Labour and Maternity ? – a dreadful pun, a dreadful record.

I’d like to vent my spleen on the Labour Party, especially their behaviour during the current maternity crisis.

Locally, as far as I am aware the Caithness Labour Party has not uttered a single word in defence of Caithness Maternity Unit. Ex-Labour councillor John Rosie, Maureen Macmillans ‘representative’ at recent workshops discussing the ‘options’ for Wick, was actually so bad that NAG felt obliged to write a letter of complaint to her about him. Of course she took no action.

Maureen Macmillan (Labour MSP) claims she has ‘lobbied strongly’ for the Caithness Unit but, when asked, she REFUSED to release her correspondence (if any) to the NHS Board or Calder Committee.

I can reveal that the inept Health minister, Malcolm Chisholm has now said that he has in fact NEVER received correspondence on this matter from the fragrant Ms Macmillan (as of June 10th 2004).

When a NAG delegation met Health Minister Chisholm in Inverness, MacMillan and Dierdre Stevens sat silently alongside him. Their only contribution to the meeting was to jointly and flatly contradict an important and factually-correct NAG point that the EGAMS remit was to stay within existing resources (ie no extra money).

There were no Labour Party placards on ANY of the demonstations in Wick or elsewhere else, a reflection of both their political bankruptcy and also of the fact that they have few ‘activists’ left. (It is widely believed that the only people now working for the ever-shrinking Labour Party are trade union officials, councillors, and their close friends and relatives).

The bare-faced cheek of Maureen Macmillan MSP is incredible. Remember her strutting the platform at the huge Rally in Wick on Mothers Day? Remember the applause she milked as she promised her full support for the campaign?
All the while this woman is stabbing us in the back, acquiescent and silent as the Board’s downgrading scheme lumbers on.
As far as I am aware, not a single person within the Labour Party has ever stated that they support the retention of full consultant services at Wick.

It’s not just her, of course, she’s only the organ grinder’s monkey. Nationally the Labour Party is pressing through centralisation of acute services with dogmatic determination, AND with the full agreement of their LibDem partners.

When NAG lobbied MSPs at Edinburgh on June 17th, not a single Labour MSP (the largest group) bothered to attend the briefing, though the room was only 100 yards from the building.

So, if the people of Caithness think the Labour Party is supporting them, they are quite mistaken. This miserable little gang of careerists and opportunists deserve to be booted out at the next opportunity and, if there are any socialists still remaining within the Labour Party, they should join the SSP. You won’t shift a wheelbarrow by sitting inside it.

Trade unionists should follow the Railworkers and Firefighters in dumping Labour. Why do Amicus members still tolerate their union giving Labour £1 million per year?

I write these lines in the hope that the guilty will be prompted into reversing their position and start to behave properly. Can they remember, I wonder, why they joined Labour in the first place?