CAUGHT in a tangled web of contradictory Thatcherite policies. John Major's government is rushing around attempting to neutralise potential electoral embarrass ments.
This is the reason why Environment Secretary Michael Hesottine made his unexpected intervention, announcing plans to reverse the policy of communty care for people with mental ilness.
Heseltine is of course not in the least concerned about the pight of mental illness sufferers, who have been shamefully neglected by successire governments, with thousands cast adrift in the 1980s. He is alarmed by the aggravation suffered by growing numbers of well-heeled Tory voters who stumble over victims of com munity care policies in the streets and shop doorways of London.
Two-faced Heseltine's two-faced atttude is shared by the Mai on Sunday, which was the unlikely bearer of the frontpage news of Heseltine's unexpected native. under the • banner headline U-Turn on Homeless Line nectave resuits of the policy wore blamed on "Mrs Thatcher's years in office' - as if completely new goverment wore now in Downing Street.
In Tact Meserine nimsell was a prominent member of Thatcher's government, and the Mail its most servie apologist in the 1980s when the current policies were introduced. They consist in paying Ip-service to com munity whie closing psychiatric spending of health authorities and local councils to prevent them from providing actual care and support in the com Hesetine himself is even now imposing even stricter spending curbs on local councils that have triggered a wave of brutal cuts in social services including the closure of homes for the olderly and facilities for mental liness sufferers.
ine cosmete characien of the latest Tory initiative on community demonstrated by the fact that the piiful increases in cash they are allocating to local councils are targeted solely at the most visibly embarrassing element - the noring the vast majority of the county's 3.7 milion severe sulferers, 99 percent of whom live in the community, few of them receiving any specialist holp. Only 350,000 attend psychlatric cutpatient departments.
A mere 60,000 are in-patents at any one time, and hospital psychiatric beds have been rapidly cut back from 89.000 in 1979 to just 50,000 in 1969 beds in the big psychiatric hospitale have closed since 1984, percent of the NHS £2 billion mental health budget is spent on hospi tal care of the 60,000 in-patients, while community-based 25,000 costs just £200 million The Cosmons Social Serives Committee argues that to provide satisfac care in the community costs £2,752 per person per year. This would Proposing to dump mentally ill back in bins: Heseltine incicate that care for the 3.7 milion severe sufferers would cost C8.3 bilion - four times the total NHS spend on mental heath.
The same committee argues that ? is elint ames more expensive to pro vide proper residential and day care to people cischarged mom psychur hospitals - £21,366 a year. No wonder the ful costs of community care!
Pittance
In 1990-91 the overnment's nev /ectal Health Specific Grant added u to just 4.2 million across the whole of London- an average of only £130,000 per borough. Meanwhile local councils were offering fower places in day centres in 1989 than they had in 1981. . with counci residential places for people with mental liness expanding unevenly at a rate of just 21 new places per year in Greater London.
Retusing to face these facts, Hosettine has begun uttering ominous threats to the homeless mentally ill We are coming to the conclusion that we have a hard core of people who of the offers of accomodation). have all got to cackle this problem. All of us are af. fronted and feel a deep concern for the condition of these pecple* The taot throat is that those who will not voluntarily take up the Tories offers' will b impulsorily dumped back into institutior same in This is not the ne on streets in an election ightenment but a new blast of Victorian values, seeking to dump the 'bonies' back into the bins inal pabents pres sure groups have been fighting to close
International News TO tion movement to be so big. were surprised.
In Greece we also have our own NUS. AllISO uney were against the occupations, but as the action spread they changed to not saying anything at all. Be cause they were opposed to the actions, we had to build our own committees of struggle on the ground. In every school and colege these committees were erected by generas meeting But even if the NUS had supported the occupations we would have had to build such committees, Bach movement must be controlled by the ac-