Longworth: Vote for Supporting Strike Action as Aha Dig in

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The determined occupation by staff at Longworth Hospital, Oxfordshire continues to grow in strength, despite a range of attacks from the local Area Health Authority.

The most insidious of the AHA attacks focusses on a bid to strip the hospital of medical cover by refusing to advertise As members of the WRP meet for their 5th Annual Conference, a 'number of problems will weigh heavy on their minds.

One is no doubt how they can square their ostensibly "Trotskyist" banner with the main line of the WRP's *Manifesto 81" which has more in common with the Stalinist politics of the Morning Star.

Entitled "Tory CounterRevolution: The WRP Reply" the manifesto spells out an unashamed Popular Front policy based on the extension of cross-class "community councils" to draw in petty bourgeois and capitalist forces-small vacant posts for nursing staff which are becoming vacant.

They plainly hope by this policy to force the staff to concede to the planned elosure of the hospital-with a consequent loss of 35 geriatric beds in an area already 200 geriatric beds below requirements.

But the response has been very different. A meeting of COHSE members at the nearby Warneford Hospital voted to take supporting strike action and to back a lobby of the AHA on Tuesday • January • 21, demanding the vacancies be notified.

Elsewhere, too, fresh support has been coming in. University students have now joined the list of those supporting the 24hour picket of the hospital gates.

And a Regional conference of COHSE delegates voted at the weekend to send an emergency resolution to their NEC calling on them to investigate the necessity for industrial action to support the Longworth work-in.

COHSE-the health union which organises the bulk of Longworth staff-has so far given önly token official support. But the enthusiasm of the Regional conference indicates that COHSE branches could now begin to mobilise in active financial and political support.

In the Oxford City Labour Lady McCarthy is a himal Lady isa Committee member, a resolution censuring her role on Longworth and calling on her to comply with Labour Party policy (which is to support the occupation) was only narrowly defeated by 3 votes at last week's GC meeting.

McCarthy has professed herself "insulted" by questions from the local press on whether she supports the right wing "Gang of Three"

But she has little to grumble about from local papers. Both the Oxford Mail and Oxford Times are effectively blocking any press statements put out by the occupation committee, while giving full vent to the scabs of the AHA and the reactionary Royal College of Nursing, who wish to see the hospital closed down.

Trade unionists and Labour Party members should campaign for donations and messages of support to the occupation, as well as resolutions calling McCarthy's removal from the Oxford GC and calling on the COHSE NEC. to mount a national campaign to back the Longworth work-in.

Messages of support and donations can be sent to: Barbara Russell, , Whitebread Cottage, Farringdon Road, Longworth, Abingdon, Oxon.

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Problems dog WRP members