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£6000 fund 28 Middle Lane, London N8. Printed by Fast End Utiset, London E2: a newspaper at the Post Office. Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the SUA.

ICKY 1984: the date has become linked in popular thinking with George Orwell's nightmare vision of a totalitarian, centralised state machine operating on the Ctalinict mndol with: "Thanaht Stalinist Police and 'Big Brother watching you'.

But the 1984 that Thatcher's gang are dreaming or cowa make urwen s nightmare seem like a soft option.

It is now clear that the Tories plans to put more cash into the pockets of the rich are leading even now to a wholesale demolition of the welfare state. The premature and embarrassing leak of the cabinet's Think Tank report - proposing the scrapping of the National Health Service, of free higher education, the axing of pensions and state benefits and even the abolition of the state education system itself - has pinpointed the direction of Tory policies.

Such/plans may seem fantastic -too outrageous to even mention. But they have only been "shelved", not scrapped.

And meantime, draconian cutbacks are actually being made in the NHS. Oxfordshire Regional Health Authority, faced with a cash crunch directly resulting irom tory cuts, last week spelled out the horrifying kind of "economics" they need to balance their books:

*Scrapping accident and emergency services at weekends.

Tuenyug neau cart « prupit *... health newly-arrived in the region.

*Closing some general hospitals.

*Closing all mentally handicapped hospitals.

*Charging patients for family planning and non-urgent operations.

*Charging for patient's catering, laundry and transnort • So sweeping are these plans that even Tory ministers have been forced to warn the Regional Health Authority that some may at present be illegal.

Rut if the rate are not made in this way, they will come in some other form if Tory cash limits are enforced.

RHA chairman Gordon Roberts Dianary aaminea inar some ur our L1--1l+ ideas will surprise a lot of people and cause despair, but we must take measures to live within our resources."

Mr Roberts' "measures" mean, of course, ensuring that fewer working class people live and more resources go to the Tory rich. Indeed RHA spokespeople in Oxford and elsewhere are quick to blame the elderly for the crisis in the NHS. Tory strategy will deal with this 'problem' in a ruthless pincer movement - raising their rents and rates, cutting their pensions and destroying the NHS and social services which sustain them.

If this is not the solution you had in mind, remember the Tory wreckers can be stopped.

A general strike, led by the NHS unions, could not only win the 12% pay claim, but lay a solid basis for defence of existing services in the NHS. It coma even grow mto a move- To mild mannes поло anta a manno ment strong enough to topple the Thatcher government itself and create conditions in which the workers' movement could carry through the struggle against Labour's right wing leadership fan a rantinó asinelors, for a genuine government.

Only a government based on the strength of the working class and prepared to carry through a socialist programme can prevent the nightmare visions of 1984 becoming the stark reality of tomorrow.

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