[UNERS SSOCIATION -Up on FREERS ACSON COLCATTEE LILACTICH…]

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UNERS SSOCIATION -Up on FREERS ACSON COLCATTEE LILACTICH CFALL HEALTH, WO Sea AT ITS meeting on February 13 the North Staffs District Health Authority approved proposals for reorganisation including the closure of three hospitals.

The District Health Authority put out a consultative document on its proposals last year, but the local Labour Party failed to make any submissions - and the Labour Deputy Leader of Stoke City Council, Ted Smith, endorsed the proposals!

Action Committees had been set up at the three threatened hospitals, and the committee at the Westcliffe Geriatric Hospital invited councillors from the northern end of the City to a meeting to discuss the closure. Committee members expressed great anger at Ted Smith's statement that the hospital should have been bulldozed 30 years ago.

The Westcliffe Action Committee called on the councillors to make public statements in support of the hospital; but the councillors refused, assuring the Action Committee that they would "lobby behind the scenes" instead.

The Action Committee lobbied the meeting of the DHA on February 13 and the only councillors to turn up were Jimmy Dunn and SO supporter Arthur Bough. A dozen other SO supporters also supported the lobby.

The DHA also proposes to close down school clinics [minor ailment. clinics, as they have redesignated them], or where they are used for other purposes to take the school nurses out of them. When minor accidents occur at school, children will have to be rushed several miles across the city to the Accident Unit.

It is also rumoured that half the 100 beds which were to be made available at the City General Hospital for geriatric patients from Westcliffe will now be used for other purposes.

More health cuts A SPECIAL hospital centre -the Leon Gillis Unit at Queen Mary's Hospital in Roehampton, London - is being forced into partial closure by government health cuts.

It was set up in 1963 to help thadlidomide children and now deals with spina bifida and other severely disabled children.

The centre is being told to make cuts of up to £450,000 by April (the end of the financial year).

On Monday, March 5, the Richmond, Twickenham and Roehampton health authority is due to discuss the cuts -with proposals of withdrawing weekend and rota care service.

Pit closure

ON Friday, March 2, the National Coal Board is closing Cronton colliery, near Liverpool, because remaining coal stocks at the 70year old pit are "'uneconomic" to mine.

550 workers will lose their jobs; though the NCB has said that the miners would be given the choice in the coming weeks of moving to other collieries in the North West.

Union ban

FOLLOWING moves to ban union membership at GCHQ the government is now pressing for a no-disruption agreement with 900 House of Commons workers - employed by the House of Commons Commission - in talks with their Civil Service union representatives.

Do MPs fear that their bars, restaurants and other perks may face disruption in the future, or perhaps that government secrets that threaten the working class may be overheard and passed onto other union mem-