Analysing the witch hunts

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Address your for 6 months; and TWO POINTS about Alan Thornett's article (SO 144).

The BL witch-hunt was vicious. The popular press is, indeed, vile and repressive and bysterically anti-socialist. Attempts though pretty feeble ones - were made by the press to spread the Cowley witch-hunt across industry, and to claw into it the Laboux Party, CND, etc.

Precisely for that reason it is important to make a cool assessment of where we are at and of what happened.

I think it is wrong to see the Bu witch-hunting as part of a concerted and integrated campaign to smash the labour movement. The evidence suggests it was far more haphazard. • The Cowley management is not the whole capitalist class, and it had its specific motives for dealing with the 13 as it did. The press seized its opportunities, but it is not all-powerful.

The conditions existed in Cowley for the management to sweep out the 13 with relatively little trouble. It takes more than a few horror stories in the press to create the conditions for purges in every industry and every area of society.

And if the Cowley witch-hunt were part of a concerted effoit to smash up the labour movement, then that fact would invalidate Alan Thornett's criticism of the Socialist League.

He says that they merely fed the witch-hunters' fires by holding a press conference, and that it would have been better to keep their heads down. That makes sense if the witch-hunt was basically a localised, limited aífair, so caution and tactical sense could hope to prevent any serious extension of it.

But if there were a concerted drive against trade union militants with the Cowley witch-hunt as its cutting edge, then lying low would not help and might hinder.

It's like the well-worn argument against any militant selfassertion: that it 'provokes' the reactionaries, 'gives them an excuse' to strike at you. And the answer is the same: if it's in their interests, they'll manufacture an excuse or a provocation.

Strategy and tacties cannot be shaped by fear of provoking our opponents. Whether the SL should have kept its head down is a matter of judgment of the immediate circumstances.

A far more weighty criticism of the SL is what they did and didn't do in their press conference.

. After they had been thrown but of their jobs for being revolutionary socialists, it served no purpose to continue to deny their political identity. Who believed cheir denials?

The denials must have discredited them, and not only them, politically. They missed the UL u 1 „le"

by Satvinder Singh and Tony Purtill chance to make a bold and principled Marxist statement.

To choose to try to integrate themselves into the BL workforce rather than make socialist propaganda would have been perfectly proper — if it were an option.

But by the time they held the press conference, it wasn't.

Yet they had... a press conference to deny any connection with the SL, chaired by one of the better known SL full-timers!

They fed the press witch-hunt at that point mainly by seeming to fit exactly the media image of lying, twisting reds.

From whichever angle you look at it, it was a lamentably incompetent and disoriented performance.

JACK CLEARY, London.

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Tour Suppor Health Your ice Filealth Health astro so statis Socialist Organiser no.149 October 6. BY April Fool's Day 1984 the Thatcher Government hopes to have set up a Pay Review Body (PRB) for selected groups of NHS workers. These are nurses, midwives and health visitors, plus a group which Health Secretary Fowler labels 'Professions Allied to Medicine' and which includes physiotherapists, chiropodists, radiographers, dieticians and one or two other paramedical groups..

Many other groups are excluded, most notably the ancillaries, administrative and clerical staff, and the technical grades. This last group, mainly laboratory workers, are subjected for the second time to Fowler's Law of Divide and rule. During the NHS pay dispute of 1982 their offer was the same as the ancillaries' , and not the higher offer given to the nurses and other 'professions' To the elitist technical grades this linkage with blue-collar workers was even more insulting than the pay offer itself. The same fears arise now.

But how wise are those workers in excluded grades who can be cited from the experiences of teachers and civil servants.

Second, the consultation gives the lie to any "independènce" claimed for the mem; bers of a PRB. They are appointed by the Prime Minister - and they are sacked by the Prime Minister. In 1982 the Chair of the North-Western Regional Health Authority was asked to resign (or fired) because of his public support for the bealth workers. Half-a-dozen other Regional Chairs were sacked, too. Every one was replaced by a figure more pleasing to the Prime Minister's sensibilities.

Third is the call on staff to accept a 'no-strike clause' as the price of entry to the PRB club. .

Let's squash a few myths. Nobody in the NHS dispute stopped work to cause distress to patients or relatives. Indeed, the emergency cover organised by Joint Shop Stewards' Committees was often better than PRB proposals. To do so would be like à football team having its bootlaces all tied together by a biaşed referee before the match.

I think we should understand that the very reason the Tories are creating a PRB is because. they know it is one more way of. imposing their vision of the future of the NHS on staff and patients alike. It is'naive to imagine that a PRB structured and sculpted by the DHSS would be even independent and objective. There is no way it would be favourable towards a staff side opposed to this government's obsession with cash limits and One argument for accepting the PRB proposal is that it will help NUPE recruit nurses.

If, the argument goes, NUPE refused to recognise or submit evidence to a PRB, while COHSE and the RCN did so, nurses would join a union which at least had a say in the pay review process. Thus, all "In the end, the only pay review that unions are obliged to operate ›through the PRB simply to keep 'up membership.

But this is a foolishly short-term view. The PRB means what the Tories want it to mean, a weakening of union bargaining power and solidarity.

Members and! potential recruits will rightly ask Why pay subs to a union that can't even negotiate our wages?' -and unions will lose members: If NUPE and COHSE (and all the oner no unions wich Iear une effects of non-ręcognition of a PRB) made a united, wellargued, and widely publicised stand against the proposals, those proposals would be unworkable.

Support counts is the trade union"

And the NHS unions affiliated to the TUC - despite last. year's sell-out at national level - have the potential for ennuch workplace-based activity (especially through Joint Shop Stewards' Committees) to keep up membership at a local level. There is, therefore, no reason why we should be blackmailed into accepting a PRB.

In the end, the only pay review that counts is each member's own trade union. It is through their relatively democratic channels that members can press for improvements in wages and conditions. We decide what we want and what . we are prepared to do to get it.

The union negotiators JOHN HARRIS national level must be able to rely on the collective strength of the rank and file, and equally the memhers must atmaolo hardl for an accountable leadership 75=which has a socialist vision of a health service adequate to our needs and under the control of the working class.

Announcing the PRB Fowler said 'I am sure that the staff will welcome this new system and cooperate fully with it." I hope that activists will urge no co-oneration of their union in such a dangerously divisive and diversionary body. The reality of this government's strategic attack on the health workers and the service we provide must be exposed.

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