The following letter has been received from the Medical Committee Against Private Practice. MCAPP's intention to organise a broad conference on 11 October merits the full support of all socialists and trade unionists.
Readers are urged to order copies of this letter as well as supplies of the MCAPP brochure, which explains both the crisis in the National Health Service and the measures needed to fight it.
Red Weekly readers should raise this in their trade union branches, trades councils, Labour Parties and shop stewards committees. Such a conference can lay the basis for a unified working class fight against cuts in the NHS. This means getting maximum sponsorship for the conference and waging a campaign to get delegations from the labour movement.
Medical Committee Against throughout the country fighting Labour's wage-cut plans.
But once the cheering has stopped it is necessary to look at just how much the deal is worth - and who is going to pay for it.
All grades of rail workers will ge 27.5 per cent backdated to 28 Apri the original tribunal award. From 4 August there will be an additional 2.5 per cent plus allowances of beween 5p and £1.30 for the lowe aid. Till these allowances come in to effect, the guaranteed minimum earnings level of £36.70 a week proposed by the tribunal will operate with a guarantee that no rail workers wages will fall below this level after the new £34.65 basic comes tation with the British Railways Board and the Government. Although the increases achieved are comparatively small, ihey will be rightly seen as a victory by rail workers and other workers In the fight against sackings, speedup and BR's rationalisation plans, rail workers can expect little help from NUR general secretary Sidney Weighell. When Wilson, Healey and Foot repeatedly talked of the inability to meet the NUR's claim 'in full' they were providing Weighell and the BR with a potential get-out But the price of that get-out is the NUR's acceptance of, and votes for a new hard-line Social Contract in September.
Small size of deal and its step by step implementation makes even more urgent the need for a sliding scale of wages to protect rail workers' standard of living from the effects of raging inflation.
NUR members will have to fight to get their delegates to next month's national conference to support the resolutions against the Social Contract. In its place rail workers can launch the fight for a freeze on all rail fares, a sliding scale of wages and public expenditure against the effects of inflation, and an integrated transport plan with all jobs guaranteed.
James Hurst Photo: CHRIS DAVIES (Report)
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WEEKLY National