[-T KUST STAY OPTY ON A FIRST glance…]

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-T KUST STAY OPTY ON A FIRST glance at the Tories public spending plans, published last week, it looks as if the health service has escaped cuts.

According to the Tories. health will get a one per cent per year real increase in spending. But in fact that means substantial cuts.

The true figure, according to NUPE, is a 212% per year real cut. Their estimate is confirmed AIMS: B.

THE Government's current estimate of the total cost of waging the Falklands war, and maintaining 'Fortress Falklands' up to 1986-7, is £3 billion.

The TUC's proposals for health spending, which would maintain and slightly improve the service, require about £2 billion extra above government estimates between 1983-4 and 1985-6.

So the reason for health cuts is not lack of money. The Tories just choose to spend the money elsewhere.

JOHN HARRIS government's inquiry into NHS management, who has told the government to reckon on SO-called I "efficiency savings" of 3 to 4 per cent per year.

An apparent increase in spending means a real cut because the increase in the number of old people, and changes in medical technology, automatically push up the cost of the health service. More advanced methods of treatment mean that people survive expenEAK UNI( The aim of their cuts and privatisation programme is twofold.

Firstly, to shift resources from public service to private profit. Already they have perhaps doubled the average rate of profit in British industry. It still remains low by international standards: so they press on.

Their second aim is to break the power of the trade unions. In manufacturing industry, the anonymous forces of economic slump have done a large part of the job for them: with factories NS, BOOST the dole queue getting longer, shop stewards' organisation has been seriously weakened.

But even in the worst-hit sectors, like shipyards, union organisation is still strong enough to give the Tories a very rough ride.

And in the public services employment has held up relatively well. Shop stewards' organisation has probably increased.

Privatisatio opens up the public servi S workforce to PROFITS attacks on jobs, pay and conditions. It splits up a single, unionised workforce into fragments — each with their own separate pay rates and conditions - and thus clears the way to break up union organisation.

It fits in with the anti-union laws, which make practically all industrial action unlawful unless it is against your own employer. Where some workers in a hospital are employed by the NHS, and others by a variety of private contractors, solidarity action between them thus becomes unlawful.

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Sociąlist Organiser no.167 February 23 1984 Page