Workers Controi of the Nhs

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consulans- wau was will" ValE L11C drawn at the time that the Hounslow is already grossly PHOTO: Laurence Sparham (IFL) BEMANBURTIT EMMALS DESTROETT Workers march in support of Plaistow Hospital The methods used at Hounslow Hospital to remove 21 elderly patients clearly demonstrate the extent to which the Health Authorities will be willing, in the face of Hospital occupations, to ignore standards and follow the requirements of the Lib-Lab coalition in cutting public spending.

The Hounslow occupation has lessons for other hospital workers now (EGA, Plaistow) and in the future, and also for the organisation of workers' control of the health service.

Elements of control

At Hounslow there were some clear elements of workers control. After the official closure on August 31, patients were still being cared for against the express wishes and requirements of the Area Health Authority.

Further admissions were being organised by the Occupation Committee with the co-operation of GPs.

Individual patients, among them a principled trades unionist, were insisting on ad mission.

The Hounslow work-in was in this sense a clear chalienge to the control of health care by the capitalist state authority.

At the same time there were crucial weaknesses in the occupation.

This is illustrated by the fact that the work-in still relied on the sympathy of Jane with.

SANEDOURINHS AHA moved in.

Nurses willing to admit patients whose admission was organised by the occupation etc. hesitated when threatened by disciplinary action from the General Nursing Council so that patients were turned away.

Intercepted

Last minute arrangements for the admission of a patient were intercepted by a member of the AHA staff who still had freedom to come and go in the hospital right up to the time of the abduction.

So what are the wider implications? It is no accident that standards of health care vary enormously from region to region and area to area.

rara of the aldorlu in of workers' control over the health service it is necessary to examine the present structuring.

Delegation

The health authorities at Regional, Area, District and Sector levels are organised to respond to orders from DHSS rapidly and without question by downwards delegation from and responsibility to, the bureaucratic layer above.

It was little wonder that the "Daily Mirror" called it Black Saturday.

Not only were the power workers showing what effect their demands could have; not only were TV programmes being blacked out by ABS technicians; but the Mirror's own production of news in. London had been hit by the action of their own journalists over a pay dispute.

On all sides confrontation over pay is the rule rather than the exception.

It has not taken the most astute brains of the Fleet Street executives to point the way back to 1973/4 when the miners showed how ineffective talk of 'standing firm' by the Government could be.

rehearsal The press treatment given to the power workers is a dress rehearsal, a sharpening of the pens, for the flood of propaganda that will hit the streets as a confrontation major questions.

It is of fundamental importance in health care that developing independent working class action should bring together workers' organisations, primarily the trade unions of those who receive as well as those who give health care.

All major questions in the distribution of resources must be decided by the working class as a whole.

Trade union committees must be developed to control between the miners and Government approaches.

So far no-one has actually accused the power workers of murder. But it is touch and go.

Houses burning down, pensioners falling over in the dark and other accidents during the blackouts are being nailed at the door of the electricity supply workers as surely as if they had set fire to the house and tripped the pensioners personally.

Carry the can

When hospital emergency generators fail-presumably because health service cuts have meant inadequate funds for maintenance-then it is the power workers who have to carry the can for the chaos and danger that ensues.

Press barons are not at all embarrassed that their propaganda vies for space with declarations that they stand for the freedom of the press.

The Times openly declares its role to be one of moulding delivery of • health i== depends.

All groups of workers must force their nation= union leaderships to c developing national strike action as the only means of defending the health service.

At the centre of such action must be the call io: public spending to rise ipace with inflation as assesse: by these elected union com. mittees. public opinion agains: sections of workers prepared to fight over pay.

"Even today" , boomed its editorial, "this disregard for a special responsibility to the public (freely taken on). merely for the sake of one's immediate and narror interests should be recognised as repugnant...

''The men are opposed by the employers, their unions and by the TUC as represen. ted by Mr Len Murray yester. day.

Their unions have much io answer for, having failed either to give effective repres. entation or to impose effer tive discipline on member! abandoning the proper nego tiating channels..

"By the mobilisatior :. opinion and a readiness to withstand temporary dislo cation, these assaults have ic be resisted-starting now.

(Our italics That mobilisation opinion is what the papers ari now engaged in.

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