Dear Sister and Brother, The decline of the National Health Service is a matter of concern to the whole working class movement. Good health care means adequate financing of the NHS and the allocation of resources according to the needs of the patients.
The recent conference of the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs (ASTMS) carried a resolution demanding an imediate injection of £1,000 million into the NHS; a sliding scale of expenditure for the NHS to combat inflation, and the abolition of private practice both inside and outside the NHS.
The Medical Committee Against Private Practice (MCAPP) is a group of health service members which was formed during the wave of health workers' struggles in 1974. MCAPP has since then involved itself in a whole series of struggles around the defence and extension of the NHS. Always MCAPP has tried to involve other trade unionists in these strug gles, as it considers that a proper and genuine socialist health service is in the interests of the whole working class.
It is for this reason that MCAPP is calling a conference in London on 11 October. The aim of the conference will be to establish the maximum unity inside the working class movement around the demands adopted by the ASTMS conference. It will discuss how these demands can be made the official policy of as many trade unions as possible. Further more, it will discuss how to fight to implement these demands.
In many areas cut-backs are taking place in the NHS, some hospitals have been closed down, plans to build new hospitals are being postponed, buildings and equipment are becoming even more outdated, and funds are not being made available for their renewal. These cutbacks affect all workers and their families, and often the local trade unions along with other groups in the community have resisted these cuts. Another task that the conference will have to discuss is how to co-ordinate these local struggles and get national backing for them.
MCAPP also supports the idea of a Workers' Inquiry into the health ser vice so that its priorities and needs can be decided by the working class.
If your organisation supports such a conference you can take any one or all of the following steps to help build the conference: sponsor it; make a donation - no matter how large or small - to its organising costs; get a supply of MCAPP brochures for distribution amongst your members.
With all best wishes, We agree to sponsor the 11 October conference called by MCAPP We enclose a donation to MCAPP We would like copies of your brochure (cost 25p per hundred, post free)
We would like a speaker from MCAPP NAME OF ORGANISATION...
Details of person to whom correspondence should be sent NAME Dr P Stern (Secretary, MCAPP)
Yes/No Yes/No and return to. Or Paul Stern. 55 Bride Lane London N.W.71 (01-455-49201