Meeting
Conway Hall, Red Lion Square (Holborn Tube) Everybody welcome LAST December a highlevel alliance of trade union and Labour leaders held a conference chaired by Ken Livingstone and supported by the Morning Star: it proclaimed itself the 'Defend the Welfare State Campaign'. Prominent sponsors included three of Britain's biggest unions, UNISON, GMB and TGWU, and speeches from the proceedings, notably from Bryan Gould and GMB leader John Edmonds were given television coverage. The conference was portrayed in the media as a means of firing a warning shot across the bows of John Smith's Labour leadership, pressing for a more rigorous defence of the welfare state at a time when that appeared to be under attack within the Party. Since then, the speeches and Socialist Movement Trade Union Committee Invited speakers include • TONY BENN, • ALAN SIMPSON MP, • CAROLINE BEDALE (UNISON Health Activist Network), • JOE MARINO (General Secretary, Bakers Union) have been published in booklet form, but no further initiatives have been announced. Labour Parties and union branches wishing to get involved in an ongoing campaign have been offered no way in.
Despite its potential to reach deep into the labour movement the campaign went into hibernation, and appears to have lost all momentum.
But Tory attacks on the welfare state have continued to escalate:
• A new crackdown on 'fraud' is bringing misery to millions of social security, invalidity benefit and housing benefit claimants, as the Tories prepare to slash unemployment benefits to just six months.
• The new NHS internal market is forcing a new round of cuts and closures on health authorities and Trusts, while tens of thousands of elderly patients each year are now being compelled to sell their homes to pay means-tested charges for privatised 'communitv care? , services.
• Hundreds of thousands of students face an immediate plunge into poverty with the start of a new academic year, as the Tory policy of replacing grants with loans forces up the level of personal debt to record levels, and triggers the first spate of court cases to compel graduates to repay past loans.
Rank and file
With these problems in view, a new initiative, the Welfare State Network, has been launched, aimed at linking rank and file activists and local campaigners fighting to defend welfare services and benefits.
It is jointly launched by the Socialist Campaign Group Supporters Network and the Socialist Movement Trade Union Committee, and is urging union branches, CLPs and local campaigning bodies to affiliate and play an acuve role An initial Planning Meeting is being held on Sunday September 18 (12-4.00pm) at London's Conway Hall.
Speakers invited include MPs Tony Benn and Alan Simpson, UNISON health activist Caroline Bedale, Bakers' Union leader Joe Marino, a student nurse from Guy's Hospital, Alan Pottage of the RMT Executive and John Lister from London Health Emergency campaign.
As the organisers point out:
"There are hundreds of active and hard-working campaigns fighting to protect particular services, to resist new attacks on rights and benefits, and defend local hospitals. We need rank and file co-ordination to make sure we are not isolated - but also to give us the strength to win.
"We will campaign to defend and extend public provision so that health housing; education; and a minimum income are available to all, by right. We will defend and fight to improve universal benefits like child benefit, the basic state pension, unemployment benefit and others, against erosion of their value and against replacement by means-tested hand-outs."
The Network is pledged to support and seek to work with all other campaigns already active in this field, including the Defend the Welfare State Campaign. Beyond that, the agenda for action remains to be written on September 18. Make sure your organisation or campaign is represented!
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 68, September 10 1994, Page 6