[302. :20%? 373000 The DHA would WANDSWORTH District…]
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-07-07Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
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302. :20%?
373000 The DHA would WANDSWORTH District Health Authority (DHA) voted by 10-6 last week to close the South Lundon Hospital for Women by April 1984. recognise the massive opposition to closure DARd MO 35/00 ARA, OVER 600 women. man:
overseas, blockaded the entire to the USAF Base at Greenien Common last Monday, July 4.
Independence was the them of the demonstration, held on l Independence Day. CND issued "declaration of independence fc Britain" - independence fror American nuclear bases.
A CND representative put like this to the Morning Star:
"With US bases at Greenham Common, Upper Heyford, Hol!
Loch and Lakenheath and abou 90 other American bases i Britain, we are in a similar posi tion to the American colonial two centuries ago."
It is, of course, true that US bases in Britain would mean auto matic British involvement shouk nuclear war break out, whateve:
the wishes of the British govern ment of the day.
There is no sense whatsoeve in which the Americans are ir forcible occupation.
The British ruling class has voluntarily chosen to tie itself into the nuclear alliance.
The main enemy is not in Washington but in London.
To talk and act as if the problem is "'the Americans" is to confuse the issues, to misidentify the enemy and to deflect attention from the real tasks and the only way forward for the peace movement.
The task is to disarm the British ruling class and that involves a decisive turn to the working class which is the only force in Britain capable of doing it.
The demand "Independence for Britain" reflects. the pernicious politics of the misnamed Communist Party and those on the left influenced by it.
Listen to the patriotic Morning Star editorialising: "If (Thatcher) had an ounce of patriotism in her she would never allow the US Cruise missiles into our country...
Thatcher's patriotism is probably more reliable - it is certainly more genuine - than that of the Morning Star. The problem is not her patriotism but her class. That class's interests have led it to the NATO nuclear alliance and keep it there.
The alternative is not to be -or pretend to be - more patriotic than Thatcher but to organise the working class whose interest lies in breaking the nuclear alliance and in breaking the capitalist system. Thatcher is that system's representative and nuclear weapons are the product of its degeneracy and decay. We need not 'patriotism' but the socialist transformation of society.