Crisis Hackaly Death Trap

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Don't have a heart attack in Hackney!

This was the grim message from a nurses' steward at the Hackney hospital.

He claimed that patients admitted with cardiac arrest now stood a massively increased chance of not recovering, because of lack of equipment.

Seven wards are now closed in the hospital, including some which have recently been decorated at a cost of £18,000!

The much-publicised tour of the hospital by Department of Health worthies not long ago can be seen to have had no beneficial effect on the service to patients.

The Hackney area is one of the most viciously attacked in London at the moment.

The Metropolitan Hospital has just been closed. The AHA did not even have the usual excuse of needing to close it as a "health risk" or as "inadequate"

It was universally recognised as an extremely good, pleasant hospital by both staff and patients.

Although there was a strong jeeling by the staft for a fight against the closure, the union leadership maintained it was all useless. Many of the workers had One electrician was nearly in tears as he explained that he had got 7,000 signatures on a petition to save the Met. yet still at 55 years old he was being transferred from a hospital where he had spent nearly all his working life.

Already at the German hospital in Hackney medical facilities have been withdrawn and only a small number of psychiatric patients are housed there. The Mothers Hospital is next in line for the axe.

Meanwhile in the Islington area the apparently cushioned Whittington hospital is feeling its share of the cut.

The NUPE branch secretary Mrs Turner has been told that the laundry at the Archway wing is to be transferred to the Friern Barnet mental hospital.

It is rumoured tha the patients there are to do the work!

23 women and five men are to be transferred. It also was discovered that people employed before September signed an agreement that they would move to Frier Barnet.

The laundry at the Highgate wing is also to close by the end of the year.

The time has come to stop these cutbacks. A fight must be organised for sustained strike action who see their class interests 'as identical to those of the which is enforcing the closure AA The motion put to the Conference by the EGA stewards was a retreat from that passed at the Dec Ilth EGA support conference - it had been weakened, and missed out altogether the call for support for the CLASH conference on 23rd February.

Despite the EGA stewards' ruling that no amendments would be taken to their resolution, the Conference was finally allowed to pass a recommendation that the NECs of ASTMS, NUPE, COHSE and NALGO should be bombarded with resolutions from branches, etc. demanding they call official strike action beginning on the day the patients are moved out of the EGA.

A lobby of the NECs of these unions on 27th March on this demand should be a major focus for EGA supporters now.

The motto on a large stained class window (donated by a satisfied patient) in the EGA boardtoom states:

"There is no death - all noble souls live on enshrined in hearts they loved to aid and bless".

We must disagree with these genteel sentiments.

What faces the NHS now is indeed its death if hospital closures are allowed to go ahead.

The health of the working class depends not on "noble souls" but on the action of workers.

And the EGA cannot "live on" in any number of rat-infested wards in the Whittington hospital, but only in its own hospital on the present site.

We apologise to readers for the lower than usual typographical quality of this edition of Socialist Press caused by the breakdown of two IBM composing machines. We would like to thank Ann Ward and Rye Express withrint whose heln this erition enald

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Macy 16ca Febrass, 1977 INDU'STRIAL NEWS In Sheffield the fight against sackings has been dealt a heavy blow, all the more so as it has been delivered not directly by the employers but by the local Confed. leadership and the Communist After nine weeks of official strike action in defence of 400 jobs at the Capital Tool Works, 3,000 Edgat Allen Balfour workers have gone back to work on the recommendation of their stewards' committee with the factory closed and not one job saved.

This sell-out deal accepted the complete closure of the works and arranged for those workers who had not already taken voluntary redundancy: 1° be redeployed to fill vacancies in other factories either in the Edgar Allen Balfour group or other Sheffield engineering firms.

This deal, cynically presented by the Stalinists of the CP as a major victory, meant in reality the loss of 400 jobs to Sheffield. and the placing of about 100 sacked workers at the top of the dole queue.

Not only does this mean the loss officials and Stalinists to undermine a principled defence of jobs.

The course of the dispute clearly revealed the treachery of the Stalin ists. From the first they resisted any broadening of the strike actor beyond the Capital Tool Work itsel and only reluctantiy brough out the other factories. Then forced to take action across the District they confined this to a half-day protest strike.

From that day, having put up 1 show of District support, not on step was taken to win the strike and preparations were begun to agree to a further meeting with manage ment. The deal was done on the Saturday and announced on loca radio even before the talks wert over, and a mass meeting fixed for the Monday gave no time for any opposition to be organised.

Throughout, the CP had the passive support of the SWP who while expressing reservations aboul the extent of Discrict support neve once challenged the Stalinists leadership politically. For both, the occupation, the opening of the books of Edgar Allen Balfour ol the nationalisation of the firm under workers' management were considered impossible demands to fight for.