Throughout 2004 there will be a number of events celebrating the 20th anniversary of the start of the great Miners' Strike of 19845, in which the Women Against Pit Closures movement played a crucial supporting role.
But we must not lose sight of the important strike that was largely waged and led by women workers which began on March 19 1984, and lasted a marathon 18 months before it was crushed: this was the strike by 92 hospital cleaners at Barking Hospital. They walked out on an official strike in protest at cuts in their pay, holidays and conditions by private contractors Crothalls, in the first wave of a drive towards privatisation of NHS ancillary services. They took their fight out far and wide, and the example of the strike encouraged a wave of similar long-running battles by hospital staff resisting privatisation and its consequences in Cambridge, in Chesterfield and West London.
20 years later, with numbers of ancillary staff in the NHS reduced to a fraction of those in post in 1984, hospital support staff employed by contractors are still fighting for a living wage, and for parity in pay and conditions with their NHS equivalents.
The Barking women provided a focus and inspiration for campaigners fighting privatisa tion throughout the NHS, though their strug gle was left isolated by timid union leaders.
Fuller accounts of both the Barking strike and Women Against Pit Closures will appear i coming issues of Socialist Resistance, along side our celebration of the Miners' Strike.