Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

[With workers by the thousand taking to the…]

Socialist Press no. 227, 10 December 1980 · scan pp. 10–11 · about 498 words

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With workers by the thousand taking to the streets to oppose Tory policies there is plainly no lack of militancy in the organised working class.

Yet the existing trade union bureaucrats and Labour leaders -whether right or left'--have no perspective to offer those workers prepared to fight in defence of jobs, living standards, social services and demo. cratic rights.

These can only be defended through policies which start from the independent interests of the working class, which, as an international class, has nothing to gain and everything to lose from attempts to restore the profitability of their "own" employing class.

In a period where the contradictions of the anarchic capitalist system force the wholesale closure and destruction of the productive forces of society, only a socialist planned 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 Trotskyist 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 aqainst imperialism and adainst the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracies in the deformed and degenerated workers' 1 states.

We invite all Baders of Socialist Press to SI eek more details of the WSL anc I its work, and to join us in the si truggle for socialism.

Please send me more details of the Workers Socialist League.

Name.

Address Send to WSL: BM Box 5277, London WC1N 3XX

Scan page 11

On Tuesday December 2 Longworth Hospital for geriatric women was occupied by the staff.

The majority of workers at the hospital are members of COHSE.

COHSE has a national policy of occupation of threatened facilities-on paper, that is. For over 2½ years Longworth Hospital has been under the threat of closure but during that time not one COHSE official came to the hospital to occupation to one of support and help.

The major factor in this is that the care of the patients is not in anyway being impaired.

The strength of hospital occupations is that by law while a hospital has patients in it, it must be serviced, supplied, staff must. be paid, and full medical cover must be given.

The central question is therefore keeping the patients in the hospital.

Without an occupation there occupation should not follow the same pattern of isolation and defeat as their own and so many other occupations.

The national leaders of NUPE, COHSE and NALGO, for all their cluckings of sympathy, have not yet utilised one of the strength of their members in strike action to halt the cuts.

AHAs are confident up and down the country that they can quite literally get away with

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 227, 10 December 1980