enough to break through the traditional apathy of the left on the fight for the NHS.
Ranged on the platform alongside Health Secretary Kenneth Clarke were some of the most notorious asset strippers, plat closers and union-bashers in British industry, including Graham Day of the Rover Group (formierly BL); Bob Scholey of British Steel, and Sir Kenneth Durham of Woolies and British Aerospace. These men have heen drafted onto a new NHS policy board by Clarke, who raved on abour the qualities they have to offer: "They are formidable figures who have shown their ahility to run giant organisations. Their presence and advice will be a great encouragement to all managers in the NHS'.
Clarke of course meant that their experience in in running down giant industries: those who remember that British Leyland once employed 160,000 workers, British Stel over 100,000, and that Woolworths once had a much larger chain of stores will look with trepidation at the prospects for 1.2 million health workers, the hospitals they work in and their trade union rights once this cutting crew" gets down to business.
Nobody will he safe: the only business figure from an expanding corporation is deputy chair of the policy board, Sir Roy Griffiths, ment to those policies, and demonstrated theirlack of concern with what sort of Labour gover ment all this might produce - a dis astrous re-run of Wilson and Callaghan trying to run capitalism at the expense of the working class.
For the present, Kinnock's strategy appears to be successful. Council and parliamentary election results show Labour gaining support, with even the possibility on the horizon of winning a general election. Yet with the economy faltering and inflation rising, and the next round of privatisation (water, clectricity) being the least popular, the Tories. themselves are faltering despite managing director of Sainsbury's. His report on community care services last year proposed a massive extension of means-testing of services for the elderly, and a policy of forcing those in need of longterm care to pay for it themselves out of their savings or through the sale or re-mortgage of their own
These advisors have been appointed to help Clarke force through the White Paper proposals i Establishment of an "internal market" within the NHS involving the establishment of a massive. bureaucratic system of pricing and cross-charging for treatment, and the threat that many more patients will have to travel to find treat-
• Proposals for hospilals to "opt out of local NHS control, becoming pre-NHS style Hospital Trusts, taking all decisions behind closed doors and driven to funtion more and more like private hospitals in order to balance their
# Imposition of cash limits on all family doctor services, with the attempt to press-gang the largest GP practices into becoming 'independent budget holders, subject to rigid cash limits.
• The threat of still further privatisation of services within hospitals, despite the damage already done by privale fins that have driven down standards of cleaning, catering and laundry ser
Clarke is stepping up the pres sure on local hospital management and consultants to volunteer their hospitals for opting out. So far a preliminary fist has shown over
+ the lack of any serious counter-attack from Labour.
The renewed wave of strikes reflects disillusionment with the Tories and contributes to Labour's rise in the polls without the Labour Party lifting a finger in support of those fighting back. Ar the same time Labour gains from the fact that the 'centre" parties have col lapsed - precisely because Kinnock has stolen their clothes and the media no longer sees the need to prop them up.
The Left, however, cannot sit back and wait for Kinnock's policiesto be shown to be a frilure. There is still an outside chance of winning on unilateralism at this 140 possible hospitals -patients or the local community been asked their views. There would be no ballot or referendum: a Final not any hospital could 9 opt out would rest with Kenneth Clarke himself as Secretary of Stale.
However the campaign against these and other White Paper proposals has been almost n-existent from the official labour movement. Having failed to exploit the unpopularity of the White Paper in May's local cloctions or in the current Euro election campaign, the Labour Party has slumpedintoitrusual indifference to the NHS. Indeed the new Policy Review includes a call for the implementation of the Griffiths proposals on community care -presumably indicating a corresponding welcome for his inclusion on Clarke's new board,
Worse still, because their member are in the front line of the Tory attuck, is the inactivity of the bealth unions, which (with the partial exception of the technicians" union MSF) have done nothing to combat the White paper, leaving the initiative in the hands of the "professional bodies' - the BMA, the medical Royal Colleges and the scab Royal College of Nurs
This not only leaves tens of thousands of health workers ig. norant of the dangers, but reinfor ces all of the worst hierarchical il. lusions that defence of the NHS can he left to the doctors. Already year's conference if all its sup porters can work together.
We have to link up with the struggles taking place over pay. the Poll Tax, the NHS and privatisation, not only to provide a strategy to win against the Tories and bosses, but also to win new forces to the battle against Kinnock's social democratic policies. At the same time the left has to look seriously at thie lessons of the last few years and how Kinnock has managed to turn back the
Pete Firmin. Laughing all the way: Kenneth Clarke the BMA's uncharacteristic flurry of militancy is beginning to drop away, with GP negotiators having agreed a miscrable scll-out on the new contract for 32,000 family doctors, and with the BMA's consultant members already talking of "pilot schemes" to test out Mr Clarke's reactionary plans.
The main resistance to the White Paper has so far come from the Hands Off Our Health Service campaign launched in London in February, which has become almost the only supply of pamphlets, leaflets, posters, stickers, badges and other material against the Tory proposals.
It is vital that this type of campaigning is broadened and taken up by the official lahour move ment: the demand must be raised for the bealth unions, the TUC and Labour Party to mobilise a national demonstration in the autumn, and throw their weight hehind a full-scale campaign to rally the huge majority of the public who oppose the White Paper-forcing the government to back off
Harry Sloan.
Hands Off Our Hospitals, 446, Uxbridge Rd, London
W12 ONS. 01-749-2525