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economy on a world scale offers a way forward.

To achieve such a perspective a leadership is needed which, in today's struggles fights to advance workers beyond trade union militancy, protest politics and illusions that capitalism can be abolished through parliament.

The Workers Socialist League is a Trotskyisi movement fighting day in and day out to build such a principled leadership in the working class in Britain.

Internationally, we are affiliated to the newly-formed Trotskyist International Liaison committee, which fights for the reconstruction of the Fourth International and the building of revolutionary parties in every country to lead the struggle against imperialism and against the parasițic Stalinist bureaucacies in ihe deformed and degenerated workers' states.

We invite all readers of Socialist Press to seek more details of the WSL and its work, and to join us in the struggle for socialism.

Please send me more details of the Workers Socialist League.

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Address Send to WSL: BM Box 5277, London WC1V 6XX. meeting to discuss the wage increase for 1981-and had to eat with the union officials at a local pub!

In the heated discussion that followed, a Winsford delegate raised the question of a lack of union policy to fight the massive closures in the clothing industry and to organise against the Tory government.

The crisis that is hitting the clothing workers is a result of the crisis of capitalism, she said, and not the problem of imports trom loW cost countries.

Diversion

The union leaders are simply using the question of imports to divert from the fight against the Tory government.

A call for the nationalisation of the clothing industry was received favourably by the delegates, but diverted by the officials.

Three delegates, however, declared their willingness to fight for this policy before the conference next April, to make it a real issue in the union.

The pessimism admitted by one union official in no way reflects the workers in the clothing industry, who are more than willing to take on the Tory government and discuss ' the question of occupations and strikes to bring down Thatcher.

The mobilisation of workers for 29 November must not be left there.

Clothing workers must carry on the fight with other workers to build councils of action to fight closures, cuts, and unemployment.

Oxfordshire AHA, with the support of local consultants and the Community Health Council have renewed their attempts to close the vitally necessary long-stay Longworth Hospital for 50 highly dependant elderly women.

There is a critical shortage of well over 300 beds for the elderly in Oxfordshire, admitted by the AHA.

They have just closed . the geriatric hospital in Cowley Road, which they argue was not a cut but a straight transfer of beds.

In fact, 13 beds have been lost as well as the specialist geriatric care received there.

The closure of Cowley Road Hospital met with great public hostility, but crucial though this community support for the hospital was, it was only, the hospital staff who were in a position to defend it:

It soon became clear, however, that the otticial line of NUPE-the major union at the hospital-was not to fight to save the hospital, but instead to organise for "the best transfer terms for staff" when closure took place.

Fortunately the story at Longworth is very different.

It was in May 1978 that the staff were all gathered together for a mass meeting to be told by an AHA officer that theirhospita would close.

"Use your union to get jobs at the new Witney hospital" he said.

Fortunately the unionstewarc had other ideas about what a union was for.

She called a meeting for all union members in the hospital and asked them to oppose the closure when the time came by continuing to work with the patients and keeping all the hospital's facilities open.

To succeed, she said, they would have to seek the support of all the NHS trade unions locally, especially from their own union branch, COHSE.

The site meeting voted unanimously to continue working with their patients in the wards, to go into occupation to prevent bed removal and to ask for supporting strike action when the AHA moves in to physically close it.

It is clear that the AHA and the consultants see geriatric facilities in general and Longworth in particular as a soft option for closure.

Their cynical and systematic destruction of facilities has been exposed.

They arrogantly dismiss the determination of Longworth workers to defend the hospital.

Woman Worker supporters are fighting to ensure that the COHSE workers' action with supporting strike action from other health service unions will prove them wrong and keep this much needed hospital open.

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Wednesdar 1980