THE News Line congratulates the North East London Council of Action for its march through Enfield on Saturday and its occupation of Chase Farm Hospital’s Clock Tower.
Even though the Council of Action has been stressing, for the year of its daily picket of the hospital, that this was its policy, the occupation took the hospital management, the police and the state by surprise – they have grown too accustomed to trade union leaders speaking out of both sides of their mouths at the same time.
As it was, the police, after a couple of hours of indecision, were given their orders to clear the site, and after professing neutrality and even sympathy with keeping the hospital open, dragged the brave occupiers out, injuring at least one of them.
The main lesson from last Saturday’s occupation is not that leadership was lacking, in fact the Council of Action trod where the union leaders fear to go, but that much greater numbers are required to defend sites under occupation in important facilities and industries, against the capitalist state.
The North East London Council of Action correctly intervened into a situation at Chase Farm Hospital where 350 jobs are being wiped out at the moment, at a time when the hospital is already dangerously short of staff, when four wards have been closed, and where the A&E, and the Maternity departments are due to be closed, finishing off a hospital that the huge area of Enfield relies on.
In this crisis situation, what have been conspicuous by their absence are the major health trade unions, the BMA, RCN, Unison and Unite which have not opposed or fought a single one of these attacks.
The trade union bureaucracy has retreated to Barnet, the hospital that currently is to remain open, and is letting Chase Farm burn.
This is why the North East London Council of Action had and has a duty to intervene to fight for the hospital, all of its services, and to provide leadership for the working people of the area.
The attitude of the trade union leaders to the NHS and the Welfare State is ‘easy come easy go’.
In fact, the NHS and the Welfare State were not easily achieved. They were won over generations of struggle, and cannot be allowed to go, because the trade union bureaucrats will not mobilise seven million union members to defend them.
The NHS and the Welfare State must be defended and retained for future generations.
This means that the major trade unions must be committed to opposing all cuts, and opposing all closures of hospitals, fire stations and factories with occupations backed by mass strike actions.
It is the mobilisation of millions of workers and youth that is required, and trade union leaders who are not prepared to do this must be made to resign, and be removed by leaders who do not accept the position that the destruction of the NHS and the Welfare State is inevitable because of the crisis of capitalism.
Immediately ahead are the big battles to defend the NHS and the Welfare State.
To do this the trade unions must be committed to occupations and mass strikes to fight cuts and closures and to bring down the bankrupt Tory-led coalition and bring in a workers’ government.
We are living in the period of the death agony of capitalism.
This is why the trade union bureaucracy cannot be allowed to help the ruling classes drag the working class and the youth over the edge of the abyss with it.
We must build up the revolutionary leadership of the WRP and build a new leadership in the trade unions that will mobilise the masses to defend every gain of the working class, by carrying out a socialist revolution, to put an end to capitalism and go forward to socialism.
