working class were the result of the pressure of the workers' movement, imposing those reforms on a capitalist health service, and it is those reforms that the capitalist class is now trying to cut from the NHS.
WORKERS' PLAN
Only a health service which took account of the social nature of health, which sought to find collective solutions to problems of health, and which approached health care according to the needs of the working class, could in any way be considered a socialist health service. A real assessment of the health needs of the working class would require drawing on the experience of the whole of the working class - part of which would be such policies as an occupational health service, an extensive health education programme, and free abortion facilities available for women on demand.
To implement such a socialist plan for the health service would mean breaking the power of the AHAs and similar bodies of the state, as well as the power of the consultants within the health service. To impose such a workers' plan would require the creation of a workers state.
It is in the course of the struggles against the cuts that such a workers' plan can best be developed. Even to win the most minimal reforms it is necessary to begin to challenge the monopoly of the consultants and the bodies of the state in the NHS. Take the struggle against private practice. It was the action of healthworkers up and down the country in blacking private beds that forced Barbara Castle to take on the consultants. It will be those same healthworkers who can best enforce the banning of pay beds in the NHS.
SABOTAGE
Or take the struggle for free abortion facilities available on request under the NHS. Even under the 1967 Act, which is quite inadequate, the consultants use their power in many areas such as Birmingham to prevent abortion facilities being provided. Even if free abortion on demand became a woman's legal right, it would still be necessary for the workers' movement to organise to enforce such legislation and prevent the sabotage of the consultants.
It is out of these struggles and experiences that a workers' programme for the transformation of the NHS to meet the needs of the working class can best be forged. This is better than planned to effectively serve the needs of humanity.
Barbara Castle a hundred and one tidy blueprints for health.
The struggle to defend the health service cannot be left to health workers alone. The IMG supports the call by the Medical Committee Against Private Practice for the creation of ACTION COMMITTEES in every locality to begin to organise the fight against the whole range of cuts in the social services, as well as the NHS. This is necessary not only because the problems of health, housing, and education are the concern of all the working class, but also because it is important that one part of the public sector, such as the NHS, is not defended at the expense of others.
Such committees will be able to campaign within the local labour movement to monitor the cuts and build a fight against them.
They can begin to organise to force the the district, area and even regional health authorities to stop the cuts and reveal their immediate and long-term plans to the labour movement. Where such bodies already exist, albeit around some single issue such as the closure of a hospital, wider based action committees should not be counterposed to them, but attempts should be made to broaden their aims. It is also important that such bodies begin the process of co-ordinating their actions on a regional and national scale.
It is clear that the defence and the transformation of the NHS can only be achieved as part of a general offensive against all of Wilson's Tory policies.
alternative policies outlined above can play an important part not only in defending the health care of the working class but in building the fight to rid the workers' movement of the Wilson leadership.
A new way of life...
The drua companies - tranquillisers for canitalism. Rather than the benefits of scientific advance being used to improve the health of the community it is cynically tailored to control 'disturbed' people and boost the profits of the drugs companies. The problems are alwavs private and individual, not public and social. The surreal tone of their adver tisina is a combination of fairvland and Brave New World. Onlv when the drugs industry is nationalised under workers control will medical knowleage be pooled and resources tion' of the few exception of the police -penditure was sucked out.
estimates. have been the last. yet to come is no idle boast.
But a campaign by HOSPITAL lic sector borrowing requirement. million.
Wilson and Healey pulled no punches in their speeches at the Labour Party conference. They intend to continue with their policy of trying to save a decaying British capitalism by savage attacks on the living standards and jobs of the working class. The £6 wage norm, the rising spectre of mass unemployment and the cuts in public spending are inseparable They are all part and parcel of the same policy - "sacrifices" by the many to 'save the naThe Wilson Government not only inherited the Tory cuts of May and December 1973 - which totalled £1,700 million - but went still further. This January, in the White Paper on public expenditure for the next five years, the growth rates for every sector - with the - were reduced. Education, for example, was cut back from a rate of 3.5 per cent per year to 2.7 per cent.
Having once tasted blood, Healey wasn't slow to sink his fangs in deeper. In the April Budget a further £900 million of public exAnd only three months later he was back for still more -the July measures mean in real terms a downward revision by 10 per cent of tne January We can be sure that these will not Healey's threat of worse The July measures hit the social services in two ways. Firstly, the workers were forced SUPPORTS MORKERS to take a cut in wages via the £6 norm along with the rest of the trade union movement. The Wilson leadership particularly hoped that wage restrictions would help to lower the pubThe wage rises that these workers have won over the last few years, added to the dramatic decline in profits to finance the state sector and the sharp increase in interest rates, have caused the sector's borrowing to shoot from £1,378 million working class in 1971 to £6,371 million in 1974 to over £10 million in 1975. The Houghton award to teachers, for instance, contributed to a 40 per cent increase in education current expenditure for the first three months in 1975. Cuts Apparent Secondly, the previous cuts, together with the ceilings on public spending imposed under the Healey measures, have begun to take effect with a vengeance on future expansion - espe cially on building programmes.. In the education field this can be seen most starkly. In the first quarter of 1973 the value of building projects started totalled £216.7 million; by 1974 that dropped dramatically to £55.8 million; and in the first three months of this year it had further plummeted to a meagre £34.5 These cuts have generally hit those areas of the most concern to the working class: in fact, between 1973 and 1974 the Din Channe value of new orders received for new buildings in schools, universities, health and sewerage fell by 17, 55, 25 and 49 per cent respectively.
The lack of building expansion has had a number of results. Tne already latge number of building workers on the dole has worsened and the stockpile of idle resources in the building trade has expanded: between 1972 and 1974 the stocks of building bricks rose from 180 million to 925 million - a 514 per cent increase. The facts speak for themselves - the resources of the labour power and raw materials exist, but the Labour Government chooses to ignore them. Productivity Furthermore, the drive for greater productivity within the 'welfare state' is being stepped up at the same at the same time as the services provided are being run down. In the health service this can be seen very clearly. Between 1973 and 1974 the number of staffed beds in the National Health Service fell by 26,200 to 421,000; the waiting lists rose by 7,900 and the number of days each patient spent in hospital fell. Hence the pressure on the nursing staff and ancillary workers becomes greater, as the patients they are dealing with are invariably in a critical condition.
However the cuts in the social services do not just concern nurses, ancillaries, teachers, GUHSE patients, or students - they affect the whole of the working class. Not only does the chopp ing of building programmes have repercussions throughout the economy and spell further unemployment, but these cuts are an attack on the gains the working class as a whole has made since 1945. They are another method whereby the Labour Government is stepping up its attack on the living standards of the It is necessary for the whole of the working class to organise a fight back against Wilson's Tory cuts. This means raising demands that can build a class-wide response, such as a sliding scale of wages and social spending to protect them against inflation, and a crash programme of useful public works which would not only help to restore the cuts but begin to provide jobs for the million and a quarter unemployed.
The MAPP conference and the lobby called by the South East Region of the TUC for 21 October against the education cuts are the beginnings of a much needed response. Perhaps then the editors of Menagement Today will eat their words: 'Everyone wants better hospitals, schocis, housing and local authority facilities, but several factors make it unlikely that the increase will be substantial.
The working class certainly do want better facilities, and we intend to have them.
a delegate to the Labour Party _ red weekly 9 october 1975 MP, has consistently supported White. Bolton Labour Party mem-