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veneed 410% ce: of bs. ng as nd Ts* Dn pm ter ter the nal we ies, ind - Sé in ild aten ed - UI the miNg ting ent tion ban 1) is i to 12% lite Lion iwe nkby to *0lHad Albert Spanswick really think that. CoHSE militants expected the union to foot the entire bill for strike pay for over 200,000 workers?

The answer to the strike pay problem is in the whole labour movement. It is solidarity, the bedrock of The TUC knew the feeling was high in the NHS for a fight on pay. They knew that only indefinite strike could hit the Government hard enough to make it crumble, and they knew that workers would have to get some subsidy in order to be able to strike.

Yet they did nothing. In October of last year, when we were voicing our opposition to the government's 4% norm for the public sector and saying that we would fight, the TUC should have committed itself to support us and organised a levy of affiliated organisations to help finance the dispute.

Money Rank and file members know -how easy it has been to raise money. Most workplaces are now financing their members through local strike funds without going to the national union offices. The "it will bust us" argument is itself bankrupt and we have proved it.

Indefinite strike action is the only way to win this dispute and everyone knows it. For some health service workers, though, it is a big step - trade union officials will argue (have always argued) that the membership will not take the step. However, where the membership have come out on indefinite strike they have been smashed by the leadership. left without strike pay and forced to go back to work.

Officials

The members have been prepared since May 19 for indefinite strike. Reactionary officials, both lay and full-time, have tried • to dampen that spirit but have failed. Even some full timers are now openly calling on the TUC to call for an indefinite.strike...... * Spanswick can still argue bankruptcy, Bickerstaffe can TO still argue unity, but they cart and nor can anyone else come up with a formuia to win without arguing for indefinite strike.

Militants must still con tinue the pressure on the bureaucracy for indefinite strike action with emergency cover under workers control.

The leadership have used excuse after excuse. They have been unable (though perhaps not unwilling) to sell out the health workers in the same way as they sold out ASLEF.

Confidence

We can still win and with that win we can use the experience and confidence gained to press for real changes in the NHS, changes which will radically alter health care - democracy and accountability throughout the NHS - with workers in control of the hospitals and services who will expand the services and build a real national health care system.

But first we have to win. and to win we need indefinite action now. NUPE's national officer for the health service, Roger Poole, called last week for an indefinite general strike for the health workers' claim.

"We have the right" , said Poole, "to demand that the rest of the trade union movement comes out on a general strike, not just for one day, not for two days, not for three days, but until we have won the 12%."

He made this militant call at a public meeting organised Party on 6 October, which was also addressed by Michael• Meacher MP and Fred Burnall of Lewisham and • Deptford Trades Council.

The audience of hospital workers, Labour Party activists and left councillors greeted Poole's strike call with enthusiasm.

However, Poole rejected the idea of a full-scale strike in the NHS. He made out that the choice was between the present level of activity by the health service unions and a total withdrawal of all services.

Leading militants in the health unions locally were disappointed; they see an all-out strike with emergency cover as the only way forward after 22 September.

Poole is thus in a position of calling for an illegal general strike by other workers with no escalation of actior in the hospitals. And, though he was dubious about the value of the current round of regional strikes, he was against public criticism of the TUC Health Services Committee.

Yet he must know that without massive, openlyorganised pressure, there is no chance of the Committee calling a general strike.

From the floor, Lewisham Hospital shop steward Millie Barnett outlined the problems of sustaining such a prolonged dispute and

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