JANET MAGUIRE, NCC national organiser, told the final rally in Trafalgar Square: "They talk about freedom of choice, but the workers have no right to choose Working women cannot afford to buy abortions. Crippled workers cannot afford to buy their way into the King Edward VII Hospital, like that pampered young ERNIE ROBERTS, NCC chairperson, pointed out that it was the working class who built the NHS, it is the working class who keep the NHS going, and that the NHS 'should be the property of the working class'.
HAROLD KING, chairperson of the London Trade Union & Old Age Pensioners Joint Committee, pointed out that it would be the old people from the working class who would be the chief sufferers if the cuts were allowed to go through. JOHN MITCHELL, full-time Secretary of NATSOPA London Joint Branches, took the collection. He set the ball rolling by pledging f50 from his own union.
KEVIN LING, a full-time officer representing NALGO, 'welcomed the demonstration' and 'urged a struggle against all cuts and all private practice inside and outside the St old-age pensioners. ate practice. standards and break up the social services woman who fell off her horse.
A CUTS CE Around 2,500 people marched through London last Sunday in the demonstration called by the National Coordinating Committee Against Cuts in the NHS (NCC). Of the hundred or so banners on the demonstration, the vast majority were from trades councils. trade unions, and Labour Party branches. Others included NAC groups, organisations of the revolutionary left, and a delegation of The representative character of the demonstration-there were many contingents from hospitals, as well as from other sections of the working class such as dockers, printworkers, building workers, carworkers and railworkers-shows the potential that exists for mounting a counter-offensive against the Labour Government's attacks on the NHS. The NCC must now take that campaign into the hospitals, putting its full support behind the fight against privSuch a campaign can not only play a decisive role in smashing the consultants' strikes, but can lay the basis for a fight to abolish private practice completely, outside as well as inside the NHS The decision of the NCC to support the 26 May Day of Action helps to link up the fight between cuts and the struggle against unemployment. By taking up the specific struggle to oppose all attacks on the NHS, and at the same time involving its supporters on a wide range of other issues that confront the workers movement, the NCC can play an important role in developing united action against the plans of the ruling class to drive down living Photos: LAURENCE SPARHAM (IFL), ANDREW WIARD (Report)
BAN ALL PRI DEFEND THE N.HS COMMIT ONST CUT BODK BRANCH DEMAND DRUGS
Red Weekly 29 April 1976 _ Pound/STUC 3