(RMT Southern District secretary) AFTER A SERIES of defeats for rail workers, successful strike action by signalling grades has opened up a new wave of struggle on the railways.
With their dispute continuing, and the rejection by ASLEF conference of the BR pay award, government privatisation plans have been thrown in to further disarray.
One of the least vociferous groups of rail workers, signalling grades nevertheless command a crucial position. As they proved during their one-day strike last Wednesday, without their co-operation not a single tan can iove.
Despite this strength, their By Terry Smith THE CAMPAIGN to save Guy's Hospital from closure, which began with a burst of ènergy and huge local support, has been hi-jacked by the right wing and is in danger of becoming completely stranded.
TRADE UNION NEWS Five whole months after Health Secretary Bottomley announced her decision that Guy's should close, the campaign still has not produced any coherent or centralised newsletter or campaign leaflets.
The broader the official campaign has become, the slower it has moved in building popular support.
A cross-party committee dominated by Guy's consultants and their City chums, but also including Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes and Tory MP Roger Sims has focused on raislack of voice has allowed them to slip back in the pay league.
A discussion lasting years has seen British Rail drag their feet on rewarding increased productivity - with staffing levels down nearly half in ten years. Signalling workers still oversee the same level of train movemens.
So when Railtrack came into existence two months ago, the RMT believed the time had come to press the claim for an 11 per cent pay increase to restore differentials.
Effective
After a brief but effective propaganda campaign, led for the first time by national executive members and not left to full-time officials, the vote among signalling grades, on an 80 per cent turnout, was 4-1 in favour of trike action.
Railtrack immediately tried ing up to £150,000 - to finance an 'independent' report by City consultants KPMG, in order to present a 'respectable' case to Bottomley for the retention of the Guy's site.
Any such alternative plan would be aimed not at galvanising public opinion and local resistance, but at laying the basis for a legal wrangle in a potential call for a judicial review of the closure plan. This in turn would cost another £500,000: yet a similar legal challenge over the closure of Bart's Hospital was recently thrown out by the courts.
Fees
The latest Guy's 'campaign' proposals involve paying fees of £7,500 a month to an additional business consultant, plus retaining professional Public Relations consultants and even paying out for a team of architects.
While every penny of camDIO-OYFO to compromise with a 5.7 per cent offer - a small step just enough to keep talks going. At which point something magical happened - the offer disappeared.
Despite denials it is clear that the government at the highest levels has vetoed the offer. Instead Railtrack claim that no offer was ever made, and are demanding further productivity increases, and even more job losses - as the price for a deal.
The RMT is clear on its response: unless the 5.7 per cent is put back on the table and increased, the strikes will continue.
Having seen the successful Right wing clamp on campaigning has isolated Guy's staff paign funds is being funnelled straight into the wallets of these over-paid city slickers, not a brass farthing has gone towards building up the kind of mass popular anger and action by health workers that could politically frighten Bottomley's Tory colleagues.
The official publicity for the July 5 lobby of Parliament and 5.30pm demonstration in support of Guy's has been restricted to a primitive single-sided A5 The one-day strikes against the BBC called by the National Union of Journalists and the BECTU broadcasting union have been successful on more than one level. Not only has the response been close to 100 percent, but 600 new members have joined the NUJ in order to take part! Standing firm for more cash: RMT's Knapp campaign waged by RMT's signalling grades, ASLEF have now thrown their hat into the ring.
ASLEF's national conference overturned the executive's acceptance of BR's 2.5 per cent pay offer and demanded a ballot for an increase in line with signalling staff. leaflet.
This was produced by a local resource centre, and paid for by UNISON, whose conference voted to support a day of action on Guy's, but whose London Head of Health, Godfrey Eastwood, is notorious for his consistent refusal to mobilise in defence of NHS jobs and services in the capital.
To make matters worse, the most dynamic force in the early stages of the campaign has also been stopped in its tracks.
Right winger
Southwark Community Health Council mobilised repeated vigorous public meetings of 100-plus local people, but all this has now been effectively neutered by the election to its chair of right wing Labourite Sally Keeble, former leader of Southwark council.
The public meetings and stunts which catapulted the campaian again and again into the headlines have since ground to a halt.
A measure of the bankruptcy of the Guy's campaign came in its complete failure to capitalise on the dramatic gesture of the It is clear that the Tories have decided to pick a fight with rail workers. It will not be easy for them to back down.
While Major and company may not be finally able to win, they have been helped by Labour's craven attitude over the strikes. None of the three Labour leadership candidates has been prepared forthrightly to back the strikers.
Prescott, an RMT-sponsored MP, has made only a general defence of the right to strike. Blair would not even go that far.
The signalling dispute is only a symptom of the chaos caused in the run-up to rail privatisation.
Yet it represents the best effort so far to halt that privatisation and stop the government's clamp-down on public sector pay. The rail workers deserve wholehearted support - both industrially and politically. neighbouring Lewisham Hospital Trust, whose top management this month became the first since Trusts were established publicly to break ranks and attack the inadequacy of funding and local planning.
By writing to staff at the hard-pressed Lewisham hospital, attacking the lack of proper planning or resources for local health care, the chair (Professor Lessof), chief executive and medical director at Lewisham Hospital will have infuriated Virginia Bottomley and exposed the docility and cowardice of their colleagues in other Trusts.
The Lewisham protest arises from a fresh package of £2m cuts, which they say would mean another 25 jobs to be axed, after repeated cutbacks in the last four years. The Trust chiefs warn that "If we continue to face further financial pressures beyond this year with a static or declining income, then the quality and quantity of the services we provide to our local population are bound to suffer."
Instead of lending support and identifying with this complaint, Guy's campaigners kept ominously silent.
This will reinforce underlying concerns at Lewisham that some Guy's consultants might try to salvage their own hospital's financial fortunes by snatching contract income from Lewisham Hospital.
A big turn-out for the July 5 demonstration, which assembles outside Guy's at 5.30pm could help to turn the tide, and re-assert that popular support and mass action are the key to
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 65, 25 June 1994, Page 5 French: swung conference