Adam Harmsworth, Coventry Socialist Party
Over the past couple of months, hundreds of people in Rugby, Warwickshire have protested and fought against a massive cut to their hospital. On Wednesday 4 December, nearly a quarter of Rugby’s hospital beds were taken away, as Hoskyn Ward at Hospital of St Cross was shut down. Two protests against the closure were organised, with over 400 attending each time.
Rugby is the fastest growing town in the West Midlands, but its NHS services are being cut! The NHS under the Tories got rid of Rugby’s maternity services and ambulance station, and downgraded the A&E. Rugby voted Labour at the general election, kicking out the Tories. But the Labour government has kept the NHS starved of resources, pressuring this closure. Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care System is currently halfway through cutting a £160 million financial deficit in the current year.
Newly elected Rugby Labour MP John Slinger, formerly of ‘Tony Blair Associates’, declined to attend either protest. He instead arranged a meeting between the protest organiser, the local NHS leadership, and other local groups. But by the time the meeting went ahead, the ward was already being prepared for closure, making the meeting entirely pointless. This is how Labour ‘defends’ the NHS.
Cuts
As the winter crisis unfolds in the NHS, more cuts are being revealed across the service. Weldmar Hospicecare, a hospice with £1 million deficit, has lost 40% of its funding from NHS Dorset. NHS Cheshire and Merseyside has cut a third of the Holistic Cancer Centre’s funding as part of saving £65 million. And the trade union Unison has launched a petition calling on the Scottish government to urgently fund the NHS to stop devastating cuts to vital health services across the country.
The outlook for the NHS is as bleak under Labour as it was under the Tories. According to NHS investigators, The Lowdown, the 42 Integrated Care Systems across England are nearly all making decisions to restrict spending by a collective total of around £8 billion. But cuts and closures aren’t inevitable. Communities can defend existing services with organised protests, ideally led by the trade unions and backed with strike action.
We need to build socialist opposition to Labour now, demanding a fully funded NHS, publicly owned with private profiteers kicked out, and democratically run so working-class communities can have the services we need and not what austerity politicians say we can afford.
