07.09.1995

Vote against cuts and closures!

SO OFTEN when we are campaigning against health cuts people will tell us, “Yes, we agree with you, but it doesn’t matter what you do: ‘they’ will take no notice.” Working class politics are so often characterised by a sense of helplessness.

Not so in Dundee, where a vigorous campaign, initiated by the Communist Party, has received widespread local support.

When our candidate in the Lochee West local by-election, Dominic Handley, is canvassing on the doorstep, he is receiving a warm response in a solid Labour area. Local people have a choice: to vote for a Labour Party, which has power but chooses not to use it for ordinary workers, or a candidate who is prepared to fight with the class for what they need.

The hospital campaign and Dominic’s candidacy has had the unprecedented effect of forcing the Labour Party to address ‘the future of Dundee’s health service’ publicly at a meeting this Thursday.

Needless to say, the Labour Party never dared to send a representative to the joint meeting of the Dundee Campaign against Hospital Cuts and Closures. Yet now it is being forced to make its position clear.

We welcome this development, but in honesty we remain sceptical about Labour’s willingness to fight against the closure of the Dundee Royal Infirmary, the Limb Fitting Centre and Kings Cross Hospital, local pay bargaining or the rate of exploitation of hospital staff. It is only the campaigning of workers in Dundee that has brought them this far.

Arthur Lawrence