All-out Strikes Needed Save Hospital
Socialist Press1977 1977-10-26Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 11 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 11
Five thousand London Hospital workers stopped work last week in defence of the Hounslow Hospital in West London whose patients had been forcibly removed by the Area Health Authority.
For most of them it was a 1-day stoppage in response to a call by stewards in the hospitals who had organised over the previous few days in spite of a lack of leadership from the union bureaucracy.
At the West London Hospital however, NUPE members came out on : indefinite strike-only to be forced back after 2½ days through lack of sympathy action and refusal of NUPE to make the strike official.
Nearly 3000 of the strikers assembled outside Hammersmith Town Hall on October 12 where the A.H.A. were meeting.
INAUDIBLE
Militant calls were issued from stewards demanding all-out strikes to stop the cuts.
NUPE official Ron Keating and NALGO General Secretary Geoffrey Drain also addressed the strikers, but their speeches were inaudible amongst calls from the meeting for official strike action.
Inside the town hall the A.H.A. refused to discuss a motion calling for the immediate re-opening of the Hounslow. Instead they called for a public inquiry into their own actions! CATE Supporters of the Hounslow hospital who were sitting in the public gallery were forcibly removed by police.
Immediately afterwards Sister Cath Cooney, NUPE steward at Hounslow correctly condemned the inquiry as a diversion, pointing out it might well take years to report, in which time feeling would be defused.
FACE THE SACK
Subsequently, however, the hospital occupation committee-in which the Communist Party is a major political influence-has welcomed the call for the inquiry even though "it is only into the methods used to evacuate the hospital and not into whether the Hounslow should stay open."
It is quite clear, however, that the AHA have no intention of being delayed by any enquiry.
They have written to staff still occupying the Hounslow instructing them to report to work at another hospital or be faced with the sack. As a result a few union members have since left the occupation.
The sacking threat means that the workers still occupying the