Workers in East London are setting the pace in the fight back against Labour's cuts in the NHS. A few weeks ago workers at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital intercepted a secret document which had been prepared by the City and East London Area Health Authority (Teaching).
The document contained extensive plans for reducing the medical services available in the predominantly working class East End. is served by seven hospitals: St Bartholomew's, St Leonard's; the Metropolitan; the German; the Mother's; the Eastern; and Hackney. All told, they provide only 2,500 beds for an area which has one of the largest rates in the country of infant mortality, chest diseases and nervous conditions.
The document seized by the health workers admits: 'Some of the hospitals have had very little spent on them in recent years, anticipating that they would become redundant'; and "The condition of some buildings is very poor. This gloomy picture is reinforced. because the document confesses: "The present financial stringency suggests that money is not likely to be allocated for any significant rebuilding.
'INTERNAL STREAMLINING' The only hope that the City and East London Authority can hold out 'for growth' is "by internal streamlining and rationalisation'. Its solution is simple enough. It proposes to close two of the hospitals in the district and sell them off. pital and the Metropolitan are to be put on the market, with an inevitable reduction of beds in an area which is desperately in need of more beds. Whether it will raise the necessary revenue is debatable - that it will The City/Hackney Health District This means that Eastern HosCOLIN SMITH, a member of MCAPP and the National Coordinating Committee Against the Cuts in the NHS, told Red Weekly: add to the waiting list is certain.
The London Borough of Hackney has come forward with a 'solution'. It might be prepared to take over the Eastern Hospital Site and some time in '15 to 20 years time, should the health service require it, it would 'make available a suitable, more central equivalent site'. That must be very cheering news to the chronically sick and old people who happen to need treatment now and who in 15 years time - providing the NHS can afford it - will be able to rise from the cemetery to go to this 'suitable, more central. site.
"MATERNITY WORK'
The document suggests that maternity work' in the "Mothers' Hospital could be transferred to an upgraded block at Hackney', and boldly proposes that 'the existing Mothers building could be adopted for mentally handicapped patients...
Past experience suggests that such a suggestion is no more than an excuse for closures and economies. Nine years ago, plans were made to close the Poplar Hospital and replace it with a new hospital at Newham. Next week the Poplar closes down, and not one brick has been laid towards building the Newham Hospital.
It is little wonder that the enraged health workers at the Queen Elizabeth staged a lightning strike when they got hold of this document.
At a local meeting when the Area Health Authority tried to justify their closures, they were shouted down by an audience of over 600 which was made up of workers and old-age pensioners. A big campaign headed by the East London Action Committee Against the Cuts is now under way as a result of this widespread resistance.
further document has been found of the working class.
Coordinating Committee was unthe present campaign.
mittee, which was set up by the Tories in 1973, has been kept in existence by Mrs Castle. Clearly all those promises in the Labour 6 These two documents - a in South Wales which is also plotting similar drastic cut-backs - show what is going on behind the backs sack this Committee.
The document of the London covered by London members of the Campaign to Fight the Cuts in the NHS this will mean a really big campaign launched at the MCAPP Conference. in the London area. They snow very clearly that the demand raised at the Conference to open the books' is a vital demand in EXISTENCE This London Coordinating Comall that activity. latest offensive. That means going into the hospitals, factories, onto the building sites, the housing estates - into every area where working class people are to be found.
It is the working class that will suffer if these proposals are put into practice. We have to make them aware that it is a matter of life and death for them. What is more, they are the only force that can beat back this offensive.
MUST RESIST
We must resist every single closure. OK, if the Government says a hospital is too old, we should reply: 'Yes. that is probaory true However, we have no intention of letting you close it until you have built a new one that can replace it and provide
red weekly 6 november 1975 social service cuts 11
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"This shows what's going on behind our backs!?