the 8 defendants appeared guilty before the trial even began. But for some months the mass media have been silent. Why? According to the Press Association, there was "no interesting copy in the case". Is it not interesting to know the far-reaching accusations which the defendants have so far levelled against the police, the judicial system, the whole system of capitalist exploitation in which we live? Is it not unusual, indeed sensational, when the defendants in a court can transtorm themselves into the prosecution and challenge the impartiality of the whole system of "law and order"? Is this really too dull for the Press Association, or is it perhaps too near the knuckle? But, if the dailies have been silent, one juicy little anti-Communist rag has been more than making up for this. The Red Mole would like to draw the attention of the Court (we are told this is how to put it) to an expensively produced little journal called East-West Digest, produced by the Conservative MP. Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, which speaks, in its November issue, of "those members of the Angry Brigade at present on trial". We are not legal experts, and we know that Mr Geoffrey StewartSmith is as staunch a defender of the "rule of law" as the head of Scotland Yard's Bomb Squad himself. But is this statement not the most monstrous contempt of court? The most blatant breach of the law? We will be interested to see whether the impartial' hand of the law metes out justice to this Conservative MP.
In the meantime the 8 defendants are threatened with savage sentences. One of the ways in which the left capitulates to bourgeois justice is by seeing the trial as though it were something quite outside the class struggle, something that cannot be affected by the action of socialists. In fact the main axis of the prosecution lawyers is now to try to persuade the jury that the Stoke Newington 8 are isolated nut-cases, over whose fate nobody need lose a night's sleep. So why not put them away and get back to work as quickly as possible? It is vitally important that from Monday, November 27th until the end of the trial all possible forces are brought onto the picket line outside the Old Bailey and outside the courts in provincial cities to demonstrate that the Stoke Newington 8 are not isolated and that the jury cannot believe that if they are found guilty they will be forgotten.
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE: Tariq Ali, Robin Blackburn, Peter Gowan, Alan Jones, Martin Meteyard, John Weal, Judith White.
DISTRIBUTION: Phil Sanders Published by Relgocrest for The Red Mole.
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Road, London N.I. force as some kind of volunteers who are thus particularly susceptible to moral blackmail. When they contemplate militant action in pursuit of their own interests they are invariably accused by the management by cynically endangering the lives of the patients. But it is the management's cynical exploitation of the workers' dedication to the patient which allows them to get away with running a service so inadequate that it frequently endangers life.
HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURE Militancy is also inhibited by the extremely hierarchical structure of hospital staff. This perpetuates the barriers to class unity by turning their energies into preserving the marginal privileges of their status, and by demoralising those at the bottom of the ladder into a belief that they are only paid what they are worth. The doctors at the top derive an inflated self-importance which, combined with the mystique attaching to the role of the doctor, has ensured that they have no hesitation in looking after their own special interests. Such a hierarchy reinforces the hand of the bureaucracies of the unions, where they exist. The appalling situation of many hospital workers can be expected to deteriorate if they do not organise in a new way. The Government's plans for the N.H.S, are designed to deal with the ruling class's crisis of profitability in a more drastic way than ever before. The main theme is cost-effectiveness/ cost-minimisation under "scientific" management to be introduced in a sweeping reorganisation of the N.H.S.
worked out by business consultants McKinsey & Co.
LOW PRIORITY To put an end to the chronic bad pay and conditions and to meet these current and future attacks hospital workers must realise that the source of their problems is the low priority which capitalism places on the health service and its workers. Thus their enemy is not just the management but the Government and the social system it defends. The imposition of the freeze should make that clear.
A prerequisite for fighting the Government and the freeze is to organise independently of the bureaucracies. Union chiefs said they could not justify the ts claim demanded by many branches, some of whose members take home less than 14, and while asking for a miserable f4 they were tryig to negotiate a voluntary freeze with the government. Now, instead of threatening to bring their members out on strike if the claim is not conceded, they are asking to be treated as a special case. This sort of talk, suggesting that:
it's O.K. to hit other groups of workers provided you don't touch us, just helps to divide the working class. What the union chiefs should be doing is explainSUBSCRIBE!
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