tion - the 38th government in 33 years.
The General Election to be held next month will be the most critical since the end of the last war. The Christian Dem ocrats find themselves in complete disper cent. Inflation is running at over 20 as son be augiest in any major inaus trial country.
ne la nas croopee in value even faster than the pound (by one third since January). This has sparked off a wave of capital smuggling from the coun try that now exceeds more than £25m 2 02y.
The Christian Democrat administradon nas become associated win ineliciency and graft. Various scandals link advantage of the impotence of the traditional ruling class parties to launch a further series of provocations and arson. Manv of the factories and bus depots have been guarded by workers detence squads to nip outrages in the bud. All the Moro Government did was to bleat hopelessly about ending political violence.
The election has been carefully timed to side-step two big problems for the Italian runng class. rust ine naconal wage agreements - which last for three years - had to be settled beforehand. The final agreement goes to the rank-and-file for ratification this week, rushed through by the trade union bureaucrats to stem the run on the lira hold at the heads of its 'friends' in the big bourgeoisie. Froadig the latter 1 the other direction, however, is the near hysterical reaction of the ruling class in pean colleagues with the withdrawal of the entire US military presence if EuroCommunism' (as Kissinger terms it) is allowed to grow from the Italian situaBOn emma in which the US finds itself: unable to make a direct military intervention into Italy, because of the strength of the working class; and equally incapable for the same reason of pulling off a coup utilising the extreme right wing in the al Health Service.
tial was his position promise. further concessions.
SHICHE Kissinger's statement reflects the dilThe next election will probably give The huge bulk of Lord Goodman has thrown a heavy shadow over working class expectations that this Government would get rid of pay-beds in the Nation Goodman was the go-between appoin ted by the Labour Government to deal with me consulents. Justnow maDar was revealed in a recent letter in ine times, waere ne declared that he had won for the doctors 'a victory for private practice. The consultants had achieved a massive com The issue has leapt back into the news with a fresh wave of industrial action launched by the consultants, to keep pay beds in the NHS and fight against any restriction on private medicine outside. All this has been accom panied by massive full page advertisements in the daily press. Labour's retreat has only encouraged them to demand Under Goodman's new proposals, only 1,000 of the 4,444 pay-beds in the NHS will be phased out in the near future. Yet when ancillary workers took blacking action against pay-beds in 1974, their struggle was bought off by promises that the Labour Government would deal with them through Parlia Castle's initial proposals were a wat ered down version of what they expected, but now even these limited measures will not be implemented. Ancillary workers feel they have been conned, which is why workers at the Royal quickly into action a fortnight ago.
ne consumns at me nospital went on a two day strike in defence of paybeds. But the unions organising the ancillary workers responded by putting a ban on private patients and refusing meals to doctors taking action. Confronted by this 'tit for tat' opposition, most of the doctors went back to work within hours - the first battle in the new round of pay bed disputes had been won by the labour movement.
Support for the fight to get rid of private practice is growing through the campaign to implement the policy adopted by the 1975 Labour Party Conference - for the abolition of pay-beds inside and outside the NHS. The Royal Berkshire workers have shown the essential accompaniment to that campaigl - action in the hospitals!
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May Day in Italy saw another display of the power of the working class. But it saw also the distress signal of a tottering political structure. The dissolution of parliament, as hundreds of thousands of workers demonstrated in the streets, meant the end of the minority Christian Democrat administra-