The Labour government has once again shown its concern for gay rights by delaying the reform of anti-gay laws in Northern Ireland. The Homosexual Draft order, a measure to bring the laws of Ulster into line with that of England and Wales, was an attempt to answer the appeal made by the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association to the European Commission of Human Rights.
However the prospect of having too few friends in the House of Commons is too much for Callaghan, and the measure has been shelved inorder to keep the government in office. In an effort to get the backing of the seven official Unionists, the gay law reform has been dropped like a hot potato.
As all forms of homosexual activity in Northern Ireland are at present illegal, any measure to 'liberalise' the law would be important step forward for the gay community in Ulster. It would also represent a significant victory in response to the recent attacks on the gay rights movement in Britain, - from the attacks on Maureen Colquhoun MP; prosecution, victimisation of Frank Kelly.
However bringing Ulster law into line with that of England and Wales is not enough by itself, since legislation on the mainland represents at best a liberal tolerance of homosexuality, providing you are over 21 and do it in private. In Scotland, as in Northern Ireland, all sexual acts between men are outlawed. Although three gays have recently taken the UK government to the European Court of Human Rights over the archaic Scottish laws, Strasbourg alone cannot solve the problem.
But anti-gay attacks will continue, and more often than not with the complicity of the government. The tasks ahead must be to build specific campaigns within the Labour Party, the trade unions, as well as outside the Labour movement in defence of gay rights.
doctors brings other the Gay News to the present spent on advertising and medical schools.
The Real Problems made out of our health.
drug firms, anies, Labour refuses to deal the Daily Express.
Dru Benson to the kind of disequalibrium brought out starkly in the DHSS report.
The independence enjoyed by problems, ments, especially in the field of advertising. Each year £32 million is drugs.
Included in this cost is the £10 million a year paid out to drug industry representatives who make the rounds of surgeries, hospitals Fantastic fortunes are being While the NHS is ailing - unable to meet people's essential needs - the the insurance compthe advertising industry and private consultants are all thriving. These are the fundamentai problems the DHSS with. These are panies", the kind of issues which do not find their way into the front page headlines of the Daily Mail and But they do help to explain more clearly why the industrial action taken by the hospital workers last month has been only one of a series of disputes at our hospitals. Waiting lists have grown because our health has never been taken too seriously by successive governwho are more concerned to protect the interests of private companies like Roche rather than provide a fully viable NHS. Need for Mass Campaigns The record of this government over the last few years demonstrates the unwillingness and the inability of the Labour leaders to support such a viable health service. It is therefore essential to build a mass campaign challenging the leaders hip of the Labour Party to improve the NHS. Such a campaign should be organized around the demand: "No to Hospital Closures". Implied logically within such a campaign would be the further demands for "The Nationalization of the Drug Comand "The Abolition of Private Medicine". Only by raising such issues in the Labour movement will wide layers of working people dissatisfied with a deteriorating health service, face up to the limitations of their own Labour government and see the need for socialist policies.
Socialist Action