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A NEW report, drawn up by Roy Griffiths, the managing director of Sainsbury's, is an attempt to bring some of the new, hard-headed style of British management to the NHS. Incredibly, only one year after 'Patients First' re-organised management in the NHS, Norman Fowler calls in a grocer to beef things "Griffiths proposes to draft in managers from private industry to the top level of NHS management. A new Supervisory Board and a Management Board will push aside the top bureaucrats in the DHSS and hand things over to the hard-headed new boys.

It will be the job of the Boards to make sure policies on staffing and spending are actually carried out and not left to drift. Locally they will rely on Health Authorities picking out budding Michael Edwardes from their ranks. These new 'general managers' would do for the Authorities what the new boys will be doing for the DHSS.

There have been attempts, particularly by Brian Walden when he interviewed Norman Fowler on Weekend World a few weeks ago, to pass all this off as an effort to bring consultants' spending into line.

If this were the case it would take power away from the medical hierarchy and would drastically transform the NHS (though it would not be any more democratic). What it is more likely to be about is that Fowler is making sure that proposals for cuts and privatisation don't get bogged down by local management opposition and get carried out as quickly as possible.

the law STATISTICS published last week in the Department of Employment Gazette show that the Government's first piece of anti-union legislation, the Prior 1980 Employment Act, which severely restricts trade unions' ability to take sympathetic industrial action unless related to a company's first customer or supplier, was 'considerably flouted last year.

713,000 working days, involving 986,600 workers, were lost in Britain last year through sympathy strikes. Most of them, 672,000 days, were from the eight-month-long NHS depute, and all were alavfal. UNEMPLOYED activists have played a prominent role on the Warrington picket throughout the NGA dispute. The Birmingham Unemployed Workers A sociation, for instance, has been working closely with the local NGA in organising coaches up to Warrington, and mobilising support throughout the Birmingham labour movement.

A special leaflet produced by the BUWA summarises their attitude to this dispute:

"It is in the interests of all workers, employed and unemployed together, to see a strong and effective trade union movement, free from legal interference.

'That is why unemployed people must support the Stockport Messenger dispute. That is why BUWA is fully behind the NGA."

We spoke to two unemployed activists who went up to Warrington with the BUWA last Tuesday.

BOB SMITH, a membet of the Birmingham NGA unemployed chapel, told us:

maximum unity between the unemployed • and the employed to resist the Tory JIM DENHAM reports on the solidarity activity being organised by Birmingham unemployed workers.

onslaught. Both are facing the same fight. Wages, conditions, jobs and benefits are all under attack. The unemployed have as much interest as all other workers in defending the "In Birmingham the NGA and its local officials Alan Jordan and Frank Harvey, have done an excellent job. They saw the need for building support as widely as possible, and encouraged the unemployed to get involved from the start. Relations between the local NGA and the Unemployed Workers Association have been enormously strengthened as a result of our joint work around this dispute.

A general strike is what's needed to win the Messenger fight. But it's obvious that the TUC, with their track record of scabbing on ASLEF and the health workers, are going to back away from any serious escalation of the fight. And Labour leaders like Hattersley are spouting treacherous nonsense about the necessity to uphold the law. So they expect us to just sit back and take it while the Tories slash our living standards and emasculate our organsations?

Unemployed workers should mobilise support for the NGA on the dole queues, in the unions, in their Labour Parties and in whatever unemployed groups they're involved with. We should condemn the scab role of people like Hattersley and Alastair Graham.

We must demand that the Labour leadership and the TUC get off the fence and give unconditional support to this struggie.

The unemployed - and especially youth - must play a full part in defending our unions and in building for all-out action to smash the Tory's legislation."

GEORGE MANKING, an unemployed ex-BL shop steward said:

"I've been an active trade unionist since I was 17. The last few years at BL were very demoralising. We suffered , a series of sell outs by the union leaders who simply gave in to the management offensive. Thousands of jobs were lost, while wages and conditions deteriorated.

I see the Messenger dispute not just as a matter of six jobs, but as a life and death struggle for the future of effective trade unionism. It's a chance to reverse all the set-backs of the last few years.

Hundreds

"I went up to Warrington with hundreds of other Birmingham trade unionists - employed and unemployed alike. The police laid into us up there, with fists, boots and batons. was nicked when the cops surged forward and knocked me to the ground.

"Before I could get up, I was grabbed by members of the mobile picket HQ, wrecked by police thugs Tactical Support Unit, dragged away by two of them and finally taken to Widnes police station.

'There I was held, along with many others, until Wednesday afternoon, when we were taken to Warrington Magistrates "People were being brought in in a terrible condition. One had his face smashed in after being arrested. another picket had to be taken from the cells to the hospital, because he had a blood clot in his leg caused by the beating he'd received.

Incidents like that teach people just what is at stake in a dispute like this - it's the working class versus the state, not just one employer versus a particular union.

'The unemployed have even more interest in winning this fight than other workers. We should put ourselves and our organisations at the disposal of the NGA and smash the Tory laws."