Save London hospital!

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Subscribe! THE South London Hospital is the only remaining general hospital in Britain staffed by women, for women. It was founded in 1916 by a woman doctor who had practised at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital.

Just as that hospital was the target of a savings campaign, initiated by a Labour government and carried to a ruthless conclusion by Thatcher, so the South London is now threatened with closure Health Authority (DHA).

Wandsworth. DHA, a spin off from the old Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth Area Health Authority is no stranger to closures. it was the Area Health Authority which presided over the closure of hospital and used the police and scab ambulances to smash through the occupacion picket line. Many of the members of the new authority were on the old one.

Like many other London Districts, Wandsworth has a prestige teaching hospital, St. George's. There have already been 850 beds (including the site at Hyde Park Corner) in the district cut to finance the new complex at St. George's. The next 'phase' of the complex will not be finished until 1990.

Closure

Yet at its meeting on January 27 the DHA will be recommending the closure of the South London by 1984. Women's health must suffer even more so rates: £5 for three nonths, £8.75 for ix months, and £16 or a year.

Bundle of five

lach week: £12 for three months.

Bundle of 10: £21 for three months.

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Address I endose £ To: Socialist Organi. =1. 28 Maddle Lara dog te FI that powerful consultants can get their high technology medicine.

The South London provides a unique service for women. It gives the assurance of treatment by a woman doctor, it has short waiting lists — the average waiting time for an outpatients appointment is only two weeks. It has a philosophy which puts emphasis on prevention of ill health; there are plans for developing a well woman clinic, a breast screening clinic, and last week a special clinic for women wanting to give up smoking was opened.

It has just equipped and opened a birth room. All too often women are denied choice in childbirth and are forced to fit into the system of large impersonal maternity wards. Women's needs and wishes at time of birth are rarely catered for in most general hospitals.

In the medical world women are usually treated with a lack of sympathy and undersianding® and are PUBLIC St Mary's fought closure "second class citizens'. The South London breaks out of that mould and that alone is reason enough to oppose its closure.

It is not just because it is a women's hospital, though that makes its survival important. We cannot afford any more loss of NHS beds - that is why. the hospital must be defended. Wandsworth is an inner city area which has had a monetarist Tory council since 1978. Its Social Services provision has been cut to the bone. It has already lost five hospitals result of Thatcher's policies. The loss of another 200 beds will be a severe blow to the health of the borough. If the hospital closes, people will die.

75% of the women using the hospital are in social class 4 or 5. 36% are from ethnic minorities. It is clear that this closure will not affect the rich and privileged. It is a blatant attack on the working class people of Wandsworth for whom the Tories do not give a damn.

The District Health Authority meeting promises to be stormy. The workers and residents of Wandsworth are not prepared to let the hospital close.

Over 100 people, most of them women, packed into a meeting last week to hear about closure flans and to begin a campaign around the defence of the hospital. Two local Labour MPs and Val Wise were there to give support.

However. some Labour appointees to the DHA are supporting the closure p.ars. One member actuand came to the meeting to PDas ahy ste approved She

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left!!!

She was under the delusion that if the South London closes, more money will be available for mentally ill people. When asked which client group benefited fromt he "savings" of closing St. Benedict's, she had no answer.

One woman made the point that if the South London closes, it would have such a devastating effect on women that it would lead to more people needing psychiatric care!

The DHA member said that even under, a Labour government they would need to close hospitals, since Gwyneth Dunwoody (Labour spokesperson on health) had already made it clear that there will not be enough money to maintain the present level of NHS spending.

Dunwoody's position on health is a disgrace and Labour Party members should get resolutions through their wards and GMCs demanding her resignation as health spokesperson.

On the more positive side a speaker from the EGA occupation gave an account of the tremendous fight to keep the EGA open. It was the first hospital occuation. The account of how the workers united with the community to keep services going gave the meeting a boost.

The mood of the public meeting was angry and the decision was taken to lobby and demonstrate at the DHA meeting on the 27th. As one woman said "we have to go into the meeting and make it impossible for them to take the decision to close our hospital.

There were few hospital workers at the meeting lit was quite a distance from the hosptall.

The workers in the hospital are crucial to the fight to keep it open. Some of them have been shunted from hospital to hospital during the long string of closures in that authority. A doctor and a midwife spoke at the meeting and it is vital that they link with the nurses and ancillary workers to stand firm against the closure and the rundown which is sure to begin almost immediately.

The trade union officials have called a meeting in the hospital for this week. Whilst they are prepared to give lip service to fighting the closure, they will not actively build for an occupation.

Glass The real fight will come from the working class-from the women who work there and from the women who use the hospital. But they cannot win in isolation.

Every trade unionist should raise the issue in their branch and send messages of support. Health unionists in London must raise the question of supporting strike action and get a commitment that if one step is taken to run down the hospital there will be striké action.

Workers in Wandsworth should also be building to take strike action. The links which were made during the pay dispute should now be built on for joint action in defence of the NHS. :

The Tories are confident in the wake of the pay sellout that they can now just step in and dismantle the entire. NHS. We have to show them that we are not prepared to let that happen.

Messages of support to: South Lundon Women' Hospital Campaign, 9, Rosehill Road, London SW18. TWO main strands of campaigning were discussed at the Women's Campaign for Jobs conference on January 15: women's signing-on campaigns, and how to get a women's input into the People's March.

The Campaign had originally planned to organise a full-scale Women's March for Jobs for summer 1983. Now that a People's March was being organised, we recognised that all resources and energies would go into that, and what was now necessary was to ensure that it was more relevant and appealing to women than the 1981 People's March which was overwhelmingly made up of men and organised by men.

Involving women would require a great deal of work. There would have to be facilities for children, or mothers would be excluded. There must be proper arrangements this time for sleeping, washing and toilet facilities for those women who didn't want to muck in with the men. (One woman described the experience on the last March of having to run the gauntlet of three rooms full of boisterous young men to get to the toilet in the night).

Part of the success of the last People's March was that it didn't just appeal to the traditional labour movement activists - we could make the next march even broader by making sure it was attractive and relevant to women. Numbers were important: if women were a substantial proportion of the march it would be easier for them to appeal to women along the route. This means a special effort to include women in the March.

The conference recognised that the best way to ensure that all these issues - and the work they involved - would not drop to the bottom of the agenda was to have women's sub-committees of the March organisation, nationally, regionally and locally.

The other workshop was an intensive training session run by the members of the Greenwich Women's Signing-On Campaign, who had produced a detailed pack to help other women start similar campaigns.' Mine The work they have done, which only started last September, has prised out of the Department of Employment a mine of information previously unavailable to legal advice workers. And their style of campaigning - going direct to women in launderettes and heuth centres, buying space in the local newspaper to advertise how women ian get their dole money, street leafleting by a 'Mother Xmas', and getting the local council to lay on an information caravan outside the dole office - has finally broken the confidence barrier and produced a buzz of interest among local women.

Their workshop emphasised both optimism and caution: it is possible to help women to claim their rights; but it needs careful preparation and briefing (if possible not just in writing, but with similar training sessions) and a serious approach, not just a few mornings' casual leafleting in local shopping centre.

Start However, their pioneering work must surely now make it easier for others to start such campaigns, especially around unemployed centres. As well as the briefing material (which the Women's Campaign for Jobs will include in its next newsletter), leaflet based on prototypes worked out by Greenwich and the Women's Campaign forJobs is being produced by the GLC in an initial two-colour run of 100,000 which will be available free from the beginning of February. (Contact Nicola Murray, Room 133a. County all, Waterloo, SE1. Tel: 633 5676).

The Women's Campaign for Jobs can be contacted at 41 Ellington Street, London N7 (607-5268) . . .

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Jane Goss reports fight to an unique women's hospital

MiLOT CEL BRANCH

Women struggle far

men's rch TOT jobs