New Pay Beds Offensive

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La further step forward in their fight to drive private practice out of the National Health Service.

Incensed by the refusal of the Labour Government to fulfill even its modest election pledge of a phased withdrawal' of private prac tice, ancillary workers throughout the country are now relusing to service private patients in an attemp to force the government to take action.

Already hospitals in Wales, the North-West and London have been forced to close private wards whilst at others, such as the Christie Hospital in Manchester, ancillary worker members of NUPE are preventing non-essential cosmetic operations on private private patients from going ahead LINK The link between opposition to private practice and defence of the NHS is clearly seen at the Westminster Hospital in London. Then the management wishes to close down NHS beds because they cannot afford to pay substitute staff whilst regular staff are on holiday.

The local NUPE branch has insisted that the private beds must be the first to go in these circumstanc and is refusing to provide service for fee-paying.patients. And in answer to management plans to transfer private patients to neightouring hospitals, they have called for extension of their action to these hospitals.

At other hospitals, the fight to abolish private practice has had to face up to a new threat from the consultants. At Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, 16 part-time consultants have banded together to finance a new unit at the exclusive Wellington private hospital where rooms for the rich cost upwards of £56 a day.

Barbara Casti.

By transferring their fee-paying patients to this luxury clinic the consuitants are hoping to get round the action of NUPE members which has prevented all private admissions at Moorfields.

The NUPE action has made mon beds available for NHS patients. but because of tie consultants action, 20 of these are unused. Consultants elsewhere have been quick to follow the Moorfields lead, and at Rochdale, where con sultants have closed the outpatients department of the Rochdale Infirmary, 18 of them have contributed €1.000 each to convert and extend a local nursing home to take in private patients.

At the same time as the consultant attempt to smash up the NHS, their orgapisation, the British Medical Association, demands that the Government should act to stop unions "unilaterally and illegally" closing down pay beds.

Secretary of the BMA. Dr. Derel Stevenson threatened that the clo mean that part time consulaty part-time consultant: would not be so readily availal to NHS patients.

But whilst the consultants use their wealth against the health service, the leadership of healt workers offers no way forward i. its defence. The demand for Government action against private practice is coming from the union membership in the branches and until the recent upsurge of unofficial actions, NUPE's executive no? taken no lead in demanding that our short carry out its pledge to removerprivate patients from thi Nits fa process that was scheduled to start three months ago.

And the leadership of CORSE, the other large NHS union, has still not called for any action, even though opposition to private practice is union policy.

These leaders are quite willing collaborate with the Labour Government in dismantling the health service. The fight against pa eds must take place in opposition to these reformists since these issue raise the question of the ownership and control of the whole health service.

1 resolution adonted unanimously by Oxford and District Trades Council on 14th March points the way forward now for all workers to defend the free health service and the wages and conditions of all NHS workers:

*This Trades Council deplores the Statements of Regional Consultants in the Health Service and the Battle Plan' of the BMA in calling for mass withdrawals and resignations from the Health Service in defence of private practice. Council calls on telegates to take back to their branches support for the blacking of all private work within the NHS, in line with ASTMS national policy recommendations, and in defence of the NHS, demands the restoration of all cuts in health spending and the abolition of private practice inside the Health Service: to implement these demands, Council calls for an elected committee of trades unionists representing voth Health Service workers and consumers of health services, to examine the day to day running of the Regional and Area Health Authorities, to supervise and control the deployment of resources according to the health requirements of all."