Stopping Hospital Closures

Scan page 6

the pamphlet KEEPING HOSPITALS Hounslow, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, 10p By Dai 7 demonstration, 1976. Then the leaders deralk REVIEW of Committees of Hospitals. Price The most important development in the defence of the National Health Service against the social spending cuts has been the wave of workins, the first of which, at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, has been in progress since November 1976.

This pamphlet is an attempt to gather together experiences of the workers in this and three other London hospitals threatened with closure.

Inevitably it reflects all the weaknesses as well as certain strengths of the campaigns to defend some of the first hospitals to be threatened by the cuts.

Unionisation

The work-in at the EGA began on November 15, 1976 a few days before 80,000 workers took to the streets to protest against the cuts. It started in what might have seemed the most unlikely of conditions.

The NHS has traditionally been one of the least militant sections of the working class. And although unionisation had proceeded rapidly during the nurses and ancillary workers strikes during the early seventies, smaller hospitals like the EGA had been largely untouched by this movement.

Thus when Barbara Castle, then Minister for the health CUT ARMS OPEN, published Plaistow Maternity Stephens service announced that the EGA should close, the bulk of the workers were unorganised, and although NUPE had members in the hospital, their organisation was for practical purposes moribund.

AN EVICTI DON 2aL88 SHN by the Campaign and St. Nicholas For this reason the first moves against closure came wellintentioned triends od the hospital.

Over a period of months they raised-and spent VISINC. FOR ALLI

Betrayed

Much more important is to understand how failure to grasp this central point has weakened and at times betrayed the fight to defend the threatened hospitals.

A study of the work-ins, and especially that at the EGA reveals three major questions which the pamphlet refuses to deal with, or at best skirts round.

Workers' control.

Although at the time of the joint meeting with the Trades Council sub-committee, unionisation at the EGA was very patchy, within a few weeks, all the laboratory staff had been recruited to ASTMS, NUPE had the bulk of ancillary workers in membership and a few individuals had joined NALGO and COHSE.

It was this involvement of the organised labour movement which proved the turning point. It allowed WSL members and their allies in the union branches covering the EGA to press for an occupation, and to raise the necessity of a workers' inquiry into the state of repair of the lift, which management were now using as an immediate reason for closing the hospital.

Limited experience

The main problem at that ume, however, lay in convincing the EGA workers that they could win support for an occupation from other hospitals in the area and from the wider union movement.

Their limited experience of trade union leaders had EGA supporters picket AHA m the hospital should be restored and the hospital upgraded.

In these demands, the workers were not only defending their own conditions and jobs, but clearly saw themselves as defending the NHS as a whole.

Most importantly, they called for the Area stewards together with other EGA supporters to organise a full MURE SAYS.

RUPE SAY!

NUPE has provided copious / analysis of the structural and other requirements needed to run and upgrade the hospital.

This last clause, which counterposed a workers' enquiry to the statements of

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