21.09.1995

Fight for what we need!

The Tories, Labour and the bosses all say the state cannot afford to pay for our health and education. But if the system can’t meet our basic needs, then the system must go, not our schools and hospitals

WHO STILL believes the government claims that the National Health Service and our children’s education are ‘improving’?

Earlier this week a report from Healthcare 2000, which groups together representatives from the drugs industry, the Patients’ Association and health ‘specialists’, told us what we already know - the NHS is not coming up with the goods.

There is just not enough money being spent on health. But what do these learned ladies and gentlemen recommend? The health service must start to charge for more of its services - or cut them out altogether. These bigwigs, including Patricia Hewitt, a key Labour Party adviser, think we should all go private.

The group’s spokesperson, Sir Duncan Nichol (who just happens to be a director of Bupa, the biggest private health company) says that “the continuing gap between resources and demand” can’t be closed by more government money. So whether you can afford it or not, you will have to pay through the nose.

This is already happening with prescription charges. The government has owned up that almost half of all prescriptions cost less than the £5.25 you have to fork out. Thirty percent cost less than £1!

Last week the retiring chairman of the NHS Trust Federation was even more blunt. Rodney Walker told his hospital managers’ conference, “The NHS cannot carry on.” All that can be done, according to these so-called experts, is to provide some third-rate “safety net” for the old and the weak.

But junior health minister Tom Sackville disagreed: “Before we start talking about rationing healthcare in some cases for elderly people ... we have to think about why we pay billions in benefit to young, able-bodied people.” Hammer the unemployed and single parents even harder, and only then bash the old and sick.

And what about our children’s education? Surely things can get no worse in our schools? Overstressed and overworked teachers cannot cope with large classes, underfunding and children brought up in poverty, particularly in the inner cities. The Office for Standards in Education has so far failed 90 out of 4,000 schools it has inspected. Even in leafy Oxfordshire a primary school has been forced to squeeze 46 children into one classroom.

Education secretary Gillian Shephard has been put on the spot for admitting in a leaked document that “insufficient resources threaten the provision of education in the state school sector”. But Labour’s only answer is to close down ‘failing’ schools.

So what has gone wrong? If prescriptions were free and class sizes could be held below 30 in the sixties, why should we not expect at least the same today? If technology has improved so much that medical science can now treat previously ‘incurable’ illnesses and education can provide advanced learning techniques, shouldn’t we all be better off?

Yes, we should. But the problem we have is the capitalist system itself. A system which puts profit before everything, including our basic needs. And today the bosses’ hunger to keep their profits hiked in a time of economic decline means they will attack the working class on all fronts.

As well as services, pay is being squeezed to an incredible low. Public sector workers are promised another pay freeze and pay in the private sector follows suit.

This is not an inevitable situation. The social-democratic consensus which ushered in the welfare state and health service with the approval of all parties was not given: it was won. Yes, in a period of boom, when the bosses were better equipped to give concessions. But their primary interest is their profits, and they will force down the conditions of workers to the lowest level they can.

What stops them is not the goodness of their hearts, but our organisation and com-bativity. It is this which is being eroded at the moment - and with it our rights and living standards.

The vast mass of workers vote Labour despite the fact that Tony Blair promises to close hospitals and massacre all services. This situation must be reversed through workers organising to demand what we need, not what the bosses’ parties say they can afford.