BY PATRICK BROWN
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand - Ruth Gray, Communist League candidate for mayor of Christchurch, wound up her campaign at a Militant Labor Forum opposing the planned closure of the Templeton mental hospital in this city.
"I support the fight taken on by the parents of Templeton residents, the staff and their union, and their many supporters in this city against this inhumane decision," she stated in opening the event. She urged working people to "organize support for the fight to keep Templeton open."
The evening marked the end of 10 weeks of campaigning for a socialist alternative in the mayoral election in this city, the largest in the South Island with 300,000 residents.
Gray was interviewed on a number of occasions by newspapers and radio stations in the city. She was also the subject of a brief profile on a local television station. The communist candidate was featured on the front page of a local weekly, the Mail.
In its roundup of the mayoral candidates the major daily newspaper here, the Press, quoted her. "I am standing to present a socialist, working-class alternative in the elections," Gray said. "Workers around the world face attacks on our democratic and social rights by the bosses and their government at both national and local levels."
The Press reporter noted that Gray "wanted free health services and education, and a shorter working week with no drop in pay so more people could be employed."
The question of how to fight against unemployment was posed at her workplace when Toyota decided to close down its assembly lines over the next year. Gray works in the paint shop there. The company says it will try to retain and redeploy the 150 workers there, but many are skeptical.
"This highlights for workers there's no such thing as a permanent job," commented the Communist League candidate in a press release. "It is this kind of uncertainty that all workers increasingly face under capitalism, whether it be in New Zealand, Japan or elsewhere," Gray said. "Over 100,000 people are without work at a time when the New Zealand economy has been experiencing an upturn." The fight to win jobs for all will require unionists and other workers joining forces across national borders, she emphasized.
Throughout the campaign, Gray, an activist in the Cuba Friendship Society in Christchurch, pointed to the example of revolutionary Cuba. In face of the same worldwide capitalist crisis that is hitting workers and farmers worldwide, she explained, working people in Cuba are in a stronger position because they have a fighting leadership and a government of their own. Despite 35 years of imperialist attack, the Cuban working class remains confident of its own capacities and refuses to get on its knees.
Hospital closure
In response to the planned closure of the Templeton
hospital, where more than 400 mentally handicapped people
receive specialist care, Gray immediately issued a
statement demanding "Stop the closure of Templeton!"
Supporters handed it out throughout the city, including at
two protests of 100 people against the closure.
In the statement Gray commented that "the decision to close Templeton and the arrogance that marks it fit in with other aspects of the `health reforms.' The government is determined to cut expenditure on health, and to increasingly rid itself of responsibility for other social services.
"They are reconstructing aspects of the health service along the lines of a capitalist business. The growth of private medical insurance companies and private hospitals, which profit from the decline in the public system, is one aspect of this trend.
"Food banks and charities of all kinds are proliferating as working people find it harder and harder to cope with the rising cost of health and education, the sharp cuts in benefit levels, and the levels of unemployment, which remain high in a period of recovery of profits," Gray stated. She cited an editorial in the Press, which quoted a report by the Fund-Raising Institute that "New Zealand's 26,000 incorporated charities or registered trusts are being increased by 20 a week. Groups are raising funds for many services which were once the state's responsibility."
Nuclear testing
Gray began her campaign in early August at the
demonstrations to mark the 50th anniversary of Washington's
atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The protests in
New Zealand targeted the French government's nuclear test
program in the South Pacific. "In protesting at this
decision, I oppose the policy of the New Zealand capitalist
government that, alongside its Australian counterpart,
seeks to advance its own imperialist interests in the
region and the world," Gray said in a widely circulated
statement.
"The large protests in recent weeks in Tahiti and other colonies and semicolonies across the Pacific Islands deserve the support and solidarity of workers, farmers, and young people the world over. The demands of these protests combine with the aspirations for national self- determination, independence, and economic and social development in these countries.
"At the same time," Gray noted, "the imperialist rulers in Australia and New Zealand have seized on opposition to nuclear testing as an opportunity to mount a nationalist campaign against their rivals in Paris. Canberra and Wellington are whipping up anti-French sentiments to advance their own interests against workers, peasants, and youth across the Pacific. Their actions have nothing to do with the campaign against the dangers of nuclear radiation, threat of imperialist wars, or colonial domination."
Patrick Brown is a member of the Engineers Union in Christchurch.