Defend Hackney NHS!

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"No cuts in our health sersocialists defend. vice" is the slogan on the Hackney Health Emergency banner.

The divide between us and them was there for everyone to see at the City and Hackney District Health Authority meeting on Monday when a motion was put to keep open St Leonards, a very popular local hospital, at least until the new hospital under construction, is opened.

All the speakers against the motion were people who do not USA to create a global network of terror. live in Hackney, who do not use the Hackney hospitals and will not be at risk from the closure.

One, for example, was a consultant with beds at the powerful. major teaching hospital. for 80 years. Despite their empty and pitiful protests about the agonising pain of taking such a decision (forced to do it - by a Tory government they suppport!) their hands went up in favour of closing the hospital.

The members of the DHA who live in Hackney voted to keep it open. The vote was 8-8.

The chairperson, a rich Tory who lives in London's West End, then started to speak before he Workers of the world unite! You have nothing lose cast his vote. It was too much for your chains'. the public to stomach and two pensioners said that he should Andrea take their vote and that he listen to them.

Instead, outraged that the public should dare to speak, and obviously keen to cast his vote in private, he adjourned the meeting to closed session.

The farce of how decisions are taken to close hopsitals was a lesson which will not be forgotten quickly by the people 'observing' the meeting. Several pensioners pointed out the hypocrisy and dishonesty of calling a meeting 'public' when no-one was allowed to speak and put their point of view.

Hackney Health Emergency, the local campaign launched in February which organised the is distromined that st. Leonards Hospital will stay open and that there will be no cuts in the NAS in Hackney.

St. Leonards is a small 97 bed hospital with a limited accident and emergency department, covering a very densely populated area with an ageing populationn and all the problems of the inner city. In 1979 there was a major campaign to keep it open and now the fight is on again.

Hackney has 17,000 people unemployed, one adult in every five. The NHS is now the largest single employer in the Borough. If the District Health plan goes through, 300 jobs will be directly affected.

Juggled statistics and distorted 'facts' and all the now sickeningly familiar arguments - "the build canis sar a spital, vall l stati (why?), "conditions are unsafe" (why?) were trotted out.

But on the lobby a large numberwere pensioners who have used St. Leonards all their lives -many were born there - and they treated the arguments with the contempt they deserved.

The consultation document will now go out, and we will have three months to organise before the final decision is taken.

Meanwhile, Hackney Health Emergency is growing weekly. Leafletting in markets and shopping areas provided 10,000 signatures against the closure. 100 GPs signed a special petition. Two public meetings (a third is planned) have brought dozens of offers of help.

The campaign has strong support from hospital workers in the District. Already there have been two mass meetings at St. Leonards to discuss opposing the closure:

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Socialist Organiser no.129 April 28 1983