state DEFENDING health, education and welfare services will be at the centre of resistance to the new Labour government: and the only campaign which sets out to ink and or. ganise campaigning on all these issues, the Welfare State Network, held a successful AGM conference on October 18.
Over 200 activists and campaigners heard Tony Benn open the conference with a warning that the destruction of the wel. fare state would take us back to the horrors of Victorian times, and call for "the biggest united campaign possible".
There was lively discussion in workshops on topics including the Welfare to Work policy, fighting NHS cuts, defending schools, opposing student fees, rejecting "Mad" Frankie Field's threatened pension reforms, and building on the summer's Euromarch campaign to battle on against unemployment throughout the EU.
A strengthened Steering Committee was elected, drawn from a wide political spectrum, and the WN pledged among other things to organise a conference in defence of the NHS: for campaigners and health workers, to be held in early March.
The WSN record of activity and political debate contrasts vividly with the sterile, bureaucratic posturing of Ken Livingstone's "Campaign to Defend the Welfare State", which meets only once a year in a tightly stage-managed event dominated by platform bigwigs, makes no attempt to build local campaigning activity, and nas steadfastly rebuffed all the efforts of the WSN to establish joint work. • Contact the WSN c/o 183 Queen's Crescent, London NW5 4DS. 0171639-5068 Harry Sloan LABOUR ministers continue LHE has also urged Trusts and health authorities to regard the ex-