March to Stop Cuts

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This is the first step towards fighting sex discrimination through the mobilisation of the class and through the struggle for workers' control.

The IMG on the other hand would advise one (or maybe all!) of these disappointed women to go to an industrial tribunal, plead her case before the lawyer, CBI chief and Trade Union bureaucrat who make up the panel, and win - at best - compensation for her "injured feelings" - certainly not a This is the logical conclusion from the bankrupt reformist positions argued by the IMG, ICL, RCG etc., at the conference workshops.

Their excuses and rationalisations were endless:

"We have to use these tribunals as a platform" [who's listening?] "We cannot afford to close down any avenues" [more like a cul-de-sac] ...... What about the women who aren't in unions?" they all claimed one after another.

Of course, these arguments are just what the trade union bureaucrats want the working class to hear. The bureaucracy don't want a struggle for women's right on their hands - it is much more convenient to ship an irritating woman member off to a tribunal with her complaint where she can, if necessary, be fobbed off with compensation for The fight against the cuts in the Health Service is a crucial one for the working class. An important stage in that fight will be the National Demonstration called by the National Coordinating Committee against Cuts in the NHS (NCC) in London on March 25th.

The NCC was set up last October following a national delegate conference organised by the IMG-dominated Medical Committee Against Private Practice.

AMENDMENT

At that conference the delegates from the Oxford ASTMS Health Service Branch moyed a Branch mendment to the main motion, alling both for a sliding scale of state expenditure to defend the Health Service against inflation and for setting up in each area elected committees of trade unionists to look into the day to day running of the NHS as well as for the books of Regional and Area Health Authorities to be opened to these committees.

These demands are crucial in launching a real fight at the sharpest point - the point where the Sn1t farm programme for situations where hospital and health workers must have a perspective for strike action to defend their jobs and conditions as well as the service itself.

since that time, though the NCC has apparently gained in intluence (through the declared support of the National Executive of NALGO) the tendency to pull away trom a fight on sharo questions has remained.

NALGO is certainly giving important financial support to the 25th April demonstration. But at the same time the union leadership have yet to seriously undertake any programme of trade union industrial action in defence of the service. They, along with the ASTMS and NUPE leaders, hide behind a left' form of words as their nominal policy, while doing nothing at local level to implement that policy.

The NCC, therefore, in so far as it will not fight out these questions, far from coordinating class action against the cuts, becomes restricted to simply "coordinating" protest marches at the political level of the most reluctant "left" bureaucrat.

We support all serious struggles of the working class against the cuts and in defence of living standards.

We therefore stand foursquare in support of the April 25th • do men But we must warn the NCC and its supporters of the real danger that, if a fight is not taken up against empty rhetoric and "left' talk from the trade union leaders it attracts, it can become simply a sophisticated left cover for inaction while the bureaucracy and management at local level get down to the real job of coordinating the cuts.

The clearest way of beginning a fight to test out and expose the left bureaucrats is to demand they call for strike action to back their bold statements. As the cuts bite home, this call must be the centre point of the march.

Our demands are: * Stop the Cuts in the Social Services!

For local and national strike action to oppose the cuts and defend jobs and wages. * For an immediate £1,000m cash injection to restore the Health Service, followed by a sliding scale of spending! * Ban all private practice! * Open the Books of the AHAs and RHAs to elected TU committees! * Nationalise the drug monopolies suppliers and private medical facilities. Integrate them into the NHS under workers management!

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesde; 21s1 April, 1976 ASTIES There will be no discussion at the Annual Delegate ConDELS preliminary agenda concerning the Health Service, some censuring the 28a.