Labour's NO CUTS politics for decades. Yet in the middle of the 1970s a Labour Government is still incapable of giving everyone a roof their head. Homelessness has doubled to 100,000 in the last ten years. Cathy still hasn't got a home.
While more than 200,000 building workers are on the dole, 800,000 houses either in good condition or requiring simple repairs are kept empty. Thirty thousand homeless people have been forced to squat.
The Government's response to this national scandal has been to cut £146 million off the 1977/78 housing budget. The Department of Environment is also preparing for more cuts through the circulation or secret reports which use the brazen incompetence and corruption of many councils' housing proarammies a cover to suggest almost total standstill on council buildIng. ney even suggest mat London's housing problem should be solved by people leaving the city!
The real answer is to have housing policies in the Interest people and direct action to force Labour councils to be responsible to the labour movement. Instead the Labour GovernCuts ment is lining the pockets financial sharks. The share of housing finance going on interest charges is soaring. The cuts mean that councils are being ordered to run nousing al ar increased profit to satisfy the moneylenders.
The councils' response has been to set one group of badly housed against another. They use squatters as scape goats. They intend mass evictions of squatters in order to move other homeless families from costly bed and breakfast accommodation into longer term, Tormery squatted, siums The labour movement must take up all aspects of the housing crisis and fight to defend every section of homeless and badly housed.
was planned: planned.' cuts. As he explains, areas of the public sector. the Council.
means reiection of the cuts. it mea that delegates to the Labour Pai Conference should organise action local parties wider labo movement to force councils to refuse implement the cuts.
One example of what can be do comes from the South London borou of Lambeth. Earlier this year the Trad OCCUPIED. That's the situation at the Hillcrest Hoste Bury, where members of the Bury Action Group Against O in the Social Services have moved in with residents to pre the closure of a rehabilitation centre for the mentally ill. Action Group has already notched up two important victo against the axe-madmen of Bury's Tory Council, forcing saving of Whittle Pike adult training centre and stopping closure of Ramsbottom and Radcliffe day nursery.
Tony Greehalgh, a hospital worker and a member of Action Group, explained to Red Weekly how the occupat 'It was decided at a meeting of the Action Group to occ the hostel, and on 12 September a meeting of residents occupiers decided unanimously that the hostel sho remain occupied. In fact the residents have said that they resist any move to call off the occupation. . The campa cannot stop at this point, and further actions have Tony also sees the need to broaden the fight against *the Action Group was formed to fight the cuts in social services, and I think right that they should continue in what is becoming a g campaign. But now is the time to link the fight back aga the cuts with all departments which are affected, and support those sections which may be in line for the r round of cuts - not only in local government but in o Such a united fight won't come a minute too soon. At very recall meeting of the Council meeting which reprie two of the seven institutions under the axe, a White circular was before the Council demanding another £200 in cuts! Already 19,000 people have signed a peti opposing the cuts, numerous meetings have been held, a thousand angry protesters marched on a recent meetin The feeling is there, but it has to be organised. It's that end in mind that the call has gone out for a one-day o ference for people in trade unions, the Labour Party, act groups and women's groups to discuss how the fight car carried forward. It's a fight which must be waged not against Bury's Tory Council, but against the central poli of the Labour Government which give these butchers Colhul! Hoenital near decided
Council sponsored an enquiry into the housing needs of the Villa Road area. It concluded that demolition and 'antisquatting vandalism' and evictions SnOUle stop, and repairs instead Old Loughborough Estate.
The Council ignored them united force of tenants, squatters and building workers threatened to start the repairs. Lambeth Council, fearing that its own building workers might start redeploying council labour resources from demolition to and building, promptly caved in and started the repairs.
It is this type of united action which leeds to De extended to stop and everse the housing cuts.
Against Government's ramme of evictions and lay-offs, the abour movement must fight for homes Ine IODS TOI all nrouen rogramme of repairs and homebuildng. And the system where councils run lousing at a profit in order to pay the inance houses has to be stopped hrough the cancellation of all debt harges on money borrowed for houses ind the nationalisation of the finance louses into a single state bank.
PIERS CORBYN done - so a *We have reached the stage where it has become more dangerous for some patients to be on the waiting list than to undergo major surgery."
and surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth Hosrepairs pital, Birmingham, reviewing the state of the health service at the time of last year's Labour Party Conference.
That conference passed a resolution (Composite 30) stating that it views with concern the inadequacies of the National Health Service and calls upon the leadership of the Labour Party and trade union movement to pledge itself to pro- a socialist policy for the Health Service.' This resolution, moved by NUPE, went on to reject any cuts in the National Health Service' and put forward a series of measures needed to safeguard the health care of working people and to develop the services of the NHS.
It should come as no surprise that the Labour leaders and the TUC, staunch defenders of workers democracy that they are, have totally ignored this as well as other decisions of the Labour Party Conference. What is more, they have S, IN A RUT I ruled 'out of order" any reference to year's conference. said a Dr Cyril what the present policies of the Labour patients. He said recently: Of the ninety children in the country suffering from kidney failure who need treatment from be offered treatment and will die. international bankers and city financiers has lopped a cool 355 million from the NHS budget year's funds alone. On top of these cuts in capital funds for the next four years, cash limits have been introduced while the Hospital Price Index is rising at a rate of over 25 per cent a year.
WHERE WILL WE BE *FTON CAT SHUT Composite 30 in the motions at this Chantler, a specialist at Guy's Hospital in London, has spelt out Government will mean for one group of to make the cuts:
kidney machines this year, sixty won't Building Programmes posals, In the twelve months since the last known to have been conference, Healey at the behest of the - E70 million from next for alone!
At present, behind the doors of the doors of the DASS, Regional and Area Health Authorities, the planners are doing the callous sums and drawing up their plans to carry out Labour's cuts. They have devised three main ways 1. Closing Hospitals and Slashing Although the planners are (with good reason) very secretive about their prowell over 100 hospitals are designated for closure within the next 12 to 18 months. Many more closures are undoubtedly in the pipeline. A secret DHSS document London revealed that no half- home. hearted measures were being considered. It proposed the eventual closing of well over 100 hospitals in Inner London The building programmes of the NHS have been favourite targets for cuts by successive governments - only 77 hospitals have been built in the 28 years of the NHS. Now they are to be slashed again, and the NHS will have to make do with the Victorian hospitals it inIt will have to put up with hospitals which suffer from the "partial spon- still). taneous disintegration' of the Forest Gate Hospital in East London, and RED WEEKLY 23 September 1976 NO outlining the changes in the priorities of funding the different branches of the NHS. This does not mean that we can expect to see hospital beds in the streets and car parks. But it will mean that more patients will have to be cared for at Under the guise of giving extra help to the 'cinderellas' of the NHS - the care of the old, mentally and physically handicapped, the mentally ill and children - massive cuts are justified in other areas of the service. The maternity service is to be cut by £10 million (although the birth rate is expected to rise from next year) and the general hospital service is to get practically no extra funds (although spending on the DHSS's own admission has to rise at least by two per cent a year just to stand
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Fighting ...and the way to do it
GIVE THE PASSES BACK TO THOSE THAT NEED THEM