Get together to fight the cuts

Scan page 6

"If you oppose the cuts, and you fight back, you can win." and to build up some kind of • the leaflet went for printing. cuts. est in the conference, specialANDREA CAMPBELL is one of the organisers of the Health Fightback 84 conference in Bradford on February 25, and CoHSE branch secretary in Hackney.

She spoke to Organiser •about the conference.

What are you hoping to see come out of the conference?

We are hoping, first of all, to see a lot more understanding of exactly how you can fight against cuts in the health service, and also against privatisation.

Other conferences on this over the past year and a half have attracted a fair number of people, but they've largely been rhetorical.

Trade union and Labour Party leaders have denounced the cuts, but with little or no reference to how you actually fight them.

We're hoping to gather militants from all over the country, and also people who haven't l had much previous experience of fighting the cuts but want to know what to do in their area.

We also hope that there will be some way of keeping in touch with people who come to the conference - to keep exchanging experiences network nationwide of people who are fighting the What support have you for the conference so far?

We've got several MPs sponsoring it. We've had a few shop stewards' committees send in sponsorship since tn UVE them the money There's been a lot of interly, so far, from London and the North.

Over the last few months there has been a whole new wave of struggle against health cuts. What do you think are the main lessons from that so far?

One main lesson arises from the occupations at Hayes and Northwood hospitals. If you oppose the cuts, and you fight back, you can win.

The workers there occupied their hospitals, which were scheduled for closure on October 31, and just before Christmas they were granted a reprieve of at least nine months. It was a major victory.

We need to take that out into the hospitals, into the unions, and into the Labour Parties and anywhere else that people are prepared to fight, and say you can fight back.

We've also seen that the only way of fighting the cuts is to link together, and not just at district or borough level but nationally.

The actions of the TUC and the trade union leaders over the last few months have proved that they are not prepared to fight even when the workers are - and so what we've got to do in the health service is organise people to take action and force the leadership to back them.

There was a privatisation conference called by CoHSE in London last Saturday, and our new general secretary David Williams was speaking there.

He said nothing. He didn't even mention Thornton View or Hayes. But then he was interviewed on the radio on Sunday night He said that the union leaders weren't going to advocate strike action industrial action at this time. or There had to be a fight back against the cuts, he said -but he had absolutely no proposals as to how that fight back was going to go ahead.

That shows why we need Bradford conference!