After the successful conference on 11 October, we asked MCAPP what were the next steps in the fight to defend the NHS. Q After the MCAPP Conference, what next?
A The Co-ordinating Committee will be organising meetings in the localities and setting up local conferences. The aim of these is to get the support of both health workers and trade union members zom other industries. What we want to do is to get action against any cuts made in the NHS.
The Co-ordinating Committee will also be producing a monthly palcun. This should not just supply information on the cuts and struggles against them - important as that is. It must also start a democratic debate about workers' control in the NHS, and work out what steps are needed to achieve that.
This is not just important to defeat the cuts in the NHS. It also affects workers in other jobs who are faced with the same problems.
The Bulletin will be open to everyone who supports the general aims of the Conference. We will be writing in particular to those people who attended the Conference. Because so many people who wanted to speak could not get to the rostrum, we will be asking them to send in written contributions Instead QAt the MCAPP Conference the delegate from the South West Region of the TUC suggested occupations of hospital wards threatened by closures. What do you think of A I personally think it is an excellent idea. Nobody wants the NHS run from dilapidated, antiquated Victorian wards. However, until new buildings are put up we will oppose any reductions in an already inadequate service.
We should encourage staff to keep the wards running. Support for actions like that could gain big support from local people, who will see who is on their side. It is a positive way to fight back against the Government's policies.
What is your attitude to the junior doctors' claim?
A Our resolution to the Conference made clear that we support the struggles of health workers fighting for better pay and conditions. Where possible, committees of trade unionists should be set up to support the junior doctors and junior doctors should be invited to trade union branches and shop stewards' committees to explain their case.
• What do you think of the Government's moves to set up a Royal Commission into the Health Service?
A The Conterence called for a workers enquiry into the NHS The Royal Commission will start from what the capitalist state can afford to give to the NHS.
Even before its Report is printed its conclusions are obvious. It will say that it is concerned about the decline in the health service, but that no more money can be allow ed. Then it will sanction the cuts.
We want a health service responsible to and controlled by the working class. Working people have to make the NHS their own. If they do not do this, sickness, disease and illness will get worse.
This is why the workers movement has to set up its own enquiry and demand access to the books. The labour movement alone should decide the priorities of spending and the allocation of resources, and that means that it must have full access to all information. have to fight the secret plans of the Labour Government and the Area Health Authorities, because these plans will worsen the health of the working people.
Royal Conmissions do nothing more than justify the policies of capitalism terests of the workers. A workers' enquiry has the opposite effect, beRay Perry is the branch secretary of COHSE at Velindre Hospital, Cardiff. He is a member of the Labour Party and is also a delegate to the Cardiff Trades Council. Ray was also a delegate to last week's MCAPP Conference.
We will transform the NHS.
• they exclude the inyou think this is? more.
conterence unheard of since 1926. ative inside the labour movement to Mrs Castle and her plans, and that is what worries them.
MCAPP set out to build a broad united struggle rooted inside the working class against the cuts. The 11 October Conference was a modest step towards this objective. But it did show a tremendous potential. We can now start to turn that modest beginning into a really big movement.
This is why the press are so worried. They understood that we were not just trying to organise a protest movement, but that we had set out to co-ordinate and centralise the forces inside the unions and the Labour Party who want an alternative to the pro-capitalist policies of the right-wing Labour leaders.
• so you think that the campaig against cuts concerns all sections of the working class The resolution passed by the Cardiff Trades Council - this called for a public enquiry into the NHS - ano une back the t receivee rom a sections orine labour movement showed that the fight against the cuts is the concern of all the working class.
• What do you think the role of the MCAPP Conference was, and how can it contribute to the defence and exten sion of the NHS?
MCAPP in its original form was a good idea. The Conference shows a willing ness to develoo tinto a much more an-embracing organisation of workers interested in the health and social serIt is my belief that MCAPP should now develoo !nto a healin and social Services Liaison Committee with bran ches established all over ine country This would then be equipped to fight every social injustice, ranging from prescription charges to the Old Age Per The Conference can launch MCAPP on a national scale and provide a co-ordinating body for all groups of