SABOTAGE!
The shape of things to come - there will be many more empty, abandoned hospital-wards if the consultants carry through their work-to-rule. PAPER OF THE INTERNATIO MARXIST GROUP down.
the national press have gleefully seized on this issue and are giving enthusiastic support to the consultants, defending the phony capitalist ideu of "free choice', which in reality means the right of a few to make a profit at the expense of the rest.
At the same time the private medial agencies are building up an alternative service outside the NHS. Outfits like BEPA, Allied Investmerls and American Medical Incornational are going ahoad with their plans for a rapid expansion of 9 JANUARY 1975 No 83 As the National Health Service fortes on the brink of raisite.
gration the consultants are threatening to bring it crashing Rejecting the Government's proposals, which they see as an attack on their 'right" to hawk their services on the open market.
even boasted that money for the E60 million building programme 15 being raised from the pension funds of the hig unions.
the Labour Goveroment stands mute Basing itself on a chronically ailing capitalist system which can no longer afford a free health service it cun neither meet the legitimate demands of the ancillary workers, nurses, para-roedics and junior doctors, nor can it fight the consul tants attacks.
Private practice has leeched off PRICE 8p comprehensive NHS.
In face of this attack on the NHS working chess. workers' unions. and debarring the great majority from the treatment that they are entitled lo expect. Now even the timid proposals of the Labour Gove rament have sparked off a strugelo over the very existence of a free, Unless the consultants' action is defeated then we will find ourselves with a private health service for those who can afford the exorbi tant fees charged by the top medics, and a second rate service for the It is not enough just to phase out pay beds. The wilole system of private practice must be abolished. Labour Councils must refuse planning permission to the private companies who want to build hospitals. Where Councils fail to do this then all work on such bespitals should be "Hacked" by the building private health schemes.
The Government should meet the demands of the junior doctors and appeal to them and other health workers to take over the consultants" duties, in order to smash their reactionary work-to-rule The National Union of Public Employees has called on its menbers to 'take positive action to minimise the effects of the dispute', It has told them to give "priority to the directly employed medical staff against the ts an hour scab labour from the agencies. This is a good first step forward. It sbouid be rein forced Inmediately by withdrawing all facilities for private patients through out the bealth service.
Only such measures can break the consultants sabolage and prevent the collapse of the Heulth Service, (See n 10 for full storo an comeat.
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they are operating a work-to-rule. Their call for mass resignations of doctors from the BHS is a challenge to the whole idea of a free
INSIDE - Interview with Six Counties Provisional