Health Fightback 84- Organising for direct action

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THIS Saturday. 25th, the Health Fightback 84 conference meets in Bradford Buildings. Bradford University. Great Hordon Road, 11am to 5pm). It is open workers and to labour movement delegates.

It has been called by the hospital occupation committees at Hayes. and Northwood & Pinner. Its aim is to spread the lessons organise real action. not just protest speeches, against the cuts. SUPE SONDOL ORKERS' LIMAS END NUE LOW says InsUl *theLow Poi PAY SCH WORD CLAIMS IN FULL SINCE the government announced a new round of health cuts last autumn - directly demanding job cuts for the first time -a lot of new campaigns have developed against the cuts.

Lucally, activists have petitioned, leafleted, and lobbied Health Authority meetings. Unions have issued leaflets and pamphlets. The Labour Party has sent a campaign ambulance round the country.

All this is useful - but it is only a preparation for the sort of action that will defeat the Tories.

Hayes Cottage Hospital and Northwood and Pinner Hospital, in West London, won a reprieve from closure last sively rather than dying cheaply.

2½% doesn't seem very much. But in a service where a lot of the costs are fixed, it means severe cuts at 'what Tories see as 'the margin".

Hospitals are closed or run down. In London alone over 50 hospitals are under threat. Accident and emergency servicts are centralised in a few large hospitals so that patients have further or further to travel. New hospitals are built and then shutting, jobs disappearing, and kept in is not them. December. Both hospitas sa a lot of support in their res communities - but that is It what decided it.

The reprieve was won by the workers occupying hospitals.

Workers at Thornton View Hospital in Bradford are also coupol and said they will not taken occupylls will not budge. They will not allow the hospital to be run down or patients to be moved out:

Occupations are powertul -but they also need back-up through pledges from workers in other hospitals and other industries to strike in support if the occupation is raided.

Privatisation too needs to be fought by direct action. At All Saints Hospital in Medway, domestic staff struck for five weeks last November and December against privatisation.

They didn't win - partly because of an initial weakness in their action. They were fighting for an in-house tender to be accepted as against the private tenders, rather than for fullmothballs because t lere enough money to run Health service workers are kept on low pay. Jobs are cut: the TUC estimates that at least 13,000 jobs will have been lost among directly employed staff between September 1982 and March 1984.

Not only ancillaries, but increasing numbers of nurses and doctors, are left on the dole.

BISES IS GENTs Me see die have tart uff What trie ence will Go. are:::C: :==paign or conference sas SEe = to discuss in detail noz:= ise and extend suct is action.

policy A HEALTH service freely available to all is a socialist principle. But the NHS is moulded and shaped by its capitalist environment.

The service is cut and trimmed under pressure from the drive for private profit. And inside the NHS the set-up is highly hierarchical and elitist.

The District Health Authorities have some indirectly elected members, but the majority are appointed by the government. And the Tories want to move towards more centralised and 'businesslike' management.

A socialist policy for the health service should start by eliminating all charges to patients. It should get rid of private medicine, and nationalise the drug companies without compensation.

Money should be taken from the profiteers and the military to make sure that the health service is adequately funded.

The service should be shifted towards health education and preventive medicine, and brought under democratic control by workers and local communities.

THE SHAPE of things to come in the health service was revealed by a 'consultative paper' published by the Oxford Regional Health Authority in October 1982.

Its proposals included:

*A 'qualifying period' for people moving into the area before they received any but emergency NHS care. Thornton View (Bradford i. of those struggles - to help ALL ATT:

*Charges for staying in hospital.

*Cutting down accident and emergency services so that not everyone would have access to them.

*Closure of all hospital for the mentally handicapped.

*Extensive use of volunteer labour for ancillary services in hospitals.