TGWU bureaucrats try to exclude unemployed

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Keep them out of the unions, says Moss Evans unemployed could come to- link up with Region 6 and gether to develop the TGWU then stop all attempts by the within that Region into a TGWU bureaucracy to more open and campaigning prevent the unemployed and region. employed joining together workers organise NATIONAL UNEMPLOYED WORKERS' MOVEMENT TO QUESTIONS ABOUT ETHNIC BACKGROUND!

DOWN WITH SEXIST DISCRIMINATION!

OPPOSE ALL CIVIL SERVICE JOB LOSSES Speakers from local campaigns invited, plus speakers from civil service unions. Socialist Organiser supporters in the civil service unions should get their branch to send a delegation SATURDAY APRIL 17, 11 to 5, at DIGBETH CIVIC HALL, BRIEFING AGAINST THE WITCH HUNT. op per copy, plus 11½p postage, or 20 copies. post free, from Ann Matthews, c/o Berm‹ Labour Party, 133 Lower Rd., London SE16. The TGWU Region 6 has a policy of recruiting the unemployed. Over recent months pressure has been put on Region 6 to cease this policy.

At the January Regional Committee meeting discussion was held on a letter réceived from Moss Evans instructing the Region to suspend their recruitment of The Regional Committee replied to Evans that they would continue the recruitment of the unemployed in line with rule 20 clause 18 of the TGWU rule book which states that any region can deal with its own recruitment of members. The committee also pointed out that the region was only carrying out TUC policy, who at the 1980 conference remitted a resolution calling on all affiliated unions to vigorously campaign to recruit the unemployed.

The reason why Region 6 is successful in its campaigns to recruit the unemployed is the development of the coordinating committee. This is also in line with TGWU policy.

The coordinating committees are run for the benefit of the lay membership where after the General Executive Committee meeting (within days) in the Merseyside district Bro. Quinn will give a full report as will Bro. George in the Southern Region.

This ensures that the decisions made at the GEC AS THOSE that control the media deliberately suppress information on independent working class struggles, the most urgent task of the National Unemployed Workers Movement is to link together the unemployed groups and others through a national publication as well as direct action.

We hope shortly to produce this publication to enable us to carry out this work.

SO now you know.

The Tories will question your right to National Health Service care from October 1 this year.

As predicted in Socialist Organiser of December 9, Health Secretary Fowler has now decided to impose a systematic check on the eligibility of the 17 million people who seek health service care each year.

Why? Officially, in order to catch the miniscule proportion of overseas visitors who obtain free treatment to which they are not strictly entitled.

Spelled out

The Race and Health Conference held in Manchester last November spelled out the implications of these proposals for the black community and for the NHS. As a result of pressure from many quarters the Tories have decided to modify the original unworkable plan of Patrick Jenkin, ex-legal adviser to Distillers (''the Thalidomide People") and sometime Secretary of State for Health. In his place is Norman Fowler. In its place is the 'principle of universal challenge' under which everyone will have to prove their eligibility.

Here is your starter for ten: what is an ordinary resident of the UK? There is a bonus of fifteen for explaining why the Fowler regulations use this term which no British court has can be questioned and taken back to the branches for general discussion on such subjects as the GEC's decision to donate £50,000 to Trade Unionists for a Labour Victory, which was announced at the Southern Region's Coordinating Committee and caused quite a lot of concern.

In Region 5, Brian Mathers, the Regional Secretary, has written to all branches instructing them to suspend the recruitment of the unemployed.This could be the opening for brothers and sisters in Region 5 to start a campaign around the Regional Committee's refusal to implement the TGWU's rule and TUC policy.

Out of this we could see the setting up of coordinating committees in Region 5, lloyed Some unemployed claimants groups have already worked with the CPSA to produce a national leaflet, opposing a pilot scheme for availability testing.

This is just one of the many attacks on the unemployed which are the result of the implementation of the Rayner Report.

In an attempt to get a national campaign against these attacks, before they yet managed to clarify.

Late last year the Tories set up a working party of NHS officers with some professional and community relations representatives. Its remit was to examine Jenkin's original plan and the criticisms of it put forward by ethnic groups, health unions, and student bodies. It also organised a trial run of systematic questioning in ten hospitals.

This trial showed that out of 8152 patients challenged a mere 81 were not immediately cleared for free treatment. After further questioning, three-quarters of this 81 were also found to be eligible for free care.

The level of 'abuse' on these figures is a pathetic 0.25 per cent, and it is possible that the national figure is even lower as some of the trial hospitals were specially picked for being in high-immigration areas.

Criteria

It is interesting to note that this survey used the criteria laid down by Jenkin which he said would rake in £5 million: Fowler's new, improved plan has a much narrower catchment group and yet he claims ithe saving is unlikely to be less than £6 million"

(The NHS budget is £12 billion).

Fowler's plan will impose charges for NHS treatment on any overseas visitors (including students) for where the employed and the vorkers are implemented nationally, we have called a meeting on 17 April in Birmingham and invited all the various organisations campaigning around unemployment/benefits to participate.

Another issue we are involved in is getting unemployed into the unions. At present there is a considerable variation in attitude at local level to recruiting Mick Jarmaine their first year in Britain. Originally the Jenkin proposals had suggested a three-year residency minimum, with other restrictions on workers from abroad (and their families). So, through pressure from black groups, health unions and student organisations, some concessions have been made.

Parasitic

But the dangers predicted in Socialist Organiser still remain. Despite Fowler's claims, it is hard to believe that the 'principle of universal challenge' will live up to its name. In some places only those suspected of being foreign will be questioned - and this means the harassment of black and brown people. A small but significant boost will thereby be given to the parasitic private sector, and Gwyneth Dunwoody made the point in Parliament that Fowler 'intends to provide a system of charging that can be developed in the future so that NHS patients must also pay for treatment.

In 1952 Aneurin Bevan, founder of the NHS, said;

''One of the consequences of the universality of the British Health Service is the free treatment of foreign visitors. This has given rise to a great deal of criticism, most of it ill-informed and some of it deliberately mischievous The whole agitation has This could also lead to a UNEMPLOYED WORKERS' National rally SCRAP THE RAYNER PROPOSALS!

and to co-sponsor the conference.

BIRMINGHAM. Creche available.

arg nasty taste. Instead of rejoicing at the opportunity to practise a civilised principle, Conservatives have tried to exploit the most disreputable emotions in this among many other attempts to discredit socialised medicine"

The Nationality Act suggests thạt ordinary residence implies some 'commitment' or 'loyalty' to Britain, which plays on the racist view of black people being in some way 'suspicious' and spreading disease and disquiet.

Hence, they must be kept under surveillance at unemployment offices and hospitals (the DHSS has a computer link to the TORIES in the fight for TGWU officials to become more accountable to the lay membership.

Home Office) elsewhere.

There must be national and local opposition by health unions and community groups to any such attacks. There must be a commitment to repeal the regulations immediately this Government is overturned. The Tory attacks are many. They are especially insidious as they use the gut reactions of many people to achieve their objective - that of dividing and then ruling the working class.

GEORGE MCLEAN (George McLean is Education Officer for the Manchester NHS Branch of ASTMS).

for £1 indsey mists COMMENTS on the economic situation in the left press tend to be either long analyses, or brief parades of facts to show how hard the crisis is hitting the working class, with very little in between. We are starting this column to try to help provide the Left in the labour movement with a usable running commentary on the lurches of the capitalist economy.

With unemployment dipping below three million in March as seasonable jobs pick up, we will surely hear renewed claims from the Turies that the crisis is turning the corner.

Last summer • it did indeed look as if the rapid downward slide of British industry since mid-'79 had levelled out. But the latest figures for industrial production • - January's - show that the decline is continuing.

January 1982 manufacturing output was the lowest since 1967, and 19% lower than in January 1979. Total industrial production was 15 per cent lower than January 1979, and 1.4 per cent lower than the slump level of 1975:

The downturn is international. In the US, industrial production increased quite substantially between mid-1980 and mid-1981, but it was only a flicker within the slump. Since mid-1981, industrial production has been going down again, to below the 1980 low point.

In Japan national income fell in the last three months of 1981, for the first time since 1975. In West Germany and France industrial production is stagnant, in Canada it is falling sharply.

Britain is distinguished within the "international downturn by two factors.

First, it had far less of a recovery after the 1974-5 slump than other advanced capitalist economies. The decline since 1979 started from an already low level.

Secondly, British capital is fleeing overseas at a huge rate. Instead of responding to Thatcherite economics with a new spate of efficient industrial endeavour - as the theory would have it - British capitalists are pocketing their benefits from the Tory policies and investing them abroad.

Trend

Britain's 50 biggest industrial companies now do 43 per cent of their production abroad.

The trend is especially marked in engineering.

Exports of goods have fallen dramatically. Metal manufactures exports in 1981 were 13 per cent down on the 1979 level, other manufactured materials 31% down, road vehicles 20% down - all calculated by tonnage.

The only export on the increase is capital. Exactly why this is happening, and whether the Alternative Economic Strategy's recipe of a siege economy is the best response, is a subject for another article.

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es press ahead with racist health charges