Astms Do-nothing Display

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With their members in the Health Service increasingly demanding union action to oppose spending cuts and defend jobs and standards, the rightward-moving ASTMS bureaucracy last week tried to siphon off militancy by holding a stage-managed "conference" on the NHS.

It took place, appropriately enough, at London Zoo.

To ensure the NHS members did not have too much say the bureaucracy brought along twice as many non-NHS members as NHS members, and packed the platform with "left" MPs and union officials to ensure that there was virtually no time for discussion.

Clive Jenkins introduced the conference and set the tone by saying that the Tory government could only be brought down by a split from within its own ranks.

Jenkins Our task was simply to campaign for the next. Labour government to give more priority to the NH&..

Jenkins did admit that "resources applied by the last government were not enough" but called only for "a firm commitment" from the « Labour Orme Party. The task of the conference, declared Jenkins, was to think about what policy to employ.

minister Ofor health showed minister with a tub thumping attack on the Tories-but also managed to say there should be no action.

employees.

He was followed by Norman Willis, the Deputy General Secretary of the TUC, who has the same inability to speak as all top TUC bureaucrats.

Willis hoped that the points he lost in muddled speaking would be made up for in his sincerity.

But as one delegate from Yorkshire said: "I didn't travel 200 miles to find out the heart of the Deputy General Secretary of the TUC is in the right place. It bloody well ought to be!"

Lunch was then laid onwith wine and lots of other alcohol liberally provided at a cost of over £6 per head in a move designed to make coherent discussion even more difficult and keep high living bureaucrats around for the afternoon session!

The final platform speaker was Stalinist Red Bird, ASTMS National Officer responsible for the NHS.

He at last mentioned he thought were the practical ideas of what members should do. They were:

* unremitting political pressure on Conservative MPs.

*Look at our relations with Community Health Councils.

*Get CATC and Regional TUCs to see how the trade union movement relates to AHA and RHAs and the trade union members on them.

*Give moral and practical support to NHS members.

*Write to the press-particularly if you are in the NHS.

*Get active in local politics.

There was-at last-time for discussion: : Many speakers stressed the need not to rely on the Labour Party and pointed to what the last Labour government did.

Others asked why we should wait four years before doing anything. One delegate-a Socialist Press supporterreminded the conference of ASTMS policy for the NHS as adopted at Annual Delegates Conference five years ago which is:

* Reversal of all cuts.

*Cash injection of £1,000 million into the NHS.

*NHS financing to with inflation.

*Elected trade union committees to look into the day to day running of the Area and Regional Health Authorities.

*The abolition of all private medicine.

The response of the platform to this challenge was to totally ignore everything said by that speaker-who had also called for a national conference of the ASTMS NHS members to discuss the various disputes the para-medical staff are involved in as well as the cuts.

Other questions were "answered" by going round in circles-but the question of policy and getting the NHS members together was totally and obviously ignored.

The jamboree was then closed and the platform speakers left-probably returning to the reptile house at the Zoo.

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