Officials wind up hospital work-in

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THEFIGHT BENDFOLD* Til struggre against News the planned of closure St. Mary's of Hospital, Hampton, Middlesex attracted 50 people including staff, doctors, trade unionists and local people to a meeting in early October.

Attempts by NUPE's local official Vic Palmer to control the meeting failed, and it was decided to occupy the hospital to attempt to prevent the Kingston, Richmond and Esher Area Health Authority from moving out patients before the closure date of October 16.

"In hand"

The occupation was led by the Richmond and Twickenham Trade Union Council, and was joined on the following day by officials of COHSE who claimed to "have the matter in hand"

The full meaning of this term is now clear with news that patients at the hospital have been reduced handful.

At a meeting of the AHA representatives of COHSE, TGWU and NUPE were told of a month's reprieve of closure in order to give trade unionists "time to consider alternative ways of saving the €80,000 involved".

release The local Community Health Council has issued a press release opposing the closure of St. Mary's, and one of the hospital's shop stewards, Pam Weeks, was reinstated following protests about her suspension from her job for being a "troublemaker"

A motion from COHSE workers at St. Mary's that called for support from cummunity groups, trades councils and trade unions was blocked at a COHSE branch meeting by regional officials-despite COHSE's officially proclaimed policy of organising occupations to prevent hospital closures.

A public meeting has: been planned for Monday 5 November in Hampton to assess the situation before the AHA meeting the next day.

However, the efforts of St. Mary's Hospital workers to fight cuts has been seriously undermined by the predictable sabotage of the trade union bureaucracy, and provides a tragic negative demonstration of the need for a principled revolutionary leadership.

STILL AVAILABLE WSL MANIFESTO An outline of the political programme of the Workers Socialist League. • Price 15p, including postage, from WSL, 31, Dartmouth Park t Hill, l London NW5 1HR Articles on women in Ireland, fighting the cuts, Kampuchea, and the Communist Party's women's paper, "Link"

Price 16p including postage from WSL, 31 Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR Once again this coming Thursday will see the whole town of Corby grind to a halt and thousands of workers take to the streets in protest against the British Steel Corporation's plan to shut the steel works.

There is no doubt that Corby workers, like their brothers and sisters at Shotton, and in other threatened sections of industry are ready and willing to take determined action to safeguard jobs.

Nor is there any doubt that BSC management, facing a Tory ultimatum to reverse alleged £300 million annual losses by next spring, are determined to press ahead with the closure.

Union leaders

But what is increasingly in doubt as the planned closure date approaches is the willingness of the union leaders involved to wage the slightest fight to prevent the wholesale sackings, the speed up and closures that are the essential component of BSC's plans to restore profitability at the expense of steel workers.

Speeches by ISTC leader Bill Sirs at the Labour Party and elsewhere have been full of sound and fury but signified nothing in terms of a tangible fight.

But BSC unions have the power to resist: they have the strength through strike action to shut down production of this industry that is so crucial to the balance of payments of British capitalism and to production throughout the engineering They have the numbers and the power to picket and mobilise blacking action on the docks to prevent scab steel stocks being brought in to break their action.

Such a strike would bring the job-slashing Tory government to its knees: it would easily create conditions for the defence ot jobs in Corby, Shotton and other steel plants, and the imposition of work sharing on full pay throughout the industry.

And at the same time elected trade union committees should be fighting for access, to the full accounts of BSC to find which private employers and bankers receive the benefit from its colossal £300 million "losses"

Such an examination will point to the precarious future faced by every steel worker if this Tory government and its plans for the industry are not confronted..

Small percentage

Let nobody be fooled. If all-out national strike action is not taken now to defend jobs in Corby and Shotton, then these sackings massive as they are-will only be a smail percentage of the jobs that will be axed throughout the industry.

Those union leaders that obstruct such a policy have already consigned thousands of their members to the growing dole queues: they must be fought and removed before they turn Shotton and Corby into ghost towns.

For this task, a principled, socialist. leadership must be built in the steel industry.

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WOMAN WORKER No. 3