Cuts Campaign at the Crossroads

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A section of the WSL contingent on the NCC demonstration /ORKERS SUi MRT-TH consult TO RANION OXEOFa GAM HOW SAE GE There must be a reassessment of the work and the methods of the National Coordinating Committee Against Cuts in the NHS after the poor turn out to last Sunday's national demonstration.

The small attendance (less than 800) is not a reflection of the feeling in the working class on the question, but rather of the suspicion workers have developed of protest politics and sloganising which leads to no action.

HOLLOW

At the same time it shows how bollow is the paper support of a long list of NCC "sponsors" including the NALGO National Exec"eve rade union leaders and Mus trade union leaders and MPs and the ubiquitous Ernie Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the AUEW.

For the most part these names on the list produced no forces whatever or a token show only on the demonstration. They create an illusion of a firm base of the workers movement but represent in real terms a "left" cover for bureaucrats who are in practice standing back while the cuts NO TAS! proceed.

This is why the programme of the NCC is in need of change. Up to the demonstration it remained to a certain extent unproved whether simply taking a series of correct general demands into the mass movement of the working class could produce a broad response.

It seemed, perhaps, to some, after the success of last year's Conference of the Medical Committee Against Private Practice, (attended by 350 delegates from the labour movement) that all that needed to be done was spread the word in order to win a bigger and bigger response.

This has now been shown to be completely wrong.

For workers in the Health Service in struggle against the cuts, slogans are not enough, programmes are not enough. The struggle must be directed instead towards action initiated at first on a local level, to prevent the implementation of the cuts.

Only fight for indust action does the question programme and perspective take on a living significance.

And in the fight for strike action health workers' resistance to the cuts brings them into direct confrontation with their own bureaucratic leadership, which in every area is collaborating with management in slashing manning levels, conditions and services.

Now is the time to make a turn in the policy of the NCC it it is not to collapse into a moralising phrasemongering nest for conscienceridden sections of the 'left' bureaucracy.

PLATFORM

The NCC must make its platform the fight to mobilise class action to defend against all cuts.

It must offer the full backing of all affiliates and sponsoring bodies to any local section of workers which strikes against the cuts or which takes action around the linked demands of the NCC programme.

And it must force the 'lefts' and others that decorate its list of 'supporters' to take a clear position on this.

But also required to take a stand on principle are the delegates to the NCC from the International Marxist Group.

Janet McGuire, NCC National