NUM: throw out incentives

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TO hospital will soon be without pay.

ÑALGO is said to have promised full pay up to at least November 9 when the AHA meets again but NUPE has not yet given such a committment.

CONFERENCE Meanwhile the occupation committee has not called for anything until a labour movement conference on November 5 and a lobby of the AHA meeting on November 9.

Socialist Press supports both of these initiatives though it is clear that neither can achieve very much. Hospital workers are fed up with one-day protest strikes and the main demand of the occupation should be to force the NHS union leaders to call indefinite strike action until the cuts are revoked.

This should be coupled with demands for the expulsion of David Ennals, the Minister responsible for the raid on Hounslow, both from the Labour Party and from ASTMS, the NHS trade union of which he is a member.

The struggle against the "incentive" scheme jointly advocated by the National Coal Board and right wing miners' leaders has not been advanced one inch by the scandalous and farcical court proceedings brought by the Communist Party dominated Kent Area NUM.

For those who needed any convincing, it simply provides further evidence that to involve the bourgeois courts and legal apparatus in the affairs of the workers movement is fundamentally. wrong and extremely dangerous.

ASIDE In reply to veteran Stalinist Jack Dunn's attempt to get an injunction to stop this week's national ballot on the incentive scheme, Lord Denning handed down a ruling which can be used in future against other sections of workers.

Denning set aside the clear vote of NUM delegates at this year's annual conference, and declared that the union's right wing dominated Executive has the right to flout conference decisions:

"This is a sensible and reasonable proposal by the union's executive committee to take the views of members by democratic means a secret ballot of the workers affected by the proposals."

The court action, supported also by Yorkshire left-winger Arthur Scargill, has simply demonstrated the confusion of the "left" within the NUM, who have in the past been the victims of court rulings. and clearly learned nothing.

The campaign against the Executive's position and the reactionary incentive scheme must be based on mobilising the rank and file of the union around the demand for immediate action on the pay claim.