[WORKERS In double hammer blow at health workers…]

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WORKERS In double hammer blow at health workers and the National Health Service Tory Ministers last week announced plans for organised strikebreaking and for the development of private medicine.

Social Services Secretary Patrick Jenkin, clearly heartened by the vicious scab-herding that eventually broke the Charing Cross Hospital engineers' strike, has issued a circular to Health Authorities calling on them to use "volunteers" to do the jobs of strikers.

He declared full government support for any health authority that used such scab labour during a strike, and called for the pay of workers who refused to cross picket lines to be stopped.

Troops

These Tory guidelines are coupled with detailed plans, drawn up last winter, for milit-. ary strikebreaking and with other, less publicised directives' already sent to Area Health. Authorities.

One of these recently publicised by Labour Weekly, calls upon administrators to spend thousands of pounds installing facsimile transmission machines and outside telephone lines to enable rapid and direct communications in the event of strikes.

Such expenditure, at a time of huge cash cutbacks NHS-indicates clearly where the Tory priorities lie.

But the response of trade union and Labour leaders has CAPITAL GET SOCIALIST clear For a lead in the struggle against wage control, cuts and redundancies your cheque/P.O. to list Press, 31 Dartmouth Hill, London NW5 1HR been mealy-mouthed.

COHSE leader Albert Spanswick complained that the new measures would "undermine responsible trade unionism".

Scab force

And Stan Orme, Shadow Social Services Secretary, persisted in using the euphemism "volunteers" to describe the Tories' planned shock force of scabs, moaning that:

"This type of approach could lead to conflict between volunteers and full-time staff"

With the Tories on the warpath, scabs at the ready, and union officials already on the defensive, hospital workers who take action against the cuts or in defence of their living standards must look in each area to the building of councils of action, drawing in the organised labour movement to strengthen and extend their struggles.

Meanwhile, in a move designed to secure the wholehearted support of consultants and doctors for further devastation of the NHS, the Tory Health Services Bill proposes to Jenkin end the phasing out of pay beds in NHS hospitals and ease controls on private hospitals.

This move, which will enable consultants to line their pockets as NHS patients line waiting rooms has predictably been welcomed by the fat cats of the BMA.

But the Bill also includes tighter regulation of cash limits on health authorities-aimed to prevent authorities defying government cutbacks.

Abolished

Area Health Authorities, introduced under the last Tory government, may also be abolished.

And hospitals are urged to engage in their own fund-raising activities in order to make good government cash cuts.

So, for the Tories, it's back to the pre-NHS days of charity hospitals and private care for the wealthy.

And for the working class the answer must be mass strike action to bring down the Tories.

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DON'T GO INTO THE FIGHT BLINDFOLD!