27.07.1995

Workers demand healthcare for all

Healthcare for need, not profit

IN RESPONSE TO requests from comrades working in the London borough of Hackney, the Unemployed Workers Charter petition against cuts in the National Health Service has been translated into Turkish.

The Turkish and Kurdish working class in Britain - concentrated in Hackney in particular - constitute a mass audience for revolutionary politics. Many are from exiled revolutionary organisations and are able to mobilise thousands of ordinary workers, as evidenced by May Day demonstrations in London.

A frustration felt by many of these revolutionaries is their effective exile from British politics also, despite the fact that they constitute part of the working class in this country.

Workers from Turkey and Kurdistan have many rich and important lessons for our class. Effective, united organisational forms must therefore be found to make this possible - centrally, through a reforged Communist Party of Great Britain that would include in its ranks the best fighters for the proletariat in Britain, wherever their country of origin.

An initiative such as the production of the UWC petition in Turkish is a small but important beginning on this path.

As a low paid section of the working class, without effective legal or social rights, workers from Kurdistan or Turkey are vulnerable to cuts in the NHS. As establishment chauvinism in Britain grows, workers from other countries are targeted as ‘spongers’ on the NHS, as being ineligible for free healthcare because of the land of their birth.

Already there have been cases of Turkish and Kurdish working people denied care in London hospitals until they had provided documentary evidence of their immigration status.

The Communist Party of Great Britain says there must be free healthcare for the working class, based not on ability to pay or country of origin, but on need. That is why the CPGB is supporting the UWC petition and that is why we call on workers from Turkey and Kurdistan to join us in the fight against the enemy that oppresses us all - the British imperialist state.

Ian Mahoney