Last year, sarbara Castle admitted rat 'we will be lucky if in the next few ; ears we will see any growth whatever the service'. Castle's comment was, anything, an overstatement since only = few months later it was announced that • e Nho grant would de siasnea - by £ 76m - at a time when inflation was on • me move am an anua nate or Castle's stand against 'pay beds' in the piacale ine labour movement by finishing the work of Bevan, cover uD ine TaCI unal such cuis have pushed an already inadequate service breaking pole. ills ine tinal "urn of the screw' in the NHS which has ince 1964 seeil government chocrature =-op from 15.1 to 11.5%.
-hese cuts show that the government •s not only prepared to sacrifice the • ing standards of working people - as : -e pay freeze bites ever deeper - but := sacrifice their very lives as well as e. er more are abandoned to illness, sain and premature deaths. At present, .:h building programmes grinding to staff being cut and facilities worsening, It is more ditticult to get -: o hospital today than it was back in • 2:3 Building programme «ule receniv. David Owen went on a : =_~ of new hospitals and commented it « as very 'saa'to see so many notes in ire ground where new hospitals had been • ne noes uwen reterrea to =-e, ot course, ine result or inese culs as e case or vewcastle. nave see- building allowances cut from the = su, voo requestea to a mere pittance :: =125,000.
building =-agramme can be seen to full effect • -e- it is realised that 75% of all beds =.= able are in hospitals built prior to *E and that only 42 hospitals have been : after 1945. It is hardly a wonder, •=-etore, that at present there is an ==: matea nait a million on the walting s:s:0 be admitted for hospital care and =. es in semi-Victorian buildings often government has partially tried to eay ine sluation by its new boucy redistributing financial resources • more privileged areas (London)
-ose in most need. If it is realised =: ine 'privileged' London area was in a Dhss as being bosed of pre-1948 hospitals lacking : wally none for mental illness, the extent of the present crisis can be S:e-dardising heath throughout the UK .-ch is the aim of the government's Castle: implementing massive health cuts.
"recisir oution bocv simoiv means closing London hospitals to keep open alreadv inadequate ones in Leeds. Staff cuts Labour's cuts do not only mean making inroads into the building programme but into staffing as well. It has already been estimated by COHSE that, for some time, there has been a shortage of 70,000 nurses and that most hospitals lack their complement of technical staff (e. g. radiologists and psychotherapists).
Despite this •acks nave airecay being forced to further reduce their limited staff - 50 nurses being sacked in S. Glamorgan and 80 in Portsmouth and implement a policy of non-replacement and chopping training Axing staff ratios means, fewer patients being treated (as wards are closed) which can lead to serious ality rates points out that, due to lack of hospitalisation facilities. rates of young children under one year old increased by 212 in the four months up to November 1915 compared to ine same period the preceding year. ¡i so means placing dr workload on notorious for being under-paid. partly the result of this new which accounts for growing militancy among ancilliary workers, more recently junior doctors who were held up, 'a reckless disregard for the interests of the patients in the NHS'.
It is not, of course, who have shown this reckless aisregard' for the NHS but the present Labour government wnien, tollowing pro- 1ory is prepared to sacrifice the health of batients and jobs workers to bail out ailing firms such as unrysier.
Alternative Solving the problems of the health service does not lie, Barbara Castle. drawal of private medecine while cuts in funds and staff in the public sector continue. Such a 'solution', encourages the growth in 'private medecine' as trends show.
Recent cuts have seen a rapid growth in new members to or vae neaninsurance organisations (such as BUPA) and increasinolv made by drug companies nade to nose dense la lack of facilities, prescribing ever more drugs. At a the MCAPP* last year, pro-lory measures all culs, arue companies.
Ine mass or working people. alone at its peak, outbreak, inadequate situation, cutmeant nosoildis are involved, of course, mortality Extremists Time tried to preserve unbearable On January 15th, remaining staff who are Itis on strike, situation nurses and as showing the junior doctors of health as pretended by in the phased within reality, large promis being as doctors, face of the facts. are forced back on.
Times, campaign had started!.
Line rinancial Times estimates that drug companies are expected to make record profits The real task before the labour movement today is to begin working out a strategy for implementing what Nye Bevan once termed a 'comprehensive health service free to all in which poverty would not be a disability and wealth not an advantage'. A positive start was made in this direction at conference in October, which pianned out a clear programme in opposition to Labour's The conference called for an end to for a sliding scale of social expenditure, for opening the books and for the nationalisation of the basic Touch a programme. which could begin to pose a serious fighting alternative to the government's policy, is not only ot importance to workers in the NHS. It has the real potential. it is cemands are pioneered within the broader labour movement, to •raw ever-wider lavers no sooori for a health policy in the interests of