hospital management to slash the nursing staff.
ers in the Royal.
tain the 60 nurses in hospitals in the Portsmouth area.
or planning future redundancies. extend the NHS.' even better facilities."
The Labour leaders will reply that the 'country is in trouble', but we must say we do not care about a bankrupt capitalist system - we are not preparea co sacrince une health and living standards of the working class to that svstem.
The measures proposed by the Coordinating Committee are made to save money for capitalism.
RELEVANT This is why the MCAPP demand for a Workers' Enquiry is so relevant. Either the priorities and needs are to be determined by the capitalist state, or they are going to be decided by the workers.
If we do not smash the secret negotiations and demand the openHealth workers in Portsmouth have beaten back an attempt by the local Sixty nurses at the Royal Portsmouth and St James Hospitals who had just finished their three-year training were told that no jobs were available them. So Ron Pearson, a leading NUPE steward and a member of the National Coordinating Committee Against the Cuts in the NHS - a body set up at the MCAPP Conference - organised a mass meeting of all workThe meeting, which was attended by both nurses and ancillary workers. decided to organise a work-to-rule, banned overtime and called for a workers enquiry. Faced with this tough resistance - which also precipitated action in the St James Hospital - the management climbed down and 'discovered' an extra £40,000 in the kitty. This, they say, will be used to reThey hastened to add, however, that they were already £250,000 in the red on their nursing bill. And as the Wilson/Healey measures involve a fixed limit of cash for spending in the various sections, this means that the management can only try to overcome their spending "problem' on the nurses by a quicker turn-round of patients, cut-backs in other sections, Recognising that further cuts are on the way, health workers and other trade union militants in the Portsmouth area are beginning to organise now. They are holding a public meeting and inviting delegates from local trade union bodies to attend. The aim of the meeting, according to ad hoc committee secretary Aileen Mitchell, is to 'set up a broad based Action Committee which can organise united working class action to defend and Wing of the books -if we do not insist that a Workers Enquiry decides what should be the priorities - then we can neither meet the present attacks, nor can we ever change the NHS from one that is subordinated to the needs of capitalism into one that is based on the interests of the working class.
SUPPORT We are holding a meeting later this week of people in London, called by the Committee to Fight the Cuts in the NHS. This will be diseussing how to fight for the above demands and how to organise really big working class support to put them into practice. 9 all have to try and stop that.
offices instead.
Mrs Roberts is a civil servant who lives in the area served by the Temperance.
She told us: 'It is wrong to close the hos closed the accident department. When treated just down the road. Now you have to go to the UCH which is much further away. Services for women will *The Labour Goverment is cutting all the things that it should not do. They should stop wasting money on things like Concorde and put money into health."
John Green, a local building worker *I am against closina the hospital. I have been waiting for five monins aiready tor treatment mate of mine on this estate have waited for .TOnL OrGanISaTOnS been bloody dead by the time they got in. Cuts will make it even worse and if they try to close the Temperance, we fot nanung te cuts.
DAY STRIKE Tower Hamlets social workers, members of NALGO, went on strike last Friday in protest at the Concil's policy towards the homeless. Some of the workers face the threat of disciplinary action because they have refused to send any more homeless families to hotel accommodation and are putting one such family up in their own
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Social Seru eengt ment