PAIGNING WINS EXTRA NHS CASH FOR
and Sam says he supports Arthur after all they are both from Yorkshire.
Thompson was forced by financial pressure to form a regional group of the Justice for Mineworkers Fund had dried up in Tune 1986. He since the National Solidarity uses the campaign to raise much-needed finance for the miners; but insists that all money raised in Yorkshire should stay Yorkshire, The campaign meetings are called and bureaucratically controlled by the Yorkshire NUM leadership, and Thompson Kent NUM's campaigning approach to the Justice Campaign, sacked miners to keep their heads down.
Thompson is equally opposed to associate NUM membership being offered to Women Against Pit Closure, or any other Miners' Support Group. Statements such as "They're all Trotskyist lesbians" were used to discredit the Women Against Pit Closures movement.
Thompson says he is against Lynk LONDON HEALTH campaigners been quick to claim the credit for pressurising the government into giving an extra London's health districts.
The new cash comes after years of annual cuts in London spending, and by pure coincidence was announced in believes to be an election year.
don't think we exaggerating to say that if London Health Emergency, campaigners and had not been so persistent and energetic in opposing the cutbacks in London's hospitals, this money would not have been forthcoming.
commented LHE Officer John Lister,
Norman Fowler's allocations of small sums of extra cash to relieve waiting lists, and further money to alleviate the loss of resources from London to other regions, mean that all but six of London's 30 health
cam- sacked in opposes the NE DERBYSHIRE urging 584/NIL 1985 DESPERANDUM SIL LIGITIMI PHOTO: Wayne Edginton have bonus handouts. total wall for prosecte to teen £15m to waiting soaring NHS impact of "RAWP" £2.4m extra what everyone sums are for one year only. would be local rising health unions with costs demand this year. And it is a drop in the ocean compared to over 5200m would be that provided in 1982 Information cash-starved hospital services In some Riverside, the extra money may be sufficient to stave off embarrassing
While prisoner MARKTA: (Reprinted from the latest "Health Emergency". April 1987) districts have received unplanned next election. Ten London health districts share a Barnet, nineteen districts divide up another £10.6m Thatcher's additional cash compensating for the cuts; another of goes to London-based Special Health Authorities. All the Of course the £15m total falls far short of the extra E22m needed to latest enable London's NHS to keep pace and growing activities, needed to restore London's NHS to the levels of care "Norman But it clearly reflects government campaigners. sensitivity to growing public alarm at watchdog the visible decline in the capital's such districts, as Socialist Viewpoint No. 16 April 1987 p12
and Prendergast of the UDM being allowd to rejoin the NUM, and has opposed the South Wales line on Margam and the 6-day week. But he is himself known as a regionalist/led. eralist, and has openly spoken of the Yorkshire Area breaking away from the national structure of the NUM.
tactically opposed to Scargillism, Thompson claims to be a
Cof the "Barnsley bureaucracy. Yet he has used that same bureaucracy to his own advantage, cynically exploiting the Davy Jones memorial march to promote his electoral chances, and using the last issue of the Yorkshire Miner to say "Sam's your man"
So what's the difference? This is the question more and more miners will be asking, whoever wins the election.
But what else should we expect? Thompson is a member of the same "Broad Leff" at regional and National level as Eric Clarke.
They both "piss int' same pot"! And when they get fed up with that, they'll piss on the members. new hospital closures until after the
Among the six districts which get no relief from the extra cash is
containing Margaret constituency, where waiting lists have been rocketing out
control; crisis-ridden Ealing, facing a new £1.3m cuts package; and Waltham Forest, whose waiting list is the tenth largest in the capital.
However, campaigners will see the
concessions as an encouragement to step up their
which have succeeded beyond expectations in bringing the scale of the health crisis to the public eye. As John Lister added:
Fowler's announcements confirm that it is possible for
unions. and bodies Hike London Health Emergency to push back government attacks.
Twe had left the health authorities and the media to their own devices. and not set out to
publicise each and every cutback, the government might have got
away with their original plans.
"As it is, the very fact that this exira money has been produced underlines our argument London's NHS - and the health service nationally is grossly under-funded.
"Now 1 looks as if the West Desperately seeking dropouts THE inexorable rise in national and local waiting list figures despite highly publicised commitments to reduce them has driven NHS management to new, desperate measures to manipulate the statistics.
The result is that a fall in the official figures is probably more likely to result from management action to "validate" the list than from treating patients.
This has already happened in Kingston, where mangement admit to having cut 552 names off the list without perlorming a single operation.
Recent reports in the Health Service Journal show how managers discussing the best ways of cutting back the lists. At a recent seminar at the Kings Fund centre attended by grocercum-NHS boss Sir Roy Griffiths. one unit manager boasted that he had reduced a surgeon's 200 strong list by 51% through "validation".
cuts may be held back. election hand-out. that London's NHS budget tients had died. found them if they still wanted treatment! Of course the superficial extra long unless more are available. and the preliminary "cull" ordered by tive of trimming 10% from the lists. Socialist Viewpoint No. 16 April 1987 p13
London Hospital, at least, will win a further reprieve and some other "But of course what is really needed is not a short-term pre- but a fundamental reverse in policy. We list. want an end to the annual cuts in which - threatens further bed losses and source offing. Alter initial inquiries to see which pa- moved. recovered, treatment elsewhere. patients left on the list were written to. asking improve- ment in waiting lists brought about by these tactics does nothing to increase appointment! resources in the hospitals or remedy the delays and frustration of patients for whom still no treatment is available: of the scheme: those left on the list will still wait just as funds are made These latest efforts to fiddle down the figures to produce the illusion of pro- gress follows the 1979 trick of crossing off day care patients from waiting lists. Norman Fowler in 1984 with the objec-
closures right up to 1994; instead we need a massive increase in the national NHS budget, to repair the damage that has been done, and expand the health service to meet demand and clear up the waiting Cutting the lists at A NEW. sinister move artificially to reduce queues tor outpatient and in-patient treatment appears to be in the
The Department of Health is conducting a survey on the possiblities of imposing quotas restricting the number of patients each GP could refer for hospital treatment.
If this were introduced then waiting lists could be "reduced" by preventing patients even getting a hospital
North Lincolnshire's DHA's general manager summed up the ruthless logic
"Given that demand will always exceed supply, we are talking about rationing. so we ought to try and make it rational rationing.
Another handy by-product of this scheme from a government point of view is that it would be a step towards imposing cash limits on GP services which (unlike hospitals) have until now enjoyed an open-ended budget.
• Local government workers in dispute with Islington council No hope for "soc