AT a time when the crisis of the Labour government is reaching the point of explosion, the WRP and the Young Socialists are calling for action to defend the NHS, and in particular for occupations to stop hospital closures, and national strike action to bring down the Blair–Brown government. This is in order for the working class to go forward to a workers’ government to save the NHS, and prevent a return of the Tories.
It was the Tories who began the struggle to privatise the NHS, under Thatcher, and Health Secretaries Clarke and Bottomley. The Tories now feel that they are on the brink of being able to return, thanks to Blair’s policies, to complete the privatisation of the NHS.
It is extraordinary that in this situation, the revisionists of the Socialist Party and the SWP, who are involved with the Save the Whipps Cross Hospital Campaign, should be cuddling up to the right-wing, ex-Tory Party leader, Ian Duncan Smith, and also to the Liberal Democrats, and trying to give these right-wing forces credibility as defenders of the NHS.
Ian Duncan Smith’s position on the NHS is clear. He has always supported Tory privatisation policies. He is for saving Whipps Cross, since this is the hospital that large numbers of his constituents use, and is in favour of other hospitals taking the strain and being cut and closed instead, to keep Whipps Cross open.
This is now the position that the revisionists seem to be taking. That they will be alright since Duncan Smith’s support will mean that Chase Farm or some other hospitals will be closed.
Their close support for the ex-Tory leader Duncan Smith also signals to anybody that chooses to believe it that the NHS could be in safer hands under the Tories!
This right-wing Revisionist-Tory Popular Front extends as far as seeking to gag those who are fighting to keep all district general hospitals open and calling for occupations and political strike action to achieve just that.
This was proven by the fact that Duncan Smith and the Liberal Democrats addressed last Saturday’s Whipps Cross rally, while a consultant surgeon, with many years service in the NHS, was told by the revisionists that she could not address the rallies.
This is because the SWP and the Socialist Party were very concerned that their alliance with Duncan Smith should not be disturbed by calls for occupation of Whipps Cross hospital and strike action to defend the NHS.
They acted as censors applying the gag, while Smith was allowed to spew out his rubbish as he wished.
The revisionists are incapable of defending the basic gains of the working class and are quite prepared to surrender them, not just to Blair and Brown and but also to the Tories.
The revisionists of the SWP and Socialist Party have already been defeated.
Only the WRP and the Young Socialists are leading the working class forward.
We are calling for Councils of Action to be built in every area by the local trade unions in alliance with the area’s youth and residents.
These Councils of Action will take every kind of action from local strikes, mass pickets and demonstrations to hospital occupations, to defend NHS District General Hospitals.
These struggles will drive forward the fight within the trade unions for a new and revolutionary leadership that will take national strike action to bring down the Blair-Brown government and bring in a workers’ government to carry out socialist policies to defend and develop the NHS.
A workers’ government will drive the privateers out of the NHS and obtain the resources to develop the NHS by nationalising the banks and the drugs companies.
This is the way forward. Cuddling up to Duncan Smith is not just politically perverse, it gives up the struggle for socialism in favour of collaboration with the enemies of the working class.