Government's cutbacks.
There are two very different disputes in progress. The consultants, fighting for the inclusion of pay-beds in the terms of reference of the Royal Commission, are opposed to a health service meeting the needs of the working class. Through their actions and threats they are sabotaging the development of a free NHS so that they can continue to line their pockets tomorrow. This NCC is thoroughly opposed to the aims and actions of the consultants.
The case of the junior doctors (JHDs) is very different. The JHDs are being asked by Barbara Castle to accept a wage-cut before they are allowed the elementary right to a 40-hour week. The demand of the JHDs for a 40-hour week without loss of pay is wholly in the interests of the working class. Lack of Resources The workers' movement must support the fight of all groups of health workers for the best pay and conditions inside the NHS. Over half a million people are on the waiting lists, millions of people are suffering because of chronic lack of resources. It is the policies of the Labour Government, with the £6 pay norm and its refusal to expand the NHS, that are the major block to the JHDs' victory. Understaffing and the operation of the incomes policy in the NHS, both obstacles faced by the JHDs, are indirectly and directly the result of the Government's policies.
However, this NCC notes that the vast majority of the JHDs, faced with Barbara Castle's intransigence and the lack of real action from the labour movement in the past in defence of the NHS, are being thrown into the arms of the reactionary consultants. Like the consultants, many JHDs are threatening to resign from the NHS and are taking action which includes a refusal to operate emergency services. Moreover, many JHDs are siding with the consultants in a fight to retain privalc Dracuice.
The consultants' action to maintain private practice has not gone unscathed in some hospitals. Members of the National Union of Public Employees in Birmingham are blacking all 158 pay beds in NHS hospitals there, while health workers at the Royal Northern Hospital in North London have also started an immediate private patients ban. Red Weekly talked to STEVE JOB, a General & Municipal Workers Union shop steward at the Whittington and Royal Northern hospitals, about the ban. • How did the ban come about?
The same day the consultants started their action, an emergency meeting of tants' action. porters ane uneatre technicians. supported wy some nurses, votea unanimousiy to slap a ban on private patients. The ban is obviousiy nitting them where it nurts - our senior shop steward was called a nazi by a trenzied consultant anaesFor cente. thetist • Do you think this type of action should be extended?
The consultants' action is threatening the very existence of the NHS and the health of the working class. We have the whole INto. to act last - onvate sauent oans snoure be started in every nospital were tney exIsT.
Mass meetings should be called to explain the necessity for action and to co-ordinate the ban. I am very critical of our union leaders for not organising this kind of action at a Hational ICvCl Statement from the National Coordinating Committee Against Cuts in the NHS This NCC cannot support any alliance with the consultants over the JHDs' demands, opposes all threats to resign from the NHS, and in particular opposes any support by JHDs for consultants in their fight to retain private practice. Such a line for action can only serve to undermine the NHS further.
We believe that only a campaign to win the broad labour movement to take action in support of the JHDs and to defend the NHS can effectively win the JHDs demands. In the course of this campaign we should try to win the support of JHDs with the demand: Break with the consultants. Fight alongside the trade union and labour movement to defend the NHS.
We believe the labour movement should support the following programme of demands for junior doctors, in line with the programme put forward for struggle by the full conference, and fight for an alliance with them in the battle to defend the NHS: For a 40-hour week for the JHDs; for satisfactory overtime rates compatible with other health service workers; increase the number of doctors in the NHS; for no discrimination against women doctors; for the right of JHDs to negotiate a contract of service without interference from consultants; whole-time NHS contracts for all consultants; for an end to all private practice; oppose the consultants' action on pay beds -defend the NHS.
We believe we have to fight for the Labour Government to implement these policies and for JHDs to fight alongside the labour movement to achieve this.
In pursuit of this we believe the following actions are necessary: (a) fighting nationally for MPs, national unions, TUC, CLPs, trades councils etc. to take up these demands and organise for action to back them up; (b) organising through the action committees in the It will be impossible for health workers workers and South Wales miners that really turned tne tide during tne nurses struggle last year. Unless the junior doctors extend their fight and go out to • What is the attitude of the junior never win their demands - Castle can hospital doctors to the consul- USE SIL IL OUL. I'm also involved in the Islington Campaien Reainst Ine CUTs. Wich Invo Unofficially most of them resent the consultants' attempts to merge the two disputes, but they still have illusions the cuts early next year, and we hope in the British Medical Association and the this will involve the widest possible numwhole idea of doctors being some kind isations, etc, both inside and outside the I think we have to break the juniors DuDliC sector from the BMA and explain to them that their struggle for improved working conditions is part and parcel of the fiaht against the cuts and for the defence of ised by the Medical Committee in the private patient bans, and also in nev should be invoived Against Private Practice shows a the committees to fight the cuts like the one we have here in Islington. • How do you see workers outside - such as opening the books of the area the NHS becoming involved? s health authorities, and building local I think taking this fight into the whole action committees - are the kind of working class is extremey imoorant. thing we need to go forward.
tants taking action in defence of pay-beds A conference is to be called in the Humberside area to fight the cuts in the NHS.
The Hull dockers, who are represented on the National Coordinating Committee, converied a meeting last week to plan the conference.
Docks shop steward Alan Kirkby chaired the meeting, which was attended by health workers from COHSE, dockers from the T&GWU and the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers (the "blue' union), Labour Party and Communist Party members, and other trade unionists. An organising committee was elected to start preparations for the conference, and a recall meeting will be held on 16 December which will discuss the resolution carried at the MCAPP Conference. 40 hours for JHDs -to defend the NHS on their own. It was the strike action by Sheffield engineering the organised labour movement, they can ves workers from the whole public sector.
We're planning a local conference against ber of trade unionists, community organ• Do you think the resolution pass- be thrashed out.
ed at the recent conference organI thought the conference was verv impressive. The demands in the resolution localities to win the labour movement to these policies and actions necessary to win them; (c) inviting JHDs to come to the action committees and discuss ways of campaigning for these demands both within the labour movement and amongst JHDs; (d) building and extending the private practice bans called for by unions in the NHS; (e) fighting for all trade unions represented in the NHS to take these up through stewards' bodies and branches; (f) withdrawal of services for all consul"Have you any beds? There must be someone you can chuck out!" It is lines like this, spoken by a harassed casualty officer to a ward sister on the phone, which make Red Ladder's latest production what it is — a hilarious, yet committed picture of the dec aying health service and the need to defend it against attack.
This play should be required viewing by all workers organisations, and all those fighting the Labour Government's cuts. It is worth a million branch resolutions, both as persuasive propaganda and as a vehicle for a discussion of the way forward.
The play covers the whole field - the overcrowding, the under-staffing, the secrecy and back-door methods of Barbara Castle and the civil service, the role of the consultants, drug companies and private health schemes, the mystique of the nurses 'vocation' - "But what about the patient?' - and the meaning of the 'social wage". It also touches on much deeper issues, such as the vital need to see many medical ant psychological problems, particularly those of women, in their social context rather than in the cold isolation or the doctor s surgery. Pernaps its practical conciusion: are weak - but it is precisely in discussion around the play that such questions can The dramatic highspots of the play are the consultant's tour of the wards, follow ed by his admiring, mesmerised brood of students, and the careful build-up to the first blacking of private patients by ancillary staff - "We're not doing privates today' - which will have you cheering and rolling about. But the thing which lifts this play into a class or is own is une music — wrom me sone ano-cance opening scouenco tracing the origins of the NHS, through the cabaret-style send up of BUPA and the consultants, to the brilliantly pertormed Vallium complete with chorus and pill bottle maraccas] which hits hard and low at the drug manufacturers.
All in a this is a show not to be missed - political Ineatre at is very, very Des Those in the North, where Red Ladder will soon be based, have a rare treat to come
up in Britain against unemployment.
system that spawns it. In the years after the First World War a mighty movement grew Then as now the union leaders muttered pious words about the 'horrors and deprivations of unemployment'; but then as now they remained at the best passive, while at the worst they acted as a barrier to building working class unity against unemployment and the capitalist they were forced to accept a resolution calling upon the executive councils of all trade unions affiliated to the Labour Party and the TUC to test the feeling of their members on the issue of direct action against the Government's failure to do anything about unemployment. Red Weekly 11 December 1975 ELe WOrKLOUSC. 1921 they were cut to pre-March levels and the Guardians started to implement measures to cut down relief. In Wandsworth the Guardians announced that applicants for relief would be offered tickets for gan to get results. When Parliament re-assembled in October 1921 it was announced that unemployment scales were to be revised, and for the first time dependants' allowances would be paid. Heartened by this success the unemployed movement spread its roots, and on 21 November 1921 it met in London for a three-day con
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*It will be impossible for health workers to defend the NHS on their own'