TAKING MAI
INDUSTPIAL ACTION TODAY IN DEFENCE OF THE N.HIS which rescues the market from the dustbin, where successive Labour Party conferences have attempted to throw it.
This dreary and defeatist document basically accepts the legitimacy of the role of 'market forces' and values, and de-prioritises Labour's commitment to public ownership and provision.
At this same meeting the party leadership also tabled a resolution giving little more than qualified recognition to the NHS strikes, in opposition to a position put by left members to fully support the current — and any further — strike action taken by healthworkers.
The leadership were supported, as they always are, by the trade union representatives on the NEC, who later accused the left of 'patronising' nurses by supporting them in this way and demanding Labour give a lead to their struggle — preferring their own brand of condescension (and cold feet) that tries to turn a grassroots strike movement into a 'protest'.
Small wonder then, that even with the Tories vulnerable on the health service, and with the SDP-Liberal merger fiasco fresh in the public's minds, that Labour has barely yet managed to dent Thatcher's lead in the polls, gaining only at the expense of the Alliance, and that Kinnock only manages to scrape level with Steel — a miserable 39 per cent of punters rate each as 'good' leaders.
Perhaps predictably for readers of this journal (but also unusual, and even reassuring insofar as it is confirmed by polls commissioned by the Daily Telegraph) it is clear that the problem for the labour movement comes down to the problem of the leadership of the trade unions and the Labour Party.
That there is a groundswell of support for the NHS is indisputable. The breadth and commitment of that support has been heartening. Much of it has come from outside the traditional confines of the labour movement: from patients, doctors, consultants and surgeons; well as from those professional organisations like the non-TUC and no-strike RCN, who have sometimes been almost as willing to attack the Tories 10 as they are to attack striking nurses.
HEALTH as challenge the government effectively over the NHS
But it is the strength of feeling and the eagerness of NHS workers to take action in defence of the health service that poses the greatest problem for the labour movement leadership. Because what the left of the movement have been advocating coincides with a mood for action at a grassroots level.
Health service workers, them the wider public, are looking for leadership to challenge the government effectively over the NHS. Those presently in control of the labour movement are in danger of being outflanked from both the left and the right — and it's got them running scared
Of course their first reaction to the groundswell of opposition has been to look for a way to control — and contain - it. Robin Cook, Labour's shadow health minister, weighed in quickly with a warning to nurses about striking, a point picked up by Kinnock in his speech at the local government conference in Edinburgh.
Even the trade union leaders - who at least stand to gain members from showing the slightest willingness to lead "strike action feeds the public pressure to defend the NHS' an effective campaign — shy away from the use of even limited industrial action, or indeed from any substance with any real base in their membership, in favour of "imaginative', solely PR-based initiatives.
Given the direction of Kinnockism it's not surprising that the retreat to the "moral high ground' has left the movement's leadership high and dry and cut off from the mood - and needs — of the rank and file it left behind.
Cowed by Kinnockism, the movement has been left demoralised timid of asserting even its most basic values, and lacking confidence in the use of its traditional strengths. Having hitched themselves so firmly to Thatcher's free marketeering bandwagon and her cynical sham 'championing' of the 'consumer', Kinnock et al, having dozed off for a bit, are now waking up with a bump and are getting their bums scraped as they're pulled along behind her.
Labour's response to Thatcher's challenge on NHS funding (which might yet see her through the crisis, and could well leave the Labour movement out in the cold and more of the NHS's workers in the private sector or on the dole and either way not in a union) has been slow in coming, basic at best, and SOCIALIST OUTLOOK noó March/April 1988
HEALTH stamps and lotteries. and with Everywhere Labour
'think-tanks' to produce them. But most their secretive, soul-searching, most efficient way to fund the NHS increase tax-funding to meet its increased workload. campaign of main types of 'private money': • One is your money (willing or not) of private medical insurance. • The other is company money of health and the NHS. In general, any injection of company money will mean more — so in the end there is only one your purse or wallet. To hide this uncomfortable fact, the Tories are flirting with several schemes. extension of 'consumer choice'. Everyone would receive basic hospitals — until they run out! million course few would choose to spend kidney ward.
certainly confused and patchy. 'Solutions' proffered by Labour range from
Kinnock's own initial 'agnosticism' on the question, through a basic demand for a couple of billion pounds instead of tax cuts, to Labour MP Frank Field's public toying with the idea of health politicians are scrambling to assess the amount of damage that can be limited and the bottom line that they can live with. Plus having cut policy and research resources at policies
Walworth Road, the Labour Party have suddenly realised that they need ideas and are desperately trawling around for
Labour's importantly leaders lack the political commitment, or service •
What are the Tory plans?
SHREWDLY, the Tories have opened mould-breaking 'great debate' on the future of the NHS only after the 1987
They know that the simplest and
(endorsed by 90 per cent of the public and 80 per cent of Tory voters) is to administration.
But Thatcher prefers ideas that will inject 'private' money into the NHS, and thus undermine it. There are two paying new charges or as a customer invested in ways to make a profit out patients paying charges for treatment source of 'private money', and that is
• 'Voucher' schemes dress up the imposition of charges for treatment and the establishment of a 'two tier' health service for rich and poor as an vouchers to spend in NHS or private
• 'Hotel charges' has become the deceptive term used to cover up plans to force patients to pay for each day and night in a hospital bed. The term
"hotel' suggests idle luxury — but of their fortnight's holiday in a gynae or the NHs? O
JOHN LISTER
Two big problems are that the even their own much acclaimed PR strategy, to stake a claim for the socialist alternative model for the health service.
Even under the terms of their own inadequate scheme to simply harness public support through monitoring, identifying and targetting public opinion (not itself invalid as a device) - they've flopped.
Because with their battallions of private pollsters and 'Labour listens' fiascos, they've only attempted responsive propaganda — to tailor campaigns and perceived to particular snapshots of public opinion.
They have failed, by not even attempting, to go on the offensive — to create and 'sell' a vision and practical possibility of a genuinely public health
"hotel charges' would need to be means-tested (since a majority of in-patients are pensioners, children, or unemployed); and patients caught for the full charge would have to pay a relatively large amount to compensate for the large numbers of exemptions and the huge extra costs of
Creating an 'internal market' and competition within the NHS also sounds trendy: but without extra cash many major hospitals, especially in
London, will need to continue reducing their caseload. What comfort would it be for Londoners to hear of
'competitive' hospitals in Liverpool or
Devon? And if London hospitals did increase their 'market share', this would reverse the government policy of diverting NHS resources out of the capital to other regions.
'Greater cooperation' between the
NHS and the private sector is another deception. The whole burden of training nurses and medical staff, and of providing expensive emergency services and long-stay care for the elderly, mentally ill and handicapped falls on the NHS and local authorities.
No wonder private firms volunteer to
'cooperate' in providing easy, profitable waiting list operations.
Some propose a state lottery for the
Hs. This only confirms that it is dogma, not economics that is the driving force in Tory thinking.
Why else consider going to the bizarre lengths of administering lottery ticket sales, calculating winners, and paying out prizes — when almost the whole population
(with the exception of cabinet ministers and their 'think tanks')
favours spending more tax revenue on
11
Julio Etchart/Reflex
whether anyone will oppose Kinnock his obsession with witch-hunting Labour country telling the labour movement anis Doran/Reflex AT THE TIME of writing, it is still unclear clear whether he means a diversion from and Hattersley for leader and deputy at party members or from the fight against this year's Labour Party conference.
The Campaign group of MPs has voted by a large majority that there should be a challenge, and most constituencies with Campaign group MPs sup port such a challenge. But Tony Benn, the obvious candidate, is still undecided despite the sharpness of his attacks on Kinnock. The three women MPs mooted as candidates for the deputy leadership
The longer the indecision, the less
La challenge. launching a serious campaign diminish by the day. Yet the conditions for a leadership challenge are better than they have been for several years.
Kinnock has already said that such a 12 contest would be a 'diversion'. It is not
LABOUR PARTY left