'AN IDEAL world might mean no pay increases at all.' This was Sir Geoffrey Howe last week explaining the aims of his wages policy.
The Tories new policy is part and parcel of their current offensive against the unions; their Falklands' on the train drivers and health workers. ing to hold pay rises well under the current 4 per cent for the public sector.
Three days earlier the Chancellor gave his view of his 'ideal world'. In a speech to the summer school of the Tory party in Cambridge he outlined the Tories would carry out if returned to office at the next general election.
• Further attacks on the unions through compulsory balloting proccuures. minimum rates in industries covered by • Deregulating rents in the private sector • Reducing controls on health and safety in industry • Reduction of taxation on investment income • Privatisation in local government, with services being put in private hands • Privatisation in social policy particularly in the health service with the introduction of private insurance; voucher systems in schools to encourage private schools; loans for students instead If the Tories were elected back into office and if they were allowed to put these policies into effect the result would be the destruction of most of the social gains made by working people since the Second World War.
The prospects for rolling back the Tories' recent advances are not so bleak. With every inside the government in the period leading up to the Falklands crisis start to make the issue an embarrassment rather than a votewinner. Neither ASLEF produced any easy victories for the British Rail management.
The key issue now throughout the labour healthworkers and the train drivers, taking the lead from the mineworkers conference week, which. put treacherous 'support' Michael Foot to shame.
But there must be a response politically too. The Tories are using the spectre of a general election to frighten away potential support for ASLEF. The blackmail can be confronted is by the Labour Party declaring itself ready to take on the Tories in united action with the unions.
The Labour Party and the unions have to use the healthworkers' action on 19 July and support for ASLEF as the beginning of a campaign of industrial action against the government.
The fight for an alternative to the Tories must come out loud and clear from the labour movement.
government committed to policies. Such policies would include: • End unemployment! For the 35 hour week! For worksharing without loss of pay! • For the nationalisation under workers control of the commanding heights of the economy! • Instead of a programme of remilitarisation a programme of public works to meet social need and employ the jobless! • Against incomes policy! For wages, benefits and social expenditure against inThe elements of such a programme are already in Party and TUC conferences. What is lacking is decisive leadership from within the labour movement; a leadership as devoted to the interests of our class as Thatcher and Howe are to theirs.
The elements of such a leadership are to be found in the decisions of the mineworkers conference, the 'new wave' of the left inside the Labour Party against the witch-hunt, and in the mass ranks of the disarmament moveattempt to The government will be seekprogramme that the The main points Abolition of of has the offensive against swing behind the the faltering of Len Murray and the only way this There has to be a fight for a socialist protection of policies endorsed by the Labour AS THE NHS visibly crumbles before our eyes, the private health sector is booming. By the subscribers in Britain bas 1,647, i thich in- end of 1980 number privale sector has deliberate government policy as Tory Health Minister Patrick Jenkin within one month of the Tories taking office, he said: it is, policy to welcome the contribution that independent medicine can make to the health care of the nation.' By 1980 the Health Services Bill was law, private sector had green light to go full speed Private hospitals with under beds can now be built in any health district without authorisation from the secretary of kegional Health Authorities no longer have first offer IO government departments when they are selling surplus land. ine guide line on the question of sale Regional Health nutnoritics to consider giving priority to private medical interests. As added inducement TOT people to go private, the government gives firms big incentives buy nearn scnemes Ior their staff. Return Given declining NHS, and the support of the private sector is seen as a lucrative mela of HIYCOLDunedin Private Clinic is a 38-bed private hospital in Reading run by a consortium of consulLOCATHUMISESTICS UC shows that its shareholders reaped a 55 per cent return on their capital.
No wonder the big three American 'health industry' firms: Humana incorporated, the Hospital The Wellington does better than this - but have you got £1,600 a week? cashes in health been encouraged by made clear when of course, the government's Corporation of America and American Medical al c all scrambling to get a piece of the action The latter firm in their report : to US shareholders say 'Responding the rapid growth of the private health sector in the UK, AMI opened its fifth and largest facility, the 149-bed Alexander Hospital in Manchester.
The tables show the these three US-based firms who are able to exploit the crisis inside the health service.
Although private hospitals right now provict oliv 10,000 Deos provided by the NHS they know that the government wants to increase the involvement of the sector to at least percent, so there is plenty of room for investment.
The Midland Bank which coyly describes itself as the 'listening bank' has obviously been listening to Patrick Jenkin and to the clang of the cash registers in the private sector, because it has stump up f100 million for one company to build 50 hospitals by 1990.
makes private medicine such an attractive proposition is that it has little or no training The overworked N.H.S Private medicine booms Profitability Return on equity 5yr av manua Humana HUA AMI and underpaid workers are trained by the state-run and state-financed NHS. while the doctors are pro• ducts of the state financed medical schools and universities.
A nurse in the NHS in 1981 after getting the last Learning around £80 a week before tax. Meanwhile a nurse working for the privately-run Medical Personnel of Lon• Yorkshire Evening Post 14 December, 1979 reported how an 81-year-old man, was nearly blind wanted his wife, who was senile and mentally retarded, to go into hospital, as he could not look after her. But no beds were available. In desperation he strangled her and killed himself.
• On January 1980 the Daily Express reported that woman of badly needed a hip operation. However, there was a 40-year waiting list. Her surgeon could only such operation Growth Return or wales total capital 5 yr 5yr av 33.6% 9.2% 39.8% 8.9% 27.6% 20.9% 22.1% don, which is the agency of the American company Merican Medical Europe was grossin £38 a week more, as we I as getting a daily travel allowance and shoe allowance.
The private sector is therefore able to drain away trained staff from the beleagured NHS, and the latest pay offer can only accelerate that process.
For years now we have found that babies of semi-skilled Un. skilled workers were twice as likely to die in their first year as those born in middle class families. 'Longstan. ding illness' the 1980 report remarked, was twice as among unskilled men than among profes sionals, and two and half times more common among unskilled women than profes sional women • The Guardian reported on the August 1981 how T7-year-old patient was found dead in Northumberland psychiatric hospital. PRIVATE MEDICINE been moving in the direchealth system. The principle tha health care should available to every one who necas il witnout ine con straints of cash, or privilege, stopping peopl getting treated, undermined. Peoples nealta needs are being cynically manipulated for protit.
Unless the labour movement sides with the fight of the health workers for better wages and conditions and supports their fight cut-backs, azallis.
the health of all the working people will suffer. The defence NHS literally a matter of life and death.
hospital for several months.
• However, cheer up. All is not despair and gloom on the health front At the privately-run Well. ington Hospital there are £5,000 diamond and ruby necklackes in the hospital shop if you want to buy you favourite patient a lit tle trinket. There is G-Plan chrome leather furniture none of that cheap nasty plastic stuff.
On every floor there are emergency trolleys and there are balconies overlooking Lords cricket ground it get bored wat ching coloured TV and
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cluding their dependents represented a total of 3,577,000 privately insured people. In 1981 there was a 27 per cent growth rate. The expanding