Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

Wheels fall off NHS privatisation machine FIRST STEPS TOWARDS A FIGHTBACK

by John Lister  |  Socialist Resistance no35  |  page 4

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

AFTER months of hesitation, there are signs that health unions facing wholesale job losses, service cuts and galloping privatisation in the NHS

beginning move alc towards the necessary fightback.

There are indications that as soon as unions vote to take action at just one or two NHS Trusts, others will easily be encouraged to follow suit. Strike action spread like wildfire in this way in the battle over nurses' pay back in 1988: now there are already 12,000 jobs at stake, with more cuts and closures to come.

And those contemplating action and mass campaigning to defend local services will be encouraged by evidence that the Blairite machinery driving through the market-based reforms is beginning to fracture and is losing momentum

Many were amazed when

Secretary Patricia Hewitt, who had got the bum's rush and faced a headline-grabbing humiliation from both UNISON's health conference and the Royal College of Nursing, survived Blair's ministerial reshuffle despite months of damaging media headlines on the developing crisis in the NHS.

But Health Minister Jane Kennedy has become the first serving minister to stand down and go public with criticisms of the government's imposinon or a new system ol "payment by results" which is set to destabilise NHS hospital trusts across the country.

Unlike Tormer Secretary Frank Dobson, who has for some time been prominent critic of a variety of New Labour policies, Kennedy had been seen as a Blair supporter, and her departure immediately after the bodyblow to New Labour in the local elections has undermined Blair's attempt "You've got affordable cancer" relaunch the with his ministerial reshuffle.

The elections served to highlight the damage that is being done to New Labour's support by the chaos they have created in the NHS.

The most dramatic result was the runaway victory of Huddersfield GP Jacky Grunsell, a Socialist Party member running on a Save Our NHS' platform, who romped to victory with over 2,100 votes, reminding many New Labour MPs of the nightmare prospect that if local services are axed some of them, too, could be swept away by an electoral revolt like that which lost Labour the Wyre Forest seat in 2001 in the backlash over the cloof Kidderminster sure Hospital. Interestingly the Health Concern candidates also gained another council seat in Wyre Forest.

In several areas New Labour setbacks were clearly made worse by local hospital cuts, most notably in Barking & Dagenham, where the BNP won 11 seats. Delighted fascists were able to exploit the decision of the local Barking Havering & Redbridge Trust to axe 650 jobs and close 190 beds just days before polling day in their struggle to tackle

amicus the union SAY NO TO Campaign resources from: Keep our NHS Public www.keepournhspublic.com of Health Emergency newspaper) www.healthemergency.org.uk a £24m deficit.

Stoke on Trent local blamed the announcement of 1,000 job losses in the local hospital Trust as a factor behind the BNP gaining three seats on May 4.

With thousands more jobs at risk and ministers pressing NHS chiefs to take "tough decisions" that will axe popular local hospitals and services, is clear that the political cost to New Labour is set rise, eroding the London Health Emergency (including new issue party's core support.

The anger of health workers at the process of "creative destruction" unleashed by Blairite reforms is also showing signs of beginning to boil over tito acon

UNISON's Health conference in Gateshead at the end of April adopted two emergency motions which set out a much more active and miliUnion leaders were driven along by the angry mood of a decisive section of conterence

amicus the union SAY NO TO PRIVATISATION delegates.

A few days later a militant 5,000-strong joint trade union demonstration - the biggest since the 1984 Miners' strike - marched through Stoke on Trent, opposing job losses. The rally was told by UNISON official that the union would ballot for action anywhere compulsory redundancies are proposed in the West Midlands.

UNISON has also changed tack to support a joint lobby of Parliament on May 11 with the RCN and Amicus.

Indeed even the normally docile RCN has threatened to resort to a form of industrial action, urging its members to stop working unpaid overtime - a policy that could have a big impact on busy wards.