Cuts Ncc Meets Agaia

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One organisation which has scarcely flinched as substantial struggles have erupted out on either side of it during the last five months has been the National Coordinating Committee Against Cuts in the NHS (NCC).

While strikes, occupations, demonstrations and pickets have broken out in many areas of the health service and particularly in London, the NCC has held firm to its May decision not to meet again unti October - thus ensuring it could be nothing but an interested bystander in the struggle to the cuts.

This was so much the case that when the NCC leadership decided to convene a further meeting, the letter sent out felt it necessary to assure the reader that:

"The NCC is still alive and functioning after a long summer recess"!

RESULT

For those militants who might well ask what had been the practical result of this 'functioning, the letter went on:

"We have not been entirely idle Fisher The whole facade of the NUPE leadership's call for 'guerilla strike action' against the cuts was sharply exposed at a public meeting last week in Hounslow Town Hall.

NUPE General Secretary, Alan Fisher, speaking second in the meeting, spoke forcefully, telling the large audience that the cuts were "unacceptable' and 'unnecessary"

Arguing that what was necessary was simply a cut in arms expenditure, diverting the cash to the social services, coupled with the usual nationalist call for 'import controls' peddled by left-talking reformists, Fisher at no point showed that the cuts flow from the crisis of capitalist profitability.

NO CALL For this reason he gave no call for any policy which could seriously challenge the cuts - least of all a demand for the full protection of the social services against inflation during that time, having spent most of our energy around the organisation for the Labour Party lobby, and the circulating of our petition about the resolution at last year's Labour Party Conference."

While both these activities have a certain value, and have been supported by Socialist Press they hardly provide a glittering record of struggle in a period where the cuts have begun really to bite home, and where the possibility, given a lead, of strike action to stop the cuts has been so clearly shown.

A reconvened NCC, however, met on Saturday 16th October to consider where to go from now on. Sights were set on a recalled NCC Conference, to be held in April of next year.

The Workers Socialist League made a number of criticisms NUPE'S answering this point (claiming that he could not do so in the presence of reporters from the right-wing press!), eventually came out with the statement that he could not call a one-day strike because, he claimed "the General Strike was a disaster"!

ERUPTED

At this point, the meeting rupted into shouts of protest. An lder worker, who had been in the General Strike, jumped to his feet and loudly laid the blame for the of the NCC and would welcome the chance to raise these la the fullest possible conference. But.

after five months without a meeting, to propose nothing other than a conference a further six months later can only be seen as completely inadequate.

URGENT

Specifically, it is now urgent fos the NCC to take a position of full-scale coordinated support for any section of NHS workers taking strike or other industrial action to stop the cuts.

On the positive side, he wever, the 1 NCC move circulate affiliated bodies calling for full support to the November 1* 3 Day of Action and lobby of Parament is a correct move. defeat in 1926 on Fisher's forbears in the TUC leadership of the ume.

As more evidence of hostility to the cuts among the au tience became obvious, and while more were waiting to speak, the chairman abruptly closed the meeting.

But Fisher's open revelation that the 'guerilla strikes call from NUPE is issued in opposition to serious all-out strike action to prevent the cuts will not be lost on the meeting and ust be noted by all NUPE militanto.