doubt goes to the health workers' other workers, electricians and from workers in sector.
Yet, despite the tremendous SOCCEL evoked, it did win. Thatcher and the Tory cabinet were able to ride the storm of protest and direct action that welled up health workers; their colleagues in other obs and industries, and the sympathy doutedly existed in the general public which was reflected even in sections of the capitalist press.
is entitled to an accounting and explanation of what went wrong. Why did this popularly backed struggle peter out? The blame can hardly be laid at the door health workers themselves. They responded to every call made by their leaders.
Even the Royal College of Nurses, a professional organisation which has a *no strike' clause in consututon, twice volce to reject the government's pay otter. The second to jection got more votes against, and bigger majority, than the first rejection.
Workers do not take strike action lightly, ye the lowiy-paid health workers time and time lost money through davs of action, or by self-imposed THE BIGGEST challenge on the pay front that the Tory government faced last year, without For almost seven months this dispute dragged out. It involved one million workers in the NHS alone. It got solidarity from millions of including miners, dockers, the public levies which financed regular picket lines outside the hospitals. Other workers, levied themselves money to help finance the this u2e aneton days like September well over two million of them struck work in support of the claim.
This magnificent display of action and about wages. solidarity was Of course HOLTUS the health workers were fed up with providing such an essential service for wages. Of course other workers were indig people WIG cared for the sick and the infirm should receive the ditance that most of them But what really lay at the root of the dispute was that the health workers in particular, and the workrecognised that this tory class Tory dismantle the NHS. The Tory monetarists aTe bitterly opposed to the idea of a free and comprehen sive health service for all.
That is they intended to defeat the claim.
They were out to teach the health workers and anyone else who cared to notice, that they, the Tory governwould decide the future of the NHS, and that there was nothing the working class could do to stop them.
For the Tories this was class war. Unfortunately the leaders ot the health service unions and the health never got the message They do not believe class war - that's just for those way out marxists does our paeya ment aheir raysh system.
put public pinio and on heir ability to •persuade the government the reasonableness their case, and adherence to the rules ening. Sce and her listening She and ellow Tories played by th rules. But they were rules they had made and that meant Spanswick, Murray and the rest of the union and dry. aye Days ot highand dry. Days of Action they called were not meant to be springboards To extencine dispute and bring the government to its nees They were just means of putting pressure on tae government to gell back round the negotiating table.
The effect of this on the Tories was negligible. The government knew it had nothing to fear fron chese imi bureaucrats. But it did have an effect on the dispute. Gradually the morale of the health workers and their supbegan to drain.
After SCVCH HOnES TeT were no further forward as a result of the polices of the TUC healtn committee. Slowly, but surely, the dispute wound towards its end We have said before, and we say it again that this places the NHS in greater jeopardy than ever now pres ahead for Bie Emboldened TOr cuts and will start handing out whole areas of the NHS to private companies.
This must not be allowed to go unchallenged. In side the health service, th shop stewards' committees much and where they still do no exist they must be built Every attack by the Tories on local services must be resisted by joint action o the unions and the Labour Parinside the TUC a fight must begin to remove the rotten leadership of the health committee the be the sack for members the Labour that they support every action taken to de fend the NHS and that thence with the et inside build the unions to defend the NHS, and defeat the rightwing betrayers.
If these measures ar taken the defeat reversed, and the solidari ty we saw last summer and autumn can be re-created and victorious end. Harris Spanswick never gave a lead Socialist Challenge 7 January 1983 page 3