Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today, Woman Worker, Class Fighter and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

If You Get Sick, They Won't Come Running

Socialist Press no. 90, 8 March 1978 · scan p. 8 · about 711 words

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Readers might be wondering why the Health (backed by the DHSS) have suddenly taken such an interest in their health. vice is bhing brutally ath service back, is the DHSS channeling £700,000 through the HEC in one year to exhort you to take more exercise and eat less?

'Your fault'

It might be clearer if the campaign was called "Look after yourself, because nobody else will".

What could be better for those cutting health services than to foist responsibility for health onto each individual worker.

From now on, if you get ill it must be your faultyou didn't jog to work often enough or ate too much rich food.

"Education"

If illness is the victim's fault, then what is needed is "education" to make him pull himself together-not the provision of expensive medical care.

What does the campaign tell us?

If people change their diet and make right use of their leisure they will feel better. Sounds good until you look further.

On the diet front the HEC stress the need to count calories and provides an "eating plan"

But nearly every main meal contains expensive cuts of meat, and the list of low calorie vegetables begins with globe artichokes and asparagus!

Perhaps the HEC believes the press stories about car workers and caviar sandwiches!

Certainly their propaganda adds to the occult literature ot calorie counting, pedaled by advertising agencies, all of which leads away from the three simple key nutritional points:

*Decrease sugar intake.

*Decrease total fat intake.

* Increase fibre intake.

Nor does the HEC draw attention to the way the working class diet is shorn of valuable ingredients by capitalist food monopolies.

White sliced bread, white flour, and white rice all have valuable fibre content removed by manufacturers.

nutritious And when the HEC advises workers to start the day with "your favourite breakfast cereal", it covers up the fact that the main ingredient of such a meal is more than likely sugar, while the cardboard packet itself is often more nutritious than its salespromoted contents.

Of course exercise and eating well can make workers healthier.

So can an end to physically and mentally arduous production line work in forecasting and policies which range futures.

Confrontation

Some farmers from Qulin in southeast Missouri told Labor News reporters about a confrontation which 26 tractors had with state troopers last month near Hayti, Missouri. The farmers wanted to cross 1-55 highway for a few miles in order to attend a rally against agriculture Secretary Bergland in Tennessee. Hundreds of troopers blocked gover nment affect long

Fillin

HRSPIAL polluted working conditions, an end to speed-up, and end to the hardships of the dole queue, an end, in short, to the conditions inflicted on workers by capitalist exploitation.

The HEC in fact admit that their objective is to enable people to "cope with a stressful environment"

So after working 8 hours in a "straceful enviranment" the individual worker is generally organising to stay the access road and one farmer was arrested after being knocked down by a road grader. After this, other farmers set up picket lines to block I-55 which were honored by some Teamster truck drivers. Eventually some of the tractors got through to Tennessee by taking back roads and bean fields. After "almost every state trooper in Missouri" failed to stop the farmers, Governor Teasdale, a Democrat, called off the cops and American Agriculture caravan passing through the state to fit for capitalist speed-up?

NUPE healthy working conditions into attempts at individual "solutions"

But in case this latest cynical abuse of health information seems a new development it is worth remembering that the government made use of a report by the Royal College of Physicians-linking high fat intake to heart disease-as a pretext for slash12. - 1.-- 1. .J...

Revolutionaries take

Workers need every ounce OUTI WINNED Washington DC.

With both the farmers and miners coming up against police and politicians, it is time for workers, consumers and farmers to form a new alliance for a new political party. One of the first tasks of such a party would be to campaign for the nationalisation of the food chains and monopolies under workerfarmer-consumer management.

----- pull-quotes -----

RANC AREA HEAL

WEVE VeEEN SOLD FARMING EVERYBODY'S

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 90, 8 March 1978

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