Not many left-led campaigns start off on a single issue and last 20 years: NHS pressure group London Health Emergency (LE) is an exception. Socialist Resistance spoke to its Information Director, John Lister, on how LHE has remained a reference point for campaigners since the Thatcher years. How would you sum up LHE's formula for survival? "We made ourselves useful to the unions and campaigners - and bloody awkward to ministers with duff policies. We realised from very early on that there was much more to the NHS and health unions than just the occasional pay dispute.
"And while much of the left ignored the detail and the big political issues in the NHS - which is Britain's biggest employer - we made a point of following them.
"HE was launched by campaigners resisting hospital closures in the capital triggered by cuts by Thatcher's Chancellor Nigel (now Lord) Lawson.
"It was originally set up with funding from the Greater London Council (GLC) to link up a variety of local campaigns defending hospitals across London. That was always
Nurses & Midwives Grading Degrading impossible - each of the campaigns was fiercely independent, with its own politics and internal life.
"So LHE took of the role of a Londonwide voice in defence of the NHS - against not only closures, but privatisation as well, which was being driven hard by the Tories.
"My first meeting as HE's Information Officer was in the spring of 1984, when the whole agenda was dominated by the Barking Hospital strike - the first real fightback against privatisation.
"LHE picked up this issue and ran with it: we helped build support for the Barking picket line, we started to build a database on private contractors. We launched our campaigning newspaper, posting hundreds of copies around the country to link up with London Health 20th Anniversary Public meeting 1988: nurses arrive on the scene as a major industrial force union activists and campaigners outside London. country against privatisation, and LHE had built links with that movement. GLC in 1986. How did you manage to carry on? "We had already spread our campaigning activity into a number of Labour boroughs and had worked with Labour's shadow health minister Frank Dobson.. and privatisation which Labour councillors wanted. Camden council managed to piece together a consortium of boroughs which funded us between them. For years we were the only source of London-wide facts,
SUPP COHSE COMe FIGHTING FOR THE
"By 1985 there were strikes all over the
ple even tried to do so. Most GLC-funded campaigns disappeared shortly after abolition of the
information to boroughs. on the fightback.
"We supplied information on Tory cuts
beds if they got reelected. math off Thatcher's third election