NHS leaders run f SOLD OUT FOR 3O

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For cover Spanswick gets militant - against calls for all-out action!

DESPITE inflation, the price of betrayal is getting speedily UPE officer Bob Jones succeeded in facing both ways cheaper. It cost the Romans 30 pieces of silver to buy out he issue: "It is a lousy, ludicrous and ridiculous deal" Judas Iscariot; it has cost the Tories a mere 30 pence to innounced, only to add in the next breath: "My organithrow the leaderships of the health unions into dangerous- on will be against it. But if the Royal College of Nursing ly derailing the 7 month pay battle of their 700,000 ones seems to forget that NUPE members have opted The 30 pence is the weekly amount of the ½% 'increase' in a union, not to be dictated to by a reactionary proin the government's latest pay offer to nurses - next year! ional body like the RCN, which has consistently blockThe total package would amount to a further brutal cut in real wages, imposed over a 2-year period up to April 1984. Torse still, the Tory initiative in making its offer only to As we go to press the offer has been made only to nurs- nurses has sent the union leaders down the blind alley es, in the expectation that the anti-union Royal College of emanding simply an equal (equally bad!) percentage Nursing will accept it, splitting the ranks of health workers ormally, the process of consultation on the TUC and creating conditions to defeat the struggle for a 12% lth Service Committee call for all-out strike action is But many NHS union leaders - in particular Albert proceeding as normal in the health unions. The Spanswick, general secretary of CoHSE and head of the ISE special conference is still fixed, and NUPE leader Lney Bickerstaffe has re-stated the union's support for TUC Health Services Committee - would have grasped at almost any excuse to end the dispute before the decision was taken on calls for an all-out indefinite strike. ut the latest evidence of the spinelessness and gullibilIndeed, as soon as the November 8 transport strike and if their leaders will do nothing to strengthen the resolve one-day health strike was called off late on Friday night, it invene in mid-December, the outward impression of an ne membership. And with the nursing pay talks set to was obvious that Spanswick had not the slightest idea of ending collapse could decisively tip the scales against struggle had to be undermined if it were not to escalate the one dea nrmly rooved u mis mid was bal be o fight back, health workers must resist the Tory divide into an all-out confrontation with the Tory government — rule tactics, and the pressure for a two year deal. Mass a spectre which the TUC leadership as a whole has consist- tings should be held in each area, open to all health ently sought to exorcise from the class struggle. ins, to unite the membership and consider resoluSpanswick's TUC colleagues in the transport unions had already done their best to undermine the tide of solidarity Upholding the 12% claim, and rejecting the new offer with the health workers by deliberately organising a demoralising fiasco in place of the promised one-day trans- Condemning the sabotage and cancellation of the Novport strike for November 8. The men who knifed ASLEF Demanding that the health unions - predominantly have now got their eyes set on the health workers.

The results were predictable. Fowler's contemptuous PE - that backed the TUC Health Service Committee ½ % increase in next year's offer was greeted not with the und seek every available means to win CoHSE mem- for all-out strike action mount an all-out campaign for required immediate rejection by the unions, but with a whingeing appeal for a mere ½% more next year by i and conference delegates to this policy. A date should CoHSE representative David Williams, and an agreement fixed early in January as the start of the all-out by the unions to put the sell-out package to their members.

on t he a satir ept we will go along with it" • members.

to jc fess ed ti he pay struggle.

the of d offe r for non-nursing staff.

FI increase on this year's review. Hea still CoH Rod an a Ill-out strike to win the 12% claim.

reco what the 'new' offer might be. imp Lie animAl Aka acti mee unic tion Many two-year settlement.

emb ›er 8 day of action.

NUI call it, a bers be stop page. JOHN HARRIS OUT ainst some 50-odd othe Militant activists.

Meanwhile Mortimer report accepts that the Lal our Friends of Israel an the Labour Committee f