on their Friday night regional talk show, I could not kid myself that this was my long-delayed break into show business.
It was not debonair good looks they wanted from me (just as well, I thought, or they would want their money back!). Nor, alas, did they want me as an advocate of the marxist left, a supporter of Socialist Outlook, heroic protagonist of the working class.
No, Granada wanted me for my knowledge in a field unfortunately rare on the hard left: I was to appear as an expert on the NHS, to help argue the case against hospitals "opting out"
Seven years working for London Health Emergency have led to many interviews, live and taped, with regional and national television and radio -and with a wide range of local, regional and national newspapers and magazines.
On behalf of LHE I have been asked to speak at hundreds of local, regional and national meetings called by the whole spectrum of labour movement organisations. Invitations and support have come from almost every quarter, with one notable excepFor some reason or other the eyes of almost all left activists glaze over with instant indifference the moment NHS campaigns are mentioned Revealing to most socialists that I work for LHE is almost like confessing a rather shameful addiction: "Yeah, O.K., I campaign on the NHS a bit, but can handle it..
The joke is that sections of the paranoid right wing in the unions, seeing a socialist involved in LHE, have instantly taken fright, regarding it as a LHE has almost 300 affiliations from trade unions, Labour Parties and other organisations, and virtually none of these reflect any influence or involvement of the hard left.
For seven years I have struggled to understand why the NHS, by far the most popular of the public services, and a continual electoral asset to the labour movement, should be met by such inThere is no economic or political explanation. The NHS is by far the biggest employer in the more of its million staff are women, and large percentages are black - and the left professes a special interest in fighting sexism and racism. The majority of healthworkers are unionised, and their record of militancy in the last fifteen years matches Perhaps it is the rare exceptions to the general left apathy on the NHS that give the clue: struggles on NHS pay (most recently the ambulance dispute) do occasionally cut through to galvanise some 'interventions'. But as soon as the pay fight subsides, the left troops off in search of action elseThe problem is that the left on this adopts an economistic approach. The largely female NHS workforce does not easily fit in to the stereotype of male-dominated industrial workers who tend to be targeted for the left's selective efforts at serious 'trade union work'. And many of the day-to-day issues NHS workers confront are too political or • too complex to allow easy answers to be dropped Yet with everyone other than the marxist left, the NHS is now "flavour of the month". Since the Monmouth by-election, Neil Kinnock and the Labour leadership have at last caught on to the electoral advantage of high-profile health campaigning, and the mass support that is so easily ta pow does it feel to be out-lefted by Kinnock?
Maybe you agree it's time for a change!
Ine with Kim Howells. branches' in every town. 70% or rowed them? nauseating and latterly TV's Cook Report, have hounded Arthur Scargill, with allegations of financial impropriety during the miners' strike. In particular they have accused him of using money donated for miners' welfare funds to pay off a personal mortgage. The Lightman Report, set up by the NUM executive, repudiated this claim, finding it 'without foundation'. But the Mirror continues to make these and other allegations. Socialist Outlook: Did you encounter any problems with Channel 4 in explaining who was behind the frameup?
Ken Loach: What was disappointing was that a lot of things said about the Labour Party's role in the affair, especially the actions of NUM MPs Kim Howells and Kevin Barron, were cut out by the Channel Four lawyers.
point is that Barron and Howells deserved to be criticised. They'd abused Arthur Scargill great abandon, especially SO: The original Mirror allegation was that Arthur Scargill used money sent for the miners to pay off his own mortgage. Your documentary comprehensively disproves this. However, the Mirror, in its one-page reply to your programme, makes much of the fact that you didn't respond to the accusation that Arthur was lent money by the International Miners Organisation (IMO).
KL: Yes we didn't deal with this because it seemed such a private matter. It was true that Arthur bormoney from the IMO during the strike - for six months, all paid back, and at a high rate of interest. During the strike wasn't being paid by the NUM, didn't have an income so how could he go to the local building society and borrow money from The hypocrisy of well-paid journalists like the Mirror's industrial correspondent Terry Pattinson, on their enormous expense accounts making these allegations seemed SO: The programme relies heavily on the face to face interviews. It is almost as if the camera is reading their faces to see if they are lying. Scargill came across as sincere; but so did Roger Windsor. He didn't look as if he director KEN LOACH. was lying.
KL: He seems on face value very genuine. You have to remind yourself that he has made £110,000 out of this. He was the one person in he NUM offices to get a loan luring the strike - £30,000 whick he has never paid back. He also got SO: Both Cook and the Mirror came into NUM funds from the NUM leadership during the money coming in from unions going to the NUM, otherwise it would have been sequestrated. so to keep tabs on every penny of possible. It is incredible that there made about money collected instead of striking miners. But the Soviet government. It also the USSR wouldn't give support decisions had to be made on this money at the highest level and it was totally a function of Soviet foreign policy.
The old guy who was the head of the Soviet Miners' Union was quite interesting because when he went on television ana gave a militant speech on the need for solidarity with the miners, they gave him the push. The way that Stalinism changes, but is the same, 22 May refuted the slander campaign against Scargill. It showed how much of the 'evidence' against him was based on testimony by former NUM chief executive Roger Windsor, who received £80,000 from the Mirror for his story. It also showed that those with most to gain were people in the Labour Party who wanted to destroy Scargill as a left threat to Kinnock. Sean Tunney and John Lister spoke to the programme's SO: Pattinson of the Mirror was very weak on the inconsistencies about how much money had supposedly come from Libya and the allegations about Archer's KL: The Mirror, as Arthur says, for libel. It's like a loss leader. They benefits of getting him into courtto tions about what happened to the NUM's finances during the strike. cause in the face of the sequestrato be done in a clandestine way. Lots of labour movement orly helped the NUM in this. The insidiousness of the Mircusations is that they turn this solutely necessary to preserve the SO: Nicholas Jones of the BBC was very good in the reason for the allegations was pro-Kinnock Mirror had made and demanding an enquiry. put it into a political context, not just to refute the allegations. was said in the programme was so true - that if you could denigrate Scargill then you could denigrate the whole It makes sense from Maxwell's point of view as a concerted attack on that sort of politics, on industrial struggle, on militancy, on anything that isn't vote for Neil every five years. No. 3 June 8, 1991
Ah, for Victorian values! Family life: Hardwork: respect: discipline... I'M NOT sure that Stephen Valentine's comment on Callinicos's recent book, 'Trotskyism', that the argument is one which you could have with any Socialist Worker seller, (SO 2), isn't a back-handed compliment. It does suggest a theoretical consisthe factory gate which is frequently missing in far left groups.
Firstly, Callinicos's book is an attempt to explain Trotskyism to a wider, mainly academic audience, outside of the frequently sectarian citeria which tency from the university library to various Trotskyists set to 'prove' their theories. Hence the references to Lakatos et al. My understanding is that the book has been a success on those terms.
Secondly, I'm not aware that it's the case that the SWP argues that the