causes of ill-health!
BY SUE ARNALL Edwina Currie, Junior Health Minister, marked her first few days in her new job by blaming women for the poor health of working class people in the North.
Long before she opened her mouth and shot to fame overnight, women in the North were aware of our elsewhere. Вигу,, campaign to demand action Currie's Ministry and lighten the load on our backs.
The story is a familiar one. relative mortality rates of people of all ages by class and living conditions has been closely documented since Edwin Chadwick's reports of the mid 1800s.
We know that ill health, infant mortality, and early death in adult life together with overcrowding, poor unemployment, and damp housing. We have known this for centuries, and experienced it — we don't need to be told.
Governments have known that the great improvements in infant expectancy and in diseases such as TB were made as a result of clean water, public health planning, improved housing better diet. The fact that there is still a gross difference between expectancy of the middle class and the working class is no mystery.
You only have to visit our housing estates, see the grim, damp living conditions in see conditions the sweatshops, mills, the workshops to get some idea what the reason might be. And then there is the poverty. How thousands live without electricity because they've been cut off for non-payment? How are they supposed to cook nutritious meals?
Edwina Currie, would remedy to be seen in Education - she says responsible for our "foolish" lifestyle, we need to change our eating habits!
It takes very little to make women feel guilty, and so direct their anger away from this economic policies which poverty wages and unemployment. They can teel guilt tor the cigarettes
Attack the real we have a from
0000000
The
00000 poverty, diet, which guilty for allowing kids sweets to stop them whingeing; guilty for the odd drink to help relax.
life simply who the real guilty party was.
conquering
It was a survey of inequalitites in the nation's health, and it showed that, despite 30 years oi the NHS, manual and workers and their children tended to die younger and to have worse health the life working the many gas or like the
Health we are
Government's rely on
(DHSS wider.
silent about be meals, poor.
Black centres screening, the only
MUESLI give some relief from stress;
radically
In Bury,
The Black Report in 1980 said fairly starting which
University
Community than middle class families — and it | of the ward's only NHS clinic in 1985.
OUT PATIENTS DEPT
I'm sorry. but I'm going in hare to ask rou to pich strows"
warned that this gap was growing
The Tory government has been
Black's recommendations, which were that poverty must combatted, in particular by increasing child benefit, free school improved housing and redistribution of wealth from rich to
In terms of NHS charges, Black noted the inverse-care law, that is to say there tends to be less health care in areas where the need is greatest.
called for much greater emphasis in preventing ill health, a concentration of health care in areas of greatest need such as the inner cities, and better community health providing preventive home care for disabled and elderly and antenatal care.
It is clear that the Black Report was not calling for Socialist Revolution — realistic measure which woud ever equalise our chances of a full healthy life for all irrespective of class. Nevertheless, the report had a different emphasis from present government policies.
Greater Manchester, we have a local campaign which takes its point from the Black recommendations. I live in a world has been studied by the of Manchester ExtraMural Department on behalf of our
Health Council. The report was prompted by the closure
NEATM
The study showed that on the basis of 8 different variables (percentages of households without indoor WC; percentage 0-14; percentage single parent percentage of pensioner households; percentage of percentage without a car; percentage living in council housing; percentage born in Commonwealth), East Ward scored significantly above all other wards in the District.
Nobody living here would be at all surprised. Our main council estate is pre-war, with neither inside WCs nor reasonable heating systems. We all know about the unemployment and deregulation of public transport, the fact that so many rely on the bus is a real problem.
In addition we have a great number of elderly people who rely on their sheltered housing workers or their home care workers for shopping and for the collection of prescriptions. It was helpful, however, to have things down in black and white, because the data showed that our economic, material circumstances were mirrored by higher mortality than the rest of the district.
So people in East Ward don't just suffer from poor jobs prospects, damp houses, lousy bus they also live shorter lives and are ill more often.
Wouldn't you think this information would lead to a massive health professionals? Not a bit of it. In comes the inverse care law. We have neither Doctor nor Chemist in the ward, and we have now lost our children — who are more likely to suffer from cot deaths, or infant illnesses — now have to travel across town to see a GP or other health professional. Elderly people have to walk across the town centre to audiologist, or the Health Visitor, or And when they need medicine they have to pay for their home carer to town to
After the publication of this CHC survey we have begun a campaign which we have no dropping until we achieve modest goal: a proper health centre in the ward, accessible to all the residents, which will not house GPs and chemists but which could be a centre care, for hot help for a
Currie's hobby
Education!
So East Ward Health Centre campaign will carry on fighting, along with the Tenants Association in their campaign for inside bathrooms, damp-free homes, cheap heating and decent play areas for the kids.
of households;
unemployed;
and
New
IN the minds of British trades unionists, for years David Kitson has been an important symchronic membership of the African National Consince gress's military organisation, his imprisonment was widely release by anti-apartheid activists, notably and by the leadership of his trade union.
camapgin by that same union, its left wing General Secretary Ken Gill.
also rates services;
sympathies munist Party, in his defence.
input of the nearest
But this principled and intention
OUI simply for preventive
Health who are CP members or sympathisers.
and propagandist central
In
SUPPORT
DAVID KITSON years in South
African jails after being found guilty of from his former college, Ruskin in Oxford,
"internationalism"
Now David Kitson is being remembered for something else. Only three years atter his release and return to this country he is vicious persecution
An explanation for this remarkable turnaround is to be found in the politics of the the anti-apartheid
David Kitson joined TASS's predecessor union in the late '40s. Given his political as a supporter of the
Comthis group his subsequent imprisonment ensured a CP-supported campaign
TASS featured its support for Kitson as representing the union's commitment to opposing apartheid. For many in other unions too, it was a tangible link between the workers' movement here and
As well as some (limited) assistance to repeated loud and often its pledge to provide for David after his release. In the union's own words, they promised to help him "build a new
The means of doing this was by financing a teaching position at Ruskin College
David's livelihood - vitally needed since, on his release, he would be approaching official retirement age yet by virtue of his 20 years in a South African jail, was not entitled to any state benefits.
promise from TASS was to be subject to political pressures not foreseen at the time it was made though increasingly apparent in the period leading up to David's return
The source of these developments was
Apartheid as an organisaion has, trom its formation, been heavily influenced by the
Communist Party. The aps autude of
CP's attitude solidarity work coincides with those at the
Oxford Branch.
top of the labour movement from where it derives the bulk of its support - including
Labour Party, a number of people in the trade unions,
This method is essentially moralistic.
strongiy against anything but the most token direct action.
in AAM (as with numerous other similar international solidarity campaigns), the CP has the enormous advantage of political links with the organisacial support.
tions actually influencing, and sometimes leading, the resistance movements in the countries concerned either through other Communist Parties or, in the case of
National
Recent events in the CPGB have comand now there is fierce competition between the CP majori ty and the (mainly expelled) dissident wing around the Morning Star.
The latter faction are particularly keen to assert their right to inherit the franchise
"orthodox" Stalinists concerned with against CPGB ma"revisionism"
On the issue of South Africa Ken Gill, being the leading trade unionist in the has a strong factional interest in slavishly promoting the ANC and, it seems, is prepared to do so even at the expense of his union's respected
The background to this has been events in AAM, the leadership of which has had a long-running battle with its now-expelled City of London Group. Over recent years had pursued a policy of solidarity action radically different from mainstream AA methods.
Influenced by the Revolutionary Communist Group, it adopted a militant, direct approach typified by is effective and much-publicised Non-Stop Picket outside South Africa House other independents Kitson's family, understandably keen to support increased action against became involved, as tensions built up between City Group
After David's return his family's involvement with City Group led to controversy and a demand from AA that he condemn this section of anti-apartheid activity something he refused to do. A further consequence was the suspension of David and his wife Norma from membership by the London ANC, though without charges being laid or them being given the right of
For Gill and the TASS leadership, this issue of David's "relations with the ANC" has been used as the reason for the union reneging on is financial support for the
Ruskin teaching post, which is now due to end completely in the summer of this year, despite unanimous opposition to the TASS stance within Ruskin, reaching from the college Principal to the students
Within TASS, David's own Divisiona
Council have backed his case, as has the
In Oxford, the Trades Council, District and Oxford City AA
Group, having had a request for a meetin vith Ken Gill turned down, and been tol the Executive Committee of the union
"regard the matter as closed", have issued an appeal to the labour movement nationally for protests to be made to the
TASS leadership demanding an end to this victimisation and for continuation of finan-
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