Steve Score, Former chair of Save Glenfield Children’s Heart Centre campaign
In the summer of 2016 NHS England (NHSE), and behind it the Tory government, threatened the existence of three of the eleven congenital heart centres across the country. One of those was at the Glenfield Hospital in Leicester – the only hospital in the whole of the East Midlands that carried out operations on children’s hearts. These include babies whose hearts are no bigger than a walnut. It was literally a life-and-death struggle.
18 months later NHSE announced a climbdown in the case of two of those where there had been campaigns to oppose closure.
As a father of a son who had heart surgery there, I had a personal stake, but was able to use the experience and campaigning methods of the Socialist Party to build, alongside many others, a huge campaign.
We organised an initial small public meeting, but through it got contact with other families, trade unionists and NHS campaigners. At it, we proposed the establishment of a broad campaign that included families, campaigners, staff and, importantly, the trade union movement. The first public meeting of the Save Glenfield Children’s Heart Centre campaign had 150 at it.
Over 18 months we held demonstrations of up to 2,000 people at a time, mass meetings and lobbies. 130,000 signed a petition and 7,500 engaged in NHS England’s complex online consultation. We organised a series of public meetings across the region to go through these arguments in detail.
We got backing from a series of local and regional trade union bodies. We even had Len McCluskey, then leader of Unite the Union, speak at one of the demos. After the campaign we broadened it out to ‘Save Our NHS Leicestershire’, to keep the fight going on wider issues.
Alongside other successful campaigns it proves if you fight you can win!
