Hospitals Fight

Scan page 12

Since we last went to press we have received: Oxford General £13; Islington £10; Oxford NHS £2; Oxford PSF 13.05; Oxford Assembly £15; Oxford Collection £4; Aylesbury £5.25; Oxford (Booksellers) £20; Banbury reader £1; London (North) £32; London (East) £18.25; London (South) £5; Coventry £4.50; Leamington £1 ; Nuneaton £5.25;

Total received since last edition: £160.05. Total so far: £393.00 Please send all donations to: WSL Publications Fund, 31, Dartmouth Workers at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in Central London lobbied the Area Health Authority last Tuesday to protest against the threatened closure of the hospital.

Facilities at the hospital are already being run down, although no final date for the closure has been set, and with the lifts now out of order, only the ground Iloor remains in use.

At a mass meeting held on 1st April, the workers applauded enthusiastically calls for the opening of the books of the hospital authorities to work out a plan for the hospital services in the area and the preparation of an occupation if the unique facilities of this hospital, run by women for women, were not to be preserved.

Two days later, the possibility of a fight along these lines was presented to a delegate conference of the Camden Committee Against the Cuts and Unemployment which has recently, after much prodding from some of its members, intervened at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital.

In their motion, Charing Cross ASTMS • Branch called on the TUC. .Cont'd from Delegate Conference affirms the opposite - the long-standing union policy of commitment to free collective bargaining.

Not only this but Composite 1 (a) on the Social Contract also laid down a number of preconditions for acceptance of pay restraint - including rigid price controls, expansion of the social services and a programme of house building.

We do not support this line -but it must be clear to even the most servile bureaucrat that the Labour government has every since pursued policies completely the reverse of this programme.

But Jones goes on acting in defiance of the wishes of his members and in complete opposition to their interests.

ATTITUDE

It is this attitude on the part of Jones and the whole trade union bureaucracy - not one of whom led a single fight against the pay laws - that the legislation has been kept intact. The union • leaders have been sure to isolate and attack any section likely to fight.

But the strength within the working class - the same strength which defeated the Tory government and removed them from office; the same strength that defeated the Industrial Relations Court; the same strength that forced through last year's railwaymen's pay claim; that strength has not been confronted or defeated by the employers. It emerges still in the continuing pay strike at BL's Tractors and Transmissions plant, in the SU strike, and in the surprise decision of the Coventry Committee to organise workers' action against the cuts, for increases in wages and public spending programmes, for committees of trade unionists to monitor a programme of public. works and for MPs and councillors to oppose all cuts.

Against the clarity of this programme stood a lengthy motion from the Campaign Committee majority which offered an hodgepodge of compromises between the various contending political tendencies on the committee.

After this motley collection of Stalinists, International Socialists and hangers-on had got their motion through, a, number of useful amendments were passed, mostly by the IMG. These called for the ending of repayments by the council and the nationalisation of the banks. Further amendments proposed membership that conditions of the Cuts Campaign Committee should include uncompromising opposition to the cuts, and rent and rate increases.

The threat to the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital and other proposed cuts in the area will now prove to be a testing ground as to whether the Cuts Committee in Camden can become a focal point for leadership in the struggle against the attacks of the Labour government.

the fluctuations in the price of the pound on the foreign exchange markets. And every banker and every speculator internationally is pinning his hopes on the British trade union and labour bureaucracy to hold back the strength of the working class.

And now, at the point where the sharpest fight must be waged against these betrayals, we find the biggest collapse on the part of the left' reformist politicians.

CAVED IN After an initial flurry of Parliamentary abstention on the government spending cuts, the lefts' caved in completely, voting confidence in Wilson's economic policy, and not fielding a single candidate to oppose Wilson's programme in the leadership et their continual collapses the provide the necessary diversion to allow the right wing hard liners to carry through the We say that it is the duty of every socialist to fight in the mass movement of the working class to stop all taiks on wages policy with this reactionary Laboour • We reject all forms of wage limitation.

We demand instead a substantial increase plus a sliding scale of wages clause in all agreements to protect wages against continuing inflation.

*Stop all talks on new pay *Support and extend the strike at Tractors and Transmissions! Turn it into a national fight against state control.