Huge support foi Welsh strike

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Ahove (and on facing page) scenes from Day of Action MAN HIV DANULA T (NUPE branch secretary, Cardiff Royal Infirmary in personal capacity) reports on the June 16 Day of Action MINERS, seamen, civil servants and council workers took strike action in Wales on Wednesday 16 June alongside the NHS workers.

Cardiff saw an unprecedented display of working class solidarity as over 10,000 workers took part in JOHN HARRIS the demonstration against low pay in the health service.

Health workers lined the last hundred yards of the route and gave them a reception that moved several miners to tears.

From the platform Emlyn Williams declared the solidarity of the miners with the health workers, pointing out that the best possible way to defeat the Tories anti-union legislation was for non-NHS workers to support hospital pickets.

Earlier in the day, miners and seamen paid a visit to the Heath Hospital and Cardiff Royal Infirmary picket lines, providing a tremendous boost to the morale of the strikers.

All-out Since that Wednesday, several sections in these two hospitals have expressed support for all-out indefinite strike action.

However, the attitude of the leadership was clear from the the platform at the rally. Charlie Donnett from the GWU, the man who described NUPE as cowboys when they voted for all-out strike action, claimed that an all-out strike would result in a bigger death toll than the Falklands in just one week and there was no way that NHS workers would come out on all-out strike.

Derek Gregory, NUPE Divisional Officer for Wales, didn't even mention all-out action in his speech. All we had was militant-sounding platitudes about the nasty Tories.

Obviously NUPE officials must be made to fight for union policy in this pay campaign and not let it drop because of the likes of Donnett.

On the same day the South Glamorgan Area Health Authority decided to close Rhydlafar, a major orthopoedic hospital. Again the militant attitude of the miners shone through and a determined campaign of civil disobedience was put forward as the way to stop the closure.

Breakthrough

NHS workers should learn the lessons. That day was the culmination of several weeks of hard lobbying and was the most significant breakthrough we have had in this pay campaign and in the long awaited fightback against this government.

BARCLAY

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paci from the dome of St Pauls during the 1911 rail strike NUR Executive meeting 1926: J.H.Thomas is seated of the table the right of the chairman Blatariai