One of the most influential and rapidly growing organisations dedicated to the spreading of reactionary ideas throughout the working class the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC), is planning a mass lobby of Parliament on 20 November, SPUC is the anti-abortion group which organised mass rallies in Liverpool and Manchester carlier this year. Committed to keeping women tied to their traditional positions in the kitchen and nursery (where, it might be noted, they are less likely to be troublesome to the ruling class), SPUC - with the active collaboration of the churches — cakes a special interest in working class women. They have already issued a special appeal for funds which will allow them to make up the wages of anyone who has to miss a day at work in order to attend the lobby. SPUC has close working arrangements with other reactionary peddlers of ruling class morals' they bave hacked a petition for decency sponsored by Mary Whitchouse's National Viewers and Listeners Association' and the "Festival'of Light. as well as Whitehouse's more recent Anti-Obscenity Law petition. But of all these currents it i SPUC which has sumething of a mas influence and a working class audience.
The SPUC lobby will assemble at Contral Hail, Westminster and groups of 200 will leave every half hour from 2.15 p.m. on for the House of Conimons Discussions are taking place with a view to mounting some form of counter-demonstration. Women's Abortion and Contraceptiun Campaign (WACC) have proposed a motorcade leaving the South London Womens" Centre (14 Radnor Terrace, SW8)at 12.30. An important planning meeting will be held at the General Picton pub. (corner of Caledunian Road and Wharfedaje Road near Kings Cross) at 8 p.m. on Tuesday. 13 November to work out plans for further alone Roscontarine from unmens Thoration against hospital Coventry and Leamington Women's Liberation groups, with support from local colleges and the Coventry IMG. 200 counter-demonstrators marched down the main street of Leamington, leafletting shoppers and performing street theatre. Major developments have taken place in tis fight against rising prices in hospital canteens.
the struggle.
An eight day boycott of the canteen was organised in Duiwich Hospital by the NUPE branch committee, nurses, engineers and medical students. Other hospitals in the group have been contacted, and the strugele an evening of music and theatre for MacLean at the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, WC1.Friday 16th Nowember,730pm. Peggy Seeger. Ewan MacCol Kartoon Klowns Revolution Theatre The Exiles- Bobby Ca Gordon McCulloch-Trevor Hyet the Department of Health and Social Security stressing that their canteen takings have been cut by two thirds.
Throughout the struggle the importance of the unity of all bospital workers, and the necessity for support from the local labour movement has been stressed. A picket outside Duiwich Hospital was supported by Southwark Trade Council, ASTMS, and local teachers. Doctors and medical students in Dulwich have boycol ted their canteen. Patients at Kings College Hospital have set up a support committee collected t63, and many patienis have signed a petition in support of the struggle. HEALTH SERVICE CRISIS The All London Health Workers Alliance has called on trade unions in other hospitals to support the struggle, through messages of solidarity, by taking similar action and by sending delegates to other trade unions to explain the crisis in the health service and the need to build links with other workers in. preparation for the struggles against Phase 3. The President of Southwark Trades Council echoed these points when he addressed a general meeting of the workers involved in The response of the workers at Dulwich and Kings, purlicularly that of the nurses (the vast majority of whom are unorganised), shows how deep the crisis within the health service has become, and the way in which traditionally passive sections of workers are becoming militant in defending their own interests.
The hospital workers strike carlici this year showed that the Tory Government's professed concern for the low-paid is a sham. The Phase 3 proposals, even with the extra money offered under the 'unsociar hours clause, will not even enable hospital nurses and ancillary staff to maintain their present standard of living over the next year.
The next step at Kings and Dulwich should be the setting up of a committee to build support amongst bospital workers and the local Inbour movement for the demonstration which has been called for 1 December. This action can be an important move towards linking up these sections of workers in preparution for the struggle against Phase 3 JANE SUTHERLAND
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is spreading food prices