From Labour cuts and privatisation

Support resident doctor strikes

Roger Davey, Chair of Wiltshire and Avon Unison Health Branch (personal capacity)

Care being delivered in hospital corridors, A&E resembling a battle zone, exhausted staff facing overwhelming demand.

The NHS faces its usual crisis this winter. The thing is, it now happens all through the year.

It is the result of a chronic lack of investment, and a privatisation programme that threatens the future of the NHS – continued under Keir Starmer’s Labour government.

Health workers, and everyone fighting for the future of our NHS, will be inspired by the resident doctors standing up to Starmer’s government and striking back.

A rise from £18 an hour to £22 an hour, to partially compensate for the 21% pay cut doctors have suffered since 2008, is more than reasonable. Likewise the call for an increase in training places so that thousands of well-trained medics can find a job, is not only essential, but will save lives.

Yet the strike has been met with huge outrage from Labour health secretary Wes Streeting and the capitalist media.

Of course, all workers know that all industrial action is met with bitter opposition from the bosses and the media, but their rabid fury towards this action reflects their fear of health workers getting organised in opposition to Labour’s plans for further privatisation of the NHS.

The capitalists fear that the doctors strike, if successful, will inspire and give confidence to other health workers. It will encourage the belief that if they take action, not only can they improve their pay and conditions, but they can help defend and restore the NHS. 

Despite all the media propaganda, the doctor strike has support amongst NHS staff, who face similar challenges. What is absent is trade union leaderships committed to take on the government, and mobilise the mass of NHS workers. The leadership of my union, Unison, ties itself to the Labour Party and Starmer’s government – something activists are fighting to change.

We need a new mass workers’ party that has a programme of a huge increase in investment, kicking out all the private companies, ending PFI, nationalising the pharmaceutical industry, and taking the social care sector into public ownership.

Such a programme would gain huge support amongst NHS staff and workers everywhere.