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and running down an already depleted NHS.
This resolution has to be fought for by mass working class action. That is why the IMG supports organisations like the NCC, which has been able to win support from some important sections of the labour movement.
The NCC is the first step towards building a bigger and more genuine united front in the working class movement which can give real backbone to the struggle to defend the NHS. During the nurses' dispute in 1974 it was the strike action by groups like the Welsh miners and the Manchester dockers which forced the Government to make a settlement in excess of what they really wanted to give.
It was the action of health workers that stopped cuts in many hospitals. It was the bans put on private practice by workers in hospitals like Charing Cross that forced Mrs Castle to speed up the phasing out of private practice. As soon as that struggle subsided and the embargoes were dropped, Castle felt confident enough to accept the Goodman proDOSAS which mean the continuation of private practice in many areas of the NHS and its rapid extension No confidence must be placed in the words of MPs or so-called leaders. They can only be judged on what they do. At national and local level the need is to organise every working class organisation and every militant who wants to fight this Government's anti-working class policies.
This means a serious struggle to build mass demonstrations, organise mass pickets and working towards national and local strike action against the Government's cuts. It also means mobilising all these forces to remove every Labour MP and every Labour Councillor who does not vote against cuts in public expenditure.
That fight also has to be taken into the trade unions. If we are opposed to the cuts, if we are in favour of implementing the Labour Party Conference resolution, then we have sidising the bankrupt capitalist sysprotecting the health, education and social welfare of the working class.
Take council spending. charges' accounted during 1975 for something like 40 per cent of gross council expenditure. paid nationally in 1974 on loans for social spending totalled £750 million. In April 1975 the Treasury admitted that 10p in the pound of all Government spending went on paying interest on the public debt.
Council paid out £16½ million last year in debt charges and over E15 million of that was in the form of interest. The IMG says: stop all repayments to the money-lenders and use the money that is saved to finance the NHS and the other social services. Either the NHS and the rest of the social services collapse - with all the catastrophic consequences for the working class that that means - or we refuse to line the pockets of the money-lenders.
that building materials are lying around unused. There are 748 million bricks stockpiled, and the brickmaking firms are working to only 30 per cent of their capacity. These materials should be requisitioned and put to use in the construction of hospitals, schools and homes. Not only would this free idle materials, it would also provide jobs for thousands of workers.
be abolished and the money and labour used in the armaments industry turned towards manufacturing socially useful and necessary goods. During 1975 military expenditure drained the economy by almost £5,000 million, and it is still climbing. In 1975 it cost £4,976, which is more than the total expenditure on the NHS of £4,887 million.
Another way to raise finance for developing socially useful and necessary services and production is to abolish compensation payments to the owners and shareholders of the nationalised industries. These payments, swelled by interest charges, alre But den.
'the NHS. The profit rates of the drug companies easily outstrip the profits of any other manufacturing industries. Roche has knocked up Mass action is the only effective way to fight the cuts turn the resources towards "Debt more than copies the interest In Islington, London, the Borough class.
The capitalist recession has meant profit rates as high as 2,000 per cent on its products. The wastefulness of the capitalist drug industry is shown by the fact that 95 per cent of all new drug products are nothing - with suitable and cynical adaptions to dodge the patent laws — of current medicines The drug firms justity their high profits by claiming that the money is needed to finance their research programmes. But not more than 10 to 20 per cent of the money allocated for research and development goes towards research into useful medicine. The other 80 to 90 per cent is spent on researching into chemical changes for already existing drugs and the development of more or less useless drugs like cosmetics.
Research, medical needs and social responsibility are subordinated to the search for profit, which leads to anarchy, massive waste, inflated prices in all a gross failure to meet the real health needs of the working The nationalisation of the drug RL RKE WORKERS NOI our NOT ic WEALT
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