Cars Bulletin Launched

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Workers in nearby Hackney marching against the cuts last year. LOMTTEE SEE BRAT TO BUR Thirty car workers attended the first car workers conferMovement in Birmingham on September 11.

Although representing a modest beginning the conference made an important contribution towards the development of alternative leadership in the car industry.

The conference was comprised mostly of workers from the Cowley Body Plant, the Cowley Assembly Plant, the Longbridge complex and Jaguar.

The conference took the decision to set up an on-going cars committee of the CDLM and elected delegates to it.

It charged the committee with the task of beginning the publication of a Car Workers Bulletin to be sold in the car plants as a focus for the struggle for alternative The conference also decided that the Committee should organise a wider and better prepared conference at a future date to carry this work forward.

FIGHT THE C NORTH EAST LONDO nolg MEDICAL The Action Committee of Plaisto w Hospital, East London, has called for the biggest possible mobilisation of local community and trade union support for a march on October 1.

ieved 100 supporters of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital work-in picketed DHSS headquarters on Tuesday 20 September as their representatives lobbied Secretary • of State David Ennals to demand the hospital stay open.

Ennals announced to the lobby of stewards, union officials, local MPs and consultants that he had been "converted": to the case for a women's hospital to be run by women, but gave no assurance that this meant the EGA would stay open.

He also admitted that but for the work-in, the hospital would have been shut months ago.

Instead the DHSS has been forced to implement the laborious consultation of local interests as to the future of the hospital.

This statutory procedure, which the DHSS had previously avoided, will not stop the closure, but will give the work-in another three months breathing space to step up the fight for the repair of the hospital lift and for the upgrading ni sha inanital on its nracert sit?

The conference, which was on the programme of the CDLM, passed a motion which lai d stress on the need to regain and living standards.

INFLATION

Over and above the call o break the 12-month rule and i eclaring full support to workers in against wage control, the motion spelled out the need for cost-of-living clauses to protect against inflation.

Corporate bargaining and 'participation' schemes were opposed and mutuality agreements defended, while the call for the opening of the books and nationalisation of the car and component industry was included.

Other objectives adopted were:

*Extend and improve lay off agreements to 100% pay.

*No secret negotiations. Direct control over negotiating committees by mass meetings.

*For Combine Committees directly answerable to the shop floor.

* Against import controls.

A work-in to stop close the hospital has been going since July 15.

The workers have said, through their unions, that it should stay open. until such time as better maternity facilities are provided.

The Area Health Authority plan to close Plaistow to implement government cuts and transfer its work to Forest Gate hospital presents, the workers point out, the danger of delays for expectant mothers that could be critical.

Newham has already one of the highest rates of infant mortality in Europe, with terrible conditions and run down social services.

Plaistow is not the first East London hospital to come under the axe. Already the Plaistow Invalid and Crippled Children Hospital has closed as well as the Poplar Hospital.

The responsibility for this rests first and foremost on the shoulders of the trade union leaders in the public sector who refused to mobilise strike action in their defence.

The i October 1 demonstration must become the focus of a movement of strikes and occupations that can prevent this happening again.

STILL AVAILABLE

THE TOOLROOM STRIKE AND THE FIGHT TO END WAGE CONTROL Articles reprinted from the Special Edition of Socialist Press analysing the political consequences of the toolmaker strike and the Lit Lab pact Price 250 Jus"* 58= WSL, 31, Do-a= Fre Hit Londo- VAS "-=

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ence called by the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour

BRANC YARC-