15 and 20 December 2022 will go down in history. The largest nursing strike ever in the NHS.
Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) were joined by Socialist Party members in towns and cities across England and Wales.
Socialist Party members from Nottingham to Cardiff to Hertfordshire,and many more places, report solidarity on the nurses’ picket lines from postal workers in the Communication Workers Union, also on strike.
In fact, big numbers joined the nurses everywhere. Tom Baldwin reported about 60 at Bristol Royal Infirmary; Amy Sage about 50 at Southmead Hospital in Bristol, with more still arriving.
More than 60 were reported in Cardiff and Seamus Smyth says that the picket at Kettering was, simply, “huge”.
Protests
Hundreds gathered at St Thomas’s and at University College Hospitals in central London, where National Shop Stewards Network chair Rob Williams gave a message of solidarity to both protests. Socialist Party members spoke to offer support at several protests around the country.
Socialist Party members also initiated and helped organise solidarity wherever we could. Mal Richardson organised a lunchtime solidarity rally at York hospital.
Holly Johnston helped organise an ‘NHS workers say NO’ solidarity banner drop in Sheffield, alongside CWU members and Shelter strikers, members of Unite the Union.
Socialist Students members in Southampton organised a solidarity protest of student nurses, with the support of the RCN and UCU.
A nurse at St James’s Hospital, Leeds, told Iain Dalton: “The Tories are not prepared to give anyone any extra money, apart from themselves and their mates. They don’t care about workers like you and me”.
A striker at Birmingham Children’s Hospital told Nick Hart: “People I know are leaving the nursing profession to go and work in a supermarket.”
Strike together
He reports the Socialist Party’s call to prepare for a 24-hour general strike was popular: “The idea that everyone needs to strike together is becoming common sense.”
Mark Kerr reports that in Hertfordshire, RCN pickets were “all very positive. All the people we talked to agreed on the need for a 24-hour general strike in the new year.”
Gareth Bromhall says that at the Singleton and Morriston hospitals in Swansea, and at Neath Port Talbot hospital, the trades council and Socialist Party members were welcomed and invited back.
Alec Thraves adds: “There were dozens of RCN members on each main entrance receiving support from the public and staff, including some Unison members who refused to work.
“At one stage a Wales radio interview, being recorded live from the Neath Port Talbot picket line, was almost drowned out by the noise of cars beeping their support!”
Nurses told Socialist Party member Amanda in Birmingham: “I have never felt more like just a number. This service relies on goodwill, and that goodwill is ending.”
Joining the union
Joe Foster, also in Birmingham, reports that one nurse came to the picket to join the RCN. “One reason we don’t have many agency staff here is because of all the extra unpaid work we have done over the years”.
“Striking is no good for your waistline,” one nurse said to Ross Saunders on the picketline in Llandough, near Cardiff, pointing to the mountain of cakes, chocolates and other donations they’d received.
A Unite rep from Cardiff buses stopped by to raise the pile a bit higher with donations from the drivers.
Glen Howard reports that the RCN at the Royal Worcester organised cover for non-essential wards, to ensure patients were safe during the strike. They used recommended night-time numbers of nurses, only to realise there were more nurses working today than the day before!
Despite the below-zero temperatures, the mood at the Royal in Liverpool was high among the striking workers, says Connor O’Neil, with plenty of passers-by bringing coffee and mince pies to warm everyone up. The shop steward described the striking nurses as “highly skilled professionals” who are “very pissed off!”
First strike
For almost everyone at Great Western Hospital in Swindon, it was their first strike, reports Scott Hunter. One said, “I joined the RCN 40 years ago because it was the only union that had a ‘no strikes’ clause. I never thought I’d have to do this.”
But she explained that she had been moved to strike due to the worsening conditions in the NHS. “Pay is secondary. This strike is about patient safety, working conditions and staffing. I’m getting older and I’m worried there won’t be an NHS when I need it.”
Elaine Brunskill found overwhelming support for the RCN nurses on strike: people understand that alongside fighting for better pay and conditions, nurses are also on strike to fight back against the hammer-blows being inflicted on the NHS.
In Gateshead, other health workers from the hospital, who weren’t on strike themselves, came out on their breaks carrying trays full of hot drinks to sustain the strikers.
At North Tyneside, one of the strikers told us that going out on strike was something none of them had done without a lot of soul-searching.
She said one nurse initially hadn’t been going to strike, but a member of her family had had to go to A&E, where they waited 14 hours to be seen by a doctor. For this nurse, that had been a tipping point and she was on strike.
