St Benedict's: support needed

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A workers' committee has taken over the running of St. Benedict's Hospital for geriatrics in Tooting, South London.

The committee, which includes representatives from NUPE, COHSE, AUEW and EETPU as well as the Royal College of Nursing, has pledged to keep the hospital open despite the plans of Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth AHA.

The AHA's announcement of plans to close the hospital completely by July: 1980 triggered the preparation for the workers' takeover.

Nurse Anna Finlay of the RCN told Socialist Press that the AHA had attempted.to avoid normal procedures in closing the hospital by describing it as a "temporary closure"

.As a result management dodged prior consultations, and circumvented the Community Health Council.

Unanimous

The workers' response was to set up the works action committee several weeks ago.

when the District I Management Team announced that 50 patients were to be moved to the Bolingbroke Hospital before Christmas, the action committee called a mass meeting, which voted unanimously to prevent the patients from being moved.

At the same time nursing staff refused to accept jobs in other hospitals.

The occupation, • which began on. November 15, has the support of all sections of staff, and local GPs have agreed to continue referring patients St. Benedict's. • Hospital management are at present staying well in the background-no doubt weighing their options for a new initiative.

Local union branches and the Wandsworth and East Merton Trades Council have declared support, and practical backing has come from ambulance drivers, who are refusing to move patients.

Receded

Last Saturday an ambulance crew were instructed to take out a patient, but stopped at the picket line, rang up their controllers, and told them that they were not prepared to move the patient.

The firm and militant action of the St. Benedict's workers has so far-stopped the District Management team in its tracks.

But the danger has not receded. It is certain that management will come forward with new, and more sophisticated tactics in their attempts to defeat the occupation and shut down the hospital:

Already there are signs of oreparations on three main fronts.

*Funding is being withdrawn for agency staff in some departments-particularly occupational therapy.

*The contracts of some junior doctors run out in February. The AHA could well plan not to renew these and thus gradually strip the hospital of medical cover.

This was the tactic which finally precipitated the defeat of From the 30-month work-in at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital.

*By not replacing ancillary and nursing staff who leave, the AHA can whittle down manning levels at St. Benedict's, adding to the strain on those maintaining the work-in. It is crucial to fight such attacks on standards at the hospital.

Such tactics should come as no. surprise.

While workers have shown through their experience that work-ins can halt hospital management. closures, it follows that management will have learnt from their experience that, by play- on their own members. ing for time and counting on the isolation of an individual struggle, they can hopé eventually to win the day and shut down the, hospitals on their The St. Benedict's work-in can succeed in preventing the closure. But only if it becomes the centre of growing working class action against the cuts throughout the health service Plant and a Trotskyist. and the wider labour movement PHOTO: Andrew Wiard. Report broken agreement deputy convenor,: NUPE leader Fisher