last week he told Red Weekly why they had taken this decision:
6 to organise the unions and the Labour We support ine NCC because It work: Party to take action against the cuts. The labour movement has taken the NHS for granted and allowed it to go into decline. This must be stopped.
We are setting up a local committee of the NCC in Hull. Like the NCC everywhere else, one of its aims will be to offset the pressure of the consultants. We must make sure that Mrs Castle does not cop out on the pay beds issue.
Private practice caters for those people who can afford to pay. There should be no private competition to une nearn set vice. All the private hospitals should be nationalised.
We must not simply leave the fight to health workers. The health service is When we were making the Tim we pur forward some policies...things like 'open the books under workers control", 'sliding scale of public expenditure', 'nationalise the drug companies under workers control ....but these don't appear in the film.' These words from a TGWU militant, who appears in a section of the tim, at a discussion meeting held after the film's first national showing underline its main weakness.
As an informative documentary, showing examples of how and where the cuts are occurring in all the main sectors of the welfare state, the film is very useful. We are shown, through interviews with those directly involved, cuts in house building in Glasgow, nursery cutbacks in Islinaton. hospital closures in snettield and Tower Hamlets, cuts in school building and teacher training on the Isle of Dogs and in South London, and -through an interview with GLC concillor Ken Livingstone - a glimpse of GLe cutoacKs.
The film also rightly stresses the link the responsibility of the whole trade union movement. We aim to involve trade union branches, Labour Parties, trades councils, shop stewards' committees. A series of meetings will be held, and then we are calling a Conference. There must be a national movement and a national campaign on this issue.
Where hospital closures are threatened, we must exert intense pressure to stop them. If health workers take action to stop the closures then I believe we should give them support. We cannot tell the hospital workers what to do, but if they act then we should mobilise the support of dockers and other other trade unionists.
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Tony Fee is a shop steward on the Hull Docks and an active member of Hull Central Labour Party. His shop stewards' committee is represented on the National Co-ordinating Committee Against Cuts in the NHS (NCC), and