500 WORKERS and youth, men, women and children marched yesterday through Southall to Ealing to defend Ealing hospital whose closure has begun with the shutting down of its Maternity Department yesterday.
Next is its Paediatric Department, then its A&E and then the whole hospital will be closed, a death sentence for the local community. In fact the NHS hospitals in West London are being slashed and cut to pieces. They are being downsized then closed before the remnants are privatised.
In a microcosm, this is the fate that the Tories have mapped out for the whole of the NHS. it is to be smashed and then privatised to cut costs to save capitalism, and to hell with the working class. There had been an occupation for a week to try and halt the closure of the Ealing Maternity.
The occupation was well supported, but it failed to halt the closure because the Tories cannot be swayed by a just argument and actions that do not hit them in their pocket books, or threaten their grip on power.
At yesterday’s rally the West London Council of Action faced up to this situation. Its statement said: ‘We know the occupation did not halt the closure. Only a strike by the trade unions in the hospital and supported by industrial action throughout the area, could have done that.
‘However, what the occupation proved for all to see was that there was massive support throughout the entire area for action to keep the Ealing Maternity open. Local people throughout the area understand that NHS cuts, closures of maternity departments, and closures of A&Es cost lives!
‘They are in fact death sentences for whole communities. The degree of support that the occupation received made it perfectly clear that the Maternity Unit could have been kept open and saved if the trade union leaders had mobilised their members to take action to stop this closure.
‘This, the union leaders refused to do. They stood back and watched what was happening without convening a single mass meeting inside the hospital and in industries outside of it to take any action to halt the closure.
‘Everybody knows that the closure of the Maternity Unit is now to be followed by the closure of the Paediatrics Department and then the A&E and then – the hospital as a whole. The west London hospitals, that is Ealing, Charing Cross, Hammersmith and Central Middlesex are being slashed to pieces by a government that puts saving a bankrupt capitalist system above the lives of ordinary people and their children.’
The statement added: ‘Our occupation has shown that the working class is more than ready to defend the NHS. We must now force the trade unions to take action to fight all cuts and closures, all sackings in the NHS and all attempts to privatise it with industrial action leading to a general strike to bring down this government.
‘All cuts and closures must be opposed, as must all attempts to close departments. Such attempts must be met by strike action in the NHS, supported by strike action throughout industry, since these cuts and closures threaten the lives of everybody, men, women and children.’
The West London Council of Action is proud of its occupation and the support it received and is calling a conference for all workers and trade unionists on Sunday July 19, in Southall, to organise the struggle to stop NHS cuts and closures by occupations, mass strike actions and then by the mobilisation of the whole of the working class in a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism.
In fact Councils of Action must be built everywhere, and in them the masses of the workers must join with the trade unions for mass actions to stop NHS cuts and closures and halt evictions, to prepare the way for a general strike and a social revolution, where the bankers and bosses are expropriated and replaced by a socialist planned economy.
The TUC does not favour this type of organisation and struggle, but this is just another big reason why the TUC leaders must be sacked and be replaced by a revolutionary leadership that hates capitalism and is determined to get rid of it.
