NHS Feature

Trowbridge

Hundreds march to stop Labour’s ‘leeches’

A DEMONSTRATION of over 500 health workers, trade unionists and
patients in Trowbridge, Wiltshire on 15 July marched to demand that the
town’s hospital was not closed. The local PCT has launched a bogus

‘consultation’ on three sets of proposals.

Paul Moorhouse

But as UNISON shop steward and Socialist Party member Roger Davey
told the rally after the march ‘New Labour are big on choice, but all
three ‘choices’ would close all the hospitals in the West Wiltshire!’

Marchers enthusiastically chanted ‘National Demonstration Now’ and
forced the UNISON Regional Convenor to commit herself to demand the
union’s national executive name a date for a demo.

Socialist Party regional secretary, Robin Clapp, delivering a message
of support from NHS campaigners in Bristol, contrasted Aneurin Bevan’s
vision to the privatising drive of New Labour’s Patricia Hewitt, Robin
was loudly applauded when he said that the march represented those to
whom the NHS belonged, not the new Labour privatisers or their big
business friends.

Consciousness changed quickly on that demo. At the start the Primary
Care Trust (PCT) was seen as the main enemy with the crowd shouting

"sack the PCT". By the time Socialist Party speakers had finished the
crowd was demanding an end to the New Labour and Tory policies along
with the Trust itself.

Keep the NHS working demo

Saturday 22 July, 10.30am

Sandford Park, College Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

Marching to Montpellier Gardens

Called by UNISON

Primary Care Trusts in Gloucestershire plan to close nine hospitals
in order to claw back a £45 million deficit. Socialist Party members
involved in campaigns to save NHS services in the county are calling for
extra resources from the Labour government. By itself, restoring to
Gloucestershire the national average spending per head of the population
would eliminate all the deficit.