Healey Sinks Teeth into Nhs

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obligation to treat a • patient and million in charges-28% of They start with hard "facts"opinion polls, by-elections, the mood of the working class-and leave aside the source of these phenomena in the political leadership of the working class.

When the mass of workers in 1914 were won over to support their own" bourgeoisie in World War I Lenin did not start from their moods, illusions and prejudices. He began his attack and fixed his attack on the social patriotic leaders of the Second International -their chauvinism and class collaboration, abandonment of every socialist principle.

We think any view of Scotland which does not take into account the question of revolutionary leadership in the British labour movement as a whole as the central issue must be empirical and must end up on the wrong road.

So the IMG end up supporting devolution but not even posing any workers' alternative to a bourgeois Assembly for Scotland. In this way they tacitly foster all the worst illusions that there is somehow a "Scottish road to Socialism"

Copies of Socialist Press 51, containing the article "No Scottish Road to Socialism' can be obtained, price 10p plus 6½p p&p from:

31, Dartmouth Park Hill London NW5 1HR £17 million is to be cut 17 million is to be cut from the government's NHS dental budget of £200 million by making people pay increased dental charges.

The British Dental Association has said that "These charges for dental treatment could mean the end of NHS dentistry for many adult patients"

These cuts are even more unacceptable when government surveys have shown that already less than 38% of adults in this country attend their dentist in any year.

MANY PAY Many already have to pay privately for treatment, usually for relief of pain, which they are entitled to through the NHS. Unlike medicine, it is predominantly working class people who have to pay privately for dental treatment as dentists are under no obligation to treat a patient and often will only do so if the patient agrees to pay as a private patient.

The new charges, with their complex new regulations and system of exemptions will confuse people even more.

CYNICISM

There is already abundant evidence from the government's own agencies, the Community Health being Courageat people ste patients when they thought they were receiving NHS treatment.

The cynicism of this government to the welfare of all sections of the working class is further shown by the effect of such charges on pensioners, who already pay a disproportionate share of the dental charges.

Overall in 1975-6 patients provided 17% of the total cost of services through the payment of charges. Services to OAP's cost £11.8 million bu : they paid £3.4 million in cost.

The charges introduced on April 1, 1977 will hit OAPs even harder as most of them wear dentures.

A set of upper and lower dentures will now cost £20-a rise of 66%-while a metal denture, replacing up to three teeth, will cost £15-a rise of 77%!

These charges are part of a package in which people over 21 (excluding pregnant women and women with children less than one year old) will have to pay the full cost of each item of treatment to a maximum of £5. But if crowns or dentures are provided, they will be charged up to a maximum of £30.

The working class who have historically benefitted least from the dental services, will now be prohibited even from maintaining their limited gains in the face of these astronomical price rises.

If Militant has a conveniently short memory in relation to the coalition deal, then so more surprisingly, has the International Marxist Group.

After two articles in the March 31 Red Weekly had clearly called for a break from the deal, the April 6 edition does not even manage to find room to mention the coalition!

As a • result, the IMG regale us with articles on wages, on the LPYS conference and Stechford, all discussed without a single call for the breaking of the Lib-Lab deal!

PECULIAR We can only speculate as to whether this peculiar silence is the prelude to another of those spectacular about faces in policy which so characterise the IMG.

More likely it is just the absentminded product of the IMG's aimless, abstract approach to the real political problems confronting the working class.

A new reader might even be excused for thinking that they feel their 490 votes at Stechford have resolved the problem.

One thing is certain. The Liberal Labour coalition will not improve with age.

It remains the cardinal issue of principle confronting Labour Party members and trade unionists in the next period.

And their attitude towards it will test out left groups as well.

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temporary basis to replace someone off sick is now being sacked despite the fact that the sick person has now been retired.

Thus what • was once a permanent post is now temporary