Gareth Bromhall, GMB Ambulance rep, Swansea and West Wales Socialist Party
As the NHS faces another winter of Tory misrule, with pressures mounting and as ‘business continuity’ crises and ‘black alerts’ become the new norm, one thing is clear: the fightback for the NHS is far from over.
Junior doctors in England resume their action from 20-23 December and 3-9 January. Health workers in Barts health trust in east London, members of Unite, continue their action into the festive period from 18-26 December.
Although battles involving nurses and ambulance staff have settled, the passion and desperation that forced these workers onto the picket line, many for the first time and on an unprecedented scale, continues to boil below the surface.
Tory divisions
This is happening against the backdrop of a divided and polarising Tory party, currently having its abject failure during the pandemic laid bare day to day in the Covid inquiry, and that continues to fail our NHS with ideological underfunding.
The Tories’ desperation is exemplified by the recently passed minimum service levels legislation that seeks to strip workers of the right to strike, and prevent unions organising effective industrial action.
The NHS workers are among those targeted, ambulance staff in particular. Under guidance recently published by the government, we are expected to provide 80% staffing levels – rendering strike action impotent. Ask any NHS worker and they tell you that that figure is rarely met on an ordinary work day, let alone on a day when workers are using their democratic right to strike!
The Tories are hell-bent on trying to stop workers fighting back, but what does the Labour Party offer our class in terms of the future of our NHS? The simple answer is: profiteering. Keir Starmer and his shadow health secretary Wes Streeting have been quite clear.
Streeting said recently that a future Labour government would “hold open the doors for privatisation” and on a recent trip to Singapore, whilst exalting private intervention and tech integration, stated that he aimed to “shake the NHS and public out of complacency”. He declared that “the NHS is a service not a shrine”.
His promise of “tough love” and tighter budgets coupled with further privatisation are not designed to save, preserve or expand the NHS; rather, they are excuses for further managed decline and profiteering.
The fight for the NHS is not over, and it will continue under a new Labour government too. Back the NHS strikes, and fight for a socialist political alternative to Tory and Labour cuts and privatisation.
