Against all the cuts in the NHS and for the abolition of private practice that is the theme of this weekend's demonstration organised by the National Coordinating Committee Against Cuts in the NHS (NCC).
The NCC demonstration is part of the growing opposition in the grass roots of the workers movement to the Tory policies of the Labour Government. Our problem is how to bring these new angry forces into effective action. Unemployment, the fraud of the 3 per cent increase and the tax 'concession' gimmick, and the cuts in the public sector all go together.
The bosses won't produce because profits are not high enough - so they throw people out of work. To boost profits Labour pumps in money to industry - borrowed from the finance houses, who then demand repayment out of the social services which have been fought for by decades of struggle. comes policy aims to keep those profits healthy by depressing living standards - six per cent knocked off since last year.
HAS TO BE WON The fight against this offensive is just begin ning, and it has to be won. Defeat would point the road back to the Thirties, with worsening living standards, the demoralisation of permanent unemployment of millions, and further cuts in welfare provision.
This fight can't be won by relying on the 'left' MPs and those trade union leaders who 'regretfully' not only support wage restraint and cuts in public expenditure, but actually sit in with the Labour Government concocting these schemes. Nor are protest and pressure politics effective. It is not enough to do as the left MPs did on the cuts, abstaining in the vote on Healey's proposals but then standing on the sidelines, failing to organise any real resistance.
Mass action against the Government's aus terity broadside has been slow and hesitant to date. But organisation is growing. The massive turn out of 3,041 delegates to the Assembly on Unemployment last month, which voted for national action on 26 May, is the most important development, There are others. Twenty thousand thronged the streets of London in February to protest against the education cuts. 5 March saw the city of Dundee brought to a standstill as thousands of workers streamed out of the factories striking in protest against cuts.
the jobless. ployment. ing down.
have to be fought for. This means demands which show that there is another road from that of the cuts; and forms of organisation which can mobilise people for action.
The veil of secrecy which drapes the plans and financing of the NHS have to be exposed through the demand of opening the books to the inspection of the entire trade union movement. This information has to be got to everyone concerned with the future of the health service, through a workers enquiry.
Such information should be used to draw up a programme of action which should insist that the public sector be made 'inflationproof through a sliding scale of social expenditure. Such a programme must not only defend the existing provision in the health services, but also show how the working class can go forward to extend these services and bring them under its own control.
All over Britain action committees in towns and cities have mushroomed to fight the various cuts. National bodies like the NCC and the Labour Party Committee against the Housing Cuts were formed to fight around particular issues. In the weeks leading up to the demonstration NCC teams have been touring hospitals, building sites, and workplaces to agitate and get support.
Similar actions are going forward on health education, housing, pensions, and so on. A further step must be collaboration and coordination between these bodies. The decision of the NCC to support the 26 May Day of Action is an excellent example of how that collaboration can be put into practice. It also highlights the demand for a a programme of public works to meet social need and employ The calling of local and national meetings of all those fighting the cuts to discuss joint activity can begin from the starting point of the Day of Action. The task involved is big. It means involving the widest possible forces from the factories, the sites, the docks, the unions and the Labour Party to link up with all the various struggles on cuts and unemDIRECT ACTION it was the strength and power of the workers movement that rolled back the Industrial Relations Act. It was the miners' direct ac tion which defeated Heath's incomes policy and eventually brought his Government crash To defeat the aims of the ruling class and their agents in the 'new' Callaghan leadership will require similar action.
Organisations like the NCC have to set themselves the aim of mobilising industrial action against the anti-working class policies of this Government. The NCC also has to try to win support for every attempt to defend any section of the social services under attack The campaign for a recall TUC to break with the Government's policies is central to that general offensive - to rid the workers movement of last year's decisions to support the Government's economic strategy and to prepare a struggle against those policies. The fight to build the NCC on the basis of a real united working class resistance to the rundown of the NHS is part of the fight against the cuts as a whole.