.

At a public meeting called after the occupation, NUPE steward Dave Norman pointed out that while the Hospital was WORKERS SALET LIARS MAKE THE SUPPLERS PAY 800KS being run down, casualty departments for miles around were turning away dying patients.

Demolition

Fellow steward Barry Thompson said that there was no longer a maternity unit at the hospital and that tenders amounting to thousands of pounds had gone out to demolition contractors.

ANCH Joe Beckles, TGWU steward at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, spoke of the need for coordinated action between trade unionists of all Hospitals under threat from Thatcher's plans, and for a full-scale mobilisation of workers against capitalist attacks on their most basic rights.

Another speaker in defence of the Hospital was Paul Kenny from the other local occupation at Fulham Swimming Baths.

A meeting on health service cuts in Oxford showed overwhelming support for a programme of policies to fight the cuts-but was inevitably denied its wish.

The meeting called by Oxford and District Trades Union Council drew 240although few rank and file hospital workers were included in that number.

After a series of speeches against the cuts had called for a vote on an ASTMS resolution before the meeting the President of the He said that in his experience, mobilising trade union action was a "slow process" The living answer as to why it was sometimes a "slow process" to mobilise workers in defence of their rights was provided by the presence of NUPE full-time official Godfrey Eastwood.

His carefully steered contribution emphasised solely the need to involve "the community" and did not once mention Trades . Council declared that he would allow no vote. The meeting closed amidst frustration and protest.

The ASTMS Health Service branch had tabled a motion calling for restoration of all cuts and automatic increases in NHS spending to match inflation.

It also called for full support for hospital workers who occupied hospitals or who took supporting action.

The motion had also been endorsed by the local health service Joint Trade Union Committee, members of which had urged the public meeting to support it.

Although weaknesses in resolution-no there were the ASTMS rage 11 the crucial need to mobilise workers in supporting action.

Eastwood's attitude to cuts came to light when a Camden NUPE steward pointed to the fact that Eastwood had blocked the calling of an all-London NUPE meeting on the subject.

Eastwood and his fellow officials have no intention of initiating the necessary strike action to support occupations like that at St. Stephens.

Trade unionists must fight to expose such 'leaders' for what they are, by fighting to build the necessary action, including strike action, to defend elementary services. sions-it gave a clear direction for action and a firm declaration of principled defence of the NHS.

Power-who had already closed one Trades Council meeting rather than take the resolution there-blocked the calls from every part of the hall for a vote.

Ard a 400 strong demonstration two days later through Oxford, against cuts in all social services showed the same determination from Power to avoid programme and policy.

Prominence was chiefly given to speakers with no record of a fight against the But Joanna Coxhead, a COHSE health steward succeeded in addressing the rally, to make a firm call for