Save Mildmay Mission!

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)MAY Mission is a accept medical patients or people who work i close on December 21, ment about tactics with leaving only one ward with some workers at the hosten handicapped children pital, a joint campaign has open. now begun. Mildmay This amounts to an Mission Hospital Support attempt at back-door Committee has already closure of a very popular organised a lobby of the and much needed hospital; District Health Authority and shows the contempt meeting, and are meeting the authority has for regularly to plan future consultation. The Commun- action. Tower Hamlets ity Health Council were not Labour Party has pledged even told that the Deçem- its support.

for closure, and only donations to: Mildmay learned it from a member of Mission Hospital Support the public at a CHC meet- Group, -Mildmay Mission ing. Hospital, Hackney Road.

The local residents, London E2. MILDMAY Mission small hospital nestled between council estates in London's East End.

It was originally set up in conjunction with the local mission, still has strong links with religion and is run on a 'Christian ethic'. Hardly any of the staff are unionised - and so it has become a logical target for closure.

Tower Hamlets District Health Authority is $2 million overspent and says it must find this amount by March 31.

The DHA has refused to put any money, resources, or staff into the hospital over the past few months and as a consequence the two remaining consultants told the Authority last week casualties because conditions are unsate.

Junior doctors and most workers were immediately told that the hospital would ber 21 date had been given NG of the working class at every serious turn.

It was not as if there was not easy ammunition against Fleet Street. The Sun; for example, which screamed for vengeance against the horror of Ballykelly, was the same paper which celebrated the sinking of the Belgrano with the headline "Gotcha!"

But it was the INLA which was most vociferous in pointing that out, not prominent figures in the trade unions or ‹ Labour As the furore increased, the GLC councillors steadily retreated. Livingstone has; in the past, defended the right of oppressed people to turn to the armed struggle. Under the onslaught, he began justifying the visit solely on the grounds that he will be able to tell Sinn Fein how much he and the Labour Party were opposed to violence.

This is certainly not to jeer at Livingstone. Behind him, the sound of the rats deserting the sinking ship, was deafening. Some councillors who signed the invitation fell over themselves to declare it to be a mistake.

Benn did not speak out until the war was won and lost. All over the country, Labour Party wards werc passing resolutions backing Livingstone, but the big guns were silent. It scarcely needs saying that neither Scargill nor any other figure of influence in the trade unions @ommunity groups and people who work in the area are furious at these tactics.

Initial

Despite initial disagreeMessages of support and issued one word in Livingstone's defence.

The Sinn Fein visit was. of course, a simple, demo cratic right. It met every dot and comma of bourgeois democracy - elected repres entatives exercising their right to move freely within the borders claimed by the state.

There will be more. similar tests in the coming months and years, and the Left will continue to fail them. It will fail until it is able to confront honestly such questions as the question of violence without genuflecting to altars erected by the state, which deem some acts of human destruction to be barbaric and others to be glorious.

Divorced

The press cannot be separated or divorced from the rest of the state apparatus. This was not a witchhunt dreamed up in ar editorial office. It was based on a social class, the oppressor class.

It will not be confronted by pacifist gestures or demo cratic generalities. To build an opposition to press witch-hunts of this sort means building mass forces able ti come onto the streets unc demonstrate that they wil defend Livingstone and other Lefts against it. The prerequisite for that is firs: of all leaders who will no: bend under it.