16.05.1996
Alliance on the attack
Our jobs, welfare and education are under threat from both Tories and Labour. We need to get organised
Dundee, like most cities and towns across Britain, is facing wholesale attacks on its health, education and welfare provision.
On Thursday May 16 the city council will attempt to ratify its programme of school closures and education cuts. The meeting, originally to be held in the evening, has been changed to 10.00am, making it impossible for parents, teachers, pupils and other campaigners to attend the demonstration that has been organised.
Labour councillors and education department officials have attended about 100 meetings as part of their ‘consultation’ process. This has been purely a public relations exercise in an attempt to limit any political fallout. At every meeting they have been told not to attack children’s education. Rank and file Labour Party members have stood up at meetings and resigned, attacking the party they have been members of for many years.
Labour councillors and the city’s two Labour MPs have huffed and puffed about the Tory government and Forsyth’s Scottish Office, but not one of them has had the guts to come out and take a stand with the working class communities against these attacks. They claim there is nothing they can do, because ‘we don’t want to rock the boat’ and spoil Blair’s chances of election, with no promises that anything will be any better. Many of these Labour councillors are hated within the communities. A number of them would not get back in if there was an election tomorrow.
And it is not just about education cuts: social services, home helps and pensioners’ travel passes have all been hammered.
On the health front, the city’s major NHS body - Dundee Teaching Hospitals Trust - has a £2.4 million shortfall on its budget this year. In an attempt to keep the financial managers happy, it is closing wards at Ninewells and Kings Cross hospitals, while other wards will remain open only on a part-time basis. This is the same trust which was cancelling operations in January because it did not have enough beds. It tries to camouflage any cuts as changes for sound medical reasons, but no one is really convinced. The principle of universal free healthcare, upon which the NHS allegedly stands, is rapidly disintegrating.
One of the wards under threat is Ward One at Kings Cross, a specialised unit treating those with Aids/HIV. The staff here are showing the way forward by organising and publicly campaigning against the closures. Winning support and educating people about the attacks on the NHS by petitioning in the city centre, using the media and attempting to push the trade union bureaucracy into life, they are giving a lead to all healthworkers and other workers under attack from the bosses.
“What we need to do is link up all these struggles. There is a concerted attack on the welfare state that needs to be fought.”
Although these are the words of one healthworker, they represent the thoughts of many workers from different workplaces and towns across Britain. What we need is not just unions that can fight on behalf of this or that section of workers, but a party that can learn the political lessons and organise in the interests of all workers. In Dundee, the Socialist Alliance has brought together individuals and left organisations from different socialist and revolutionary traditions, that can coordinate the fightback in all working class struggles.
But Dundee cannot stand alone. We need a party that unites the best militants throughout Britain.
There is a struggle to be waged inside the SLP to ensure that it includes such comrades from the Scottish Socialist Alliance.
Andy Maclean