Last month's strike to save UCH and Middlesex THE STRIKE action by nurses and support staff organised in UNISON at London's University College Hospital remains the focal point of the rolling, escalating crisis in the NHS.
The impact of the action in opposition to the "temporary" closure of the UCH hospital site has been far bigger than might be expected from the relatively small numbers involved. Though strikers' attempt to spread the action to neighbouring hospital and beyond have had little success, they have retained official UNISON backing and courageously defied increasingly heavy-handed management eifors ar snaim dation.
The management tactics de scended on September 10 to abruptly moving patients from their wards without notifying HOME NEWS either the staff caring for them or their visiting relatives.
Lunch
An angry protest ordinated by UNISON hut spearhieaded by angry relatives and accompanied by TV cameras burst in upon a sumptoous management The episode helped highlight the gulf between the brutal cuts in front line services and the rich pickines to be nad by top axe-wield ing NHS bosses.
The UCH strike stands out strongly against a background of passive inactivity from UNISON and other health despite the mounting evidence ofaiohs massacre sweepins the NHS.
Despite the fanfare which grected the merger of COHSE. NALGO and NUPE to form UNISON with nearly 500,000 health workers, there has been little leadership on offer at national or local level for members battered by cash-cutting. county-nunung managcaiens struggling for survival in the ones futhicss markct-siyic NHS.
A combination of incompetence. disoreanisation and the bureaucratic preoccupation of top officials with preserving their own jobs has meant that the half-hearted UNISON call for a national demonstration on the NHS on November 11. whien nas the potenaar to toco» and build on growing anger has been followed up by just one limp circular to branch secretaries -giving no details.
Meanwhile the market reforms are taking a brutal toll. with jobs and services under fire across the country The entire UCL Hospitals unit. comprising UCH. the Middlesex and related hospitals in central London, faces total bankruptcy and closure as a result of the plan by cash-strapped Camden & Islington health authority to withdraw its contracts for routine acute hospital services. If these services were to close, the remaining. purcly spocist, topilal sc saddled with ICeS woUlG 0c £19m in teaching grants, tnggering a financial collapsoServices at risk include the busy casunity unit at UCH Storm centre London as a whole remains the stoem centre of the NHS cuts, since its hich overncad UNISON costs coupled with the drastic reduction in budgets of many London ncaln autnontics nave left many hospitals stranded by the loss of contract income.
Casualty services are lurching towards chaos as closure ooms for busy unit at Barts and Charing Cross Hospitals: Heathrow Airport emergency services could be threatened by the closure of A&E services at Ashford Hospital; and outlying casualty units at Barnet General Hospital and Harold Wood in Essex face the axe. Barnet Trust chiefs, facing a £5m deficit, are seeking a merger with the ACTION THURSDAY 16 SEPT For details phone UCH Unison on (0860) 370523 For 370525. Royal National Orthopaedic Trust, itself in cash problems.
In South West London, Queen Mary's Rochampton and one other district hospital (cither Kingston or St Helier) are likely to face closure as purchasing authorities pull the financial plug. To the South East. purchasers are demanding the closure of cither Guy's or St Thomas's hospital to save £30m a year, while plans have been announced to close both Greenwich District and the Brook hospitals to merge into a smaller unit on the Queen Elizabeth's military hospital site.
The mad scramble for survival in a chaotic market system in London's NHS is complicated by the pretence of 'planning' cpilomised by the Tomlinson Report and a network of related quango bodies presided over by the London Implementation Group. Sweeping cus in seccianst scrvices are expected from Health Secretary Bottomley some time in November.
Meanwhile waiting lists in much of the capital are rocketing upwards, well above the 150.000 mark, even hefore the impending autumn round of cash cuts.
But of course London is not alone in this crisis. Birmingham, coo. races navoc, with d massive shift of contract income away from the city's central specialist hospitals, where local health budgets are also facing heavy cuts.
£24m shortfall South Birmingham health authority alone faces a massive £24m deficit, of which £11m stems from the under-funding of acute hospital services, and another £2m from the refusal of other health authorities to pay up for patients treated.
The city's Accident Hospital closed in August. Royal Orthopacdic closing in December. Others at risk include the Children's and the Eye hospitals, while brutal cuts are looming at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Elsewhere Newcastle General Hospital faces closure as brutal rationalisation plans are forced throuch by nval nids in the teeth of public opposition. Bradford Hospital Trust is pressing ahead with closure of Woodlands orthopaedic hospital to save £500,000 a year. In Manchester, Salford's two children's hospitals are facing drastic cuts and across-theboard job losses to cut E1.5m from a £2.6m deficit.
Double deficit
Other units in trouble include Plymouth hospitals. where a 200.00 overspend doubled in July, raising the spectre of a fim plus deficit, and Darlington, where 5 percent of staff at the Memorial Hospital could face the axe to cut £3.5m over three years. looking at ways of cutting jobs to save money.
But it is not all bad news. London's Forest Healthcare Trust, based in Waltham Forest, has announced a first-year profit of El.Im. However a closer reading of its annual accounts shows this follows service cuts totalling ..El.Im!
None of this appears to trouble Virginia Bottomley. She recently travelled to Islington's Whittington Hospital to 'open' a hospital wing which had already been in use for two ycars. It is not cical wich snc will retur to officially close the ward which has already bitHOUST The fightback for our NHS must be stepped up as the cuts gather pace. Support for the KRATONCn DOOCHL opposing cach and every cutback in hospital and health services across the country.
Demand UNISON build and other TUC unions support the November 11 demonstration!
Socialist OUILLOOK SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 49. 18 September 1993, Page 7
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