HIDDEN PLANS to cut back on health services have been blown by the Humber side Health Service Action Committee.
Gien spray, a member of tne commit tee, explained in a series of interviews with BBC Radio Humberside and the peak-time Yorkshire TV programme "Calendar' that behind the backs of the people the Area Health Authority were oreparine secret pians to carve up une Humperside neain service tacities She went on: "Over the next 15 years the Area Health Authority plans to shut down 20 units and concentrate all major patient services in Hull. This would mean that Driffield, which has three hospitals with 290 beds, would Tinisn up with oniy si Deos ine plans also include tne closing large mental hospitals, and a move towards community care - a euphemism for putting the burden on the family. Most maternity units in Humberside will be closed and simply concentrated at the Hull Royal. This means that the unit at Hull's Hedon Road Hospital will go. as will the units at Withinsea, Woodgates Maternity Hospital and Hull Hospital Tor women.
"The savageness of these cuts is showr by the way that maternity services are are also being reduced.
Ine so-called community service suggestion is a sheer exercise in cynicism. It wah ceorive elceriv people of aomit tance to hospital. Day-hospitals will be set up so that people will nave to visit the hospital and then can be shunted back home to save the expense of looking after them properly:
The action of Humberside's Health Service Action Committee in "opening the books" has unleashed a storm of Drotest. In Goole, which stands to lose four hospitals, Councillor Charles Colmer remarked: Inese are terrible plans. rar from losing services, we need a new hospiRed Weekly 15 July 1976 tal including a maternity unt..
diverting patients from Goole to Scunthorpe - because that is what the plan means - would prevent people without cars from even visiting patients because public transport between Goole and scunmorse is very Door Other councillors spoke of the need to mont inese plans in tne parisn anc district councils'. But the Humberside Healtn service Action Committee recog nises that such a fight is not sufficient to stop the cuts. The Committee, which supports the National Coordinating Committee Against Cuts in the NHS (NCC), says that organised working class action is the way forward, and the fight cannot be left to discussions with the bureaucrats of the Area Health Author....AND IN LONDON CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS have fallen into the hands of the Furzedown College Action Committee in South London. The papers give the story behind the Lambein Labour groups capitulation to the demand for cuts from the Labour Government. ine Acuon committee will be using them in the fight against the cuts wich nas developed in tne area following the link-up made between Lampetn rades council and students wno occupied aqainst teacner redund ancy.
The document 'freezes' any new statt appointments. and makes sure test cuts in services will stick by banning overtime tor salaried start. Did people s meals are to increase in price by 40 per cent. Other stingy measures include a rise in crematoria fees and a reduction in external painting of council houses. Total cuts in public and amenity services bring 'savings" of over £1.5 million for the Council and the Labour The savings asked for in the 'Shore circular", the Government's demand for As a first step towards building a real opposition in the Humberside area a public meeting is being called by the Committee. The National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) locally have agreed to provide a speaker, and there will also be a speaker from the NCC as well as other representatives of the labour movement.
Glen Spray points out the importance of the workers movement fighting for the opening of the books. 'If this is not done, such plans as these are prepareo bening the acks or ine working class. Only when workers have access to all the information and have enforced their right to veto any such plans is it possible to defend the NHS.
cuts from local authorities, amounted to £2.2 million. But the strength of union resistance has stopped cuts of this magnitude taking place.
meeting decided to pass the cuts. The proposals now go to the full council meeting on 23 July. If the cuts are passed the local NUPE branch will call a one-day strike, which they hope will be supported by orner unions representing council employees as the beginning of concerted action against the cuts.
South West London Conference against the Cuts on 24 July, from 2-6 p.m. at don S.W.17 (phone 672 0509 for more information). The first question that must be asked at the conference is why it was left to the Furzedown students to expose the Council's plans? Why didn't the left' councillors begin their fight against the cuts with a Tull public expos ure of the planned cuts?
OPEN ment falls due.
By a small majority the Labour group Cut and finish KILLING OLD AGE PENSIONERS is profitable. This is one of the discoveries our socialist Labour Government has made in the past year of public expenditure cuts. From a deficit of £257 million in the financial year April 1974 to April 1975, the Central Electricity Generating Board has produced a profit of £58 million in 1975-76. And what's a few cut-of lives and giant bills compared with that?
Can't afford to gas yourself to ease the misery? Never mind, the Gas Corporation turned a $45 million deficit into a £25 million profit. Don't tell your friends about it, though — not that you'll be able to since the postal and telephone charges rocketed to help the Post Office turn a £306 million deficit into a £150 million profit.
And so the story goes on. The British Steel Corporation is busy chopping 40,000 jobs to wipe out losses of £250-300 million. This is what has been going on in the so-called 'public' sector of industry. And when turn-coats like Leslie Huckfield MP talk of putting factories before hospitals, they are begging for the same thing to be done in the private sector.
As the barons of big business demand more and more concessions, the rag-bag traitors of the Labour Government comply in full. Even after all the relaxations that have turned the Price Code into an ever extending piece of elastic, the Confederation of British Industry is still demanding £200 million more in 'relief". In what was supposed to be a dire threat to the Labour lefts in the House of Commons, Prices Secretary Shirley Williams warned that the very survival of the private sector will be at risk if rates of return on capital continue to fall'.
For stockbrokers Philips and Drew, however, even Stormy Jim's promise of a further £1 billion cuts in public spending is not enough - they want £2bn. They'll get them eventually as well. The Treasury has already been drawing on the £5.3bn, standby credit extended by the Central Banks, and if the Government is not quite fast enough in cutting, the International Monetary Fund will quickly persuade it to speed up when the loan repayCuts/IWC 3