Hostel Sit-in
Socialist Press1980 1980-12-17Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 10 →
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use this occupation to feather their own caps, they would now use their weight to tip the scales the other way-to suspending the occupation!
This, they said, was a gesture of faith to the AHA, who promised not to move patients for a whole five weeks and to 'consult' COHSE before they did so!
The occupation committee, knowing they could not retreat, having come so far, and starting to realise their own strength and the responsibility this placed on them to stand firm, unanimously rejected this deal.
Meanwhile the AHA, under its chairman, Lady McCarthy (Who also sits on the local Labour Party GMC!)-had just one card to play.
Not daring to risk her repuAHA finds that playing a wait. game, with persuasion, derision and blackmail in not opening Witney Hospital will not be enough, and begin to plan in earnest to break the occupation.
This is the time for which Longworth staff must prepare other trade unionists to stand alongside them by taking strike action to safeguard this hospital.
Meanwhile the occupation and picketing urgently need financial assistance and moral support from other health workers and trade unionists.
Send donations and messages of support to:
Barbara Russell, Weybread Cottage, Farringdon Road, Longworth, Oxfordshire.
16 homeless people, together with hostel manager Joe Costello, have occupied the Bakehouse Hostel in Chelsea, to prevent its closure by the St. Georges Community Trust.
The Hostel has been run on semi-commercial lines (with charges upwards of £17.25 per week) to subsidise the Trust's main hostel.
Suddenly the Trust's founder and director, one Austin Williams MBE, . JP, declared the Bakehouse was losing money -and gave ten days notice that it would close and Costello would lose his job.
Williams is a Labour councillor in Newham-and as chairman of the education committee, he is currently considering school closures:
The homeless tenants are now occupying the hostel. They would welcome offers of support from the labour movement-to Joe Costello, Bakehouse Hostel, 47 Milmans St., London SW10. the betrayal will be similar to that of Derek Robinson. But the responsibility will go right down into the stewards' movement.
Over 100 trade unionists, youth and unemployed workers attended a conference to discuss factory closures convened in Winsford on Sunday December 14.
Platform speakers included a representative from the Gardners occupation, a full time