Armenian, was given region within the neighbouring state of Azerbaidzhan. THATCHER'S CYNICAL attempt to buy off the militancy of nursing staff was a significant retreat in the face of hostile public opinion and the strike wave of February and March.
It remains to be seen, however, if the enlarged pay settlement will achieve its objective of 'divide and rule', silencing the nurses while Tory cash limits put the boot into the NHS.
Few nurses yet know how much the review body award means to them in hard cash: it seems that many ward sisters and top-level staff nurses could yet suffer an overall loss through cuts in special duty payments for unsocial hours.
Many will get far less than they expected. Meanwhile other sections of health workers have been angered that they will receive far lower increases.
A new, brutal round of cuts and closures has begun for the new financial year, with West Lambeth district health authority heading the pack with the biggest-ever single package of cuts — £l million of which is to be saved through redundancies among all sections of staff, including nurses and doctors.
West Lambeth has also found an ingenious way to avoid further increasing waiting lists at St Thomas' Hospital while keeping 180 beds closed: it has axed 25 per cent of outpatient appointments (60,000-plus this year) — thus preventing patients being put on to the waiting list in the first place!
Further hefty cuts programmes are being pushed through most London health districts and many others across the country, including Birmingham and Manchester.
An analogous problem with the region of Nakhichevan, populated predominantly by Azerbaidzhanis but within Armenia, was solved by granting it the status of an
No peace on the wards
Little of the militant strike and protest action by nurses in February was over wages: most nurses were solely concerned with the state of the NHS.
Thatcher's attempt to buy off this movement could simply encourage other health workers to fight for decent pay, while events spur nurses into new local battles against cuts and closures, which will come back
UPFRONT autonomous republic.
Since then, Nagorno-
Karabakh has suffered further and further isolation from
Armenia. It has not been able to receive broadcasts from
General