/ lan Harrison, Fulham CLP ise?
Composite 32 was the most far-reaching. ost importantly it was the only one which equivocally called for mass action by bour movement to force the Tories out of of:e.
ie which set a minimum target for health orkers' Our composite also lled for inflation-proof otection for health orkers" pay. This, and nimum wage, are in my inion the best way and ssibly the only way to sure that any long term alth service workers ges being held down for o or three years, croded ay by inflation and cut ring a future incomes licy.
Another point in comsite 32 called for the nanalisation of all private spitals and clinics. The C's grounds for oppos¿ this was that there is a ssibility that we won't quire private hospitals continued from front page and against any expulsions whatsoever.
retreat as labour starts to fight back.
- is at stake in this dispute.
: opened the road to a Labour victory.
Nor can tha i will not let Labour betray their hopes.
of a coup in the Party.
Sidney Weighall and General Chapple at the cronies in charge of its election offansive. cialist Challenge the pay by calling for a E90 minimum which will and clinics to be nationalised." Perhaps the NEC hospital waiting lists!
Composite 32 also called for the nationalisation, not only of the manufacturing side of the phar maccancal moustry. but the retail and wholesale side.
In my speech I explained that this did not mean the High Street chemists big concerns Boots, Beechams, ICI and so on. Of course the NEC chose to ignore this and opposed the composite because, they said, of the chemists on the corner. I think their main concern was to limit the extent of nationalisation and limit victory. for the defence of the socialist policies so far won.
Why has the witch-hunt happened and why are we sad¿dled with a right wing NEC? Is it because, as in the fifties. the labour movement is in retreat as capitalism regains its ¿nerve? Nol It is because Thatcherism and Reaganism are in After three years of retreat, even our timid TUC has had : to face up to Thatcher and put its weight behind the health And the response has been massive. Is this a political strike? Yes! Whatever Chapple and Bickerstaffe : might like to say, the government's policy - and its future Is it a popular strike? Yes Whatever happened to the argument that strikes lose elactions? This dispute has managed what two years of Foot's leadership failed to do. It ; has lifted Labour out of the trough into which it was dragg;ed by Foot, it has exposed Thatcher's government and tremendous 5-2 vote in favour of unilateralism just be ignored as in 1960, when Labour supported unilateralism by a narrow majority which was quick: ly reversed after the vicious right wing organised against it. Not only are the unions far more solidly unilateralist than ; over before - even Sidney Weighell's union is in favour -: but this vote rests on the actions of hundreds of thousands ; in Britain. This movement in alliance with millions in Europe That is why the sabotage of our movement by its leaders ; has reached a new and higher stage. It combines open : treachery in the trade union struggle with open preperation What a fine example of leadership has bean set by the TUCI What an advert for 'democratic" idealsi. At the very moment when the movement has found its balance again, they have saddled us with head of Generalissimo Healey at the helm of the Labour Party. How can they claim that they are praparing a Labour victory?
When the health strike prepares the defeat of the Tories they put the strikers' most trenchant opponent in charge of the unions. With unilateralism the most popular policy Labour has to offer they put its lifelong anemy and his Frightened as they are of defeat at the Tories' hands. they are even more frightened of arriving in office and having to implement the policies we have forced them to adopt. them to the manufacturing sector.
Finally the NEC took exception to our proposal for a £90 minimum wage since, they said, should be left for the TUC to decide. But if it was up to the TUC to decide, why didn't they let trade union vote freely on the matter? Then least the burcaucrats would памо had to go back to their members and justify their refusal to support their interests, instead of hiding behind NEC opposition -while the NEC hides behind TUC opposition.
Earlier I was told by a COSE full time worker that COHSE would oppOse the composite because it would tie union negotiators hands! I think what he meant was that it would make it more ditficult for union sell out the health service workers.
The composite was detented by block vote but it won a lot of support for a properly funded health service, for an end to private profiteerOTIVELC and the pharmacuetical industry and for a socialist heaith service which pays its workers a decent wage, Www no conce Labour victory areas where Labour did best. and organise the left. SUCH and leadership.
Solidarity_
Trade Union and Labour Party hierarchy's apologists for private greed.
That hierarchy, by opposing this composite, appears to be leaving the conduct of the health dispute to the unions alone. They rejected our proposal to throw the whole political and organisational weight of the Labour Party behind the fight for the 12 defence of the NHS. and the But this does not tie the hands of local Labour Partics. They should be doing all they can actively to support NHS workers by joining picket lines, launching massive publicity campaign on the housing estates and shopp ing centres, and campaigning for a general strike to bring down Thatcher's government That's the way we'll get unity in the labour movement - unity in acthe shabby *We'll scratch your back and you scratch ours unity practiced by the platand block VOLE barons block the demands of the rank and file. And that's the way to ensure that future government will implement socialist policies for the health serThey know the resistance they will meet from Thatcher's friends in the Penatgon, the treasury and the CBI and they don't want to fight tham. They have two options, both of which they prefer to victory. The first is outright defeat at their own hands; the second is a coalition with the SDP. It is up to us to stop them. It is up to us to win a Labour victory.
The idea that the Militant and the left are an obstacle to is a crude and patently false Militant's influence stop Labour making important gains in the local elections in Liverpool? Did the cleanout of the right wing prevent a victory in Islington? No: these were the The purpose of the witch-hunt is absolutely clear. The one thing that stands in the way of their manouvres is an organised and militant left wing, linking the party and the unions. This can mobilise extraparliamentary mass action, as Skinner promised an enthusiastic Tribune audience, to force an elected Labour government to fight. Those who remember 1969 know only too weil that such a movement stopped the labour right's anti-trade union offensive in its tracks then, and they can do it again.
That is why the fight for socialist policies begins with the fight against the witch-hunt. That is why it goes from there to the creation of an organised alliance of the left, committed to extraparliamentary action against nuclear weapons and in support of the health workers. That is why we urge our readers to strain every nerve to defeat the witch-hunt But thare is one final struggle and one final decision to be won. A spectre haunts the movement: the ghost of Michael Foot, who has become a zombie of the right. Nothing illustrates more clearly how much the right wing are really on the defensive than the fact that they have to hide behind pathetic figure, and fall out themselves when they risk appearing too openly for what they are. The lesson of the Labour Party conferenca, a lesson which delegates were drawing in their hundred as they left for their own constituencies, is that the fight for socialist policies cannot be held hostage to Michael Foot's Why does it matter, therefore, what Tony Benn does? Not because the movemant will not organise without him. It is organising without him. Not just because the leading trade union lefts, such as Scargill, are hanging fire in backing this struggle, until Tony gives the word. They can be force to fight, with or without Tony.
No: it is because the left wing, if it is to present a genuine alternative to a Foot-Healey government - or, for that matSeveral thousand trade unionists marched
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THE HEALTH debate 1 moved composite 32, hich was the only one opposed by the NEC. hy did I move it and why did the NEC op-
It was the only one which clearly called for e abolition of all health charges, and the only
age and a 35 hour week. COHE's composite id that 'long term pay arrangements would i made for all grades of staff. duce the need for industrial action.