Dewsbury fights health service cuts


Paul and Dawn Wheelhouse

Huddersfield Socialist Party started running stalls and collecting signatures against privatisation of our NHS in May.

A month later, news broke that the Mid-Yorkshire trust, due to their PFI deal, was in serious financial difficulty and proposed cuts.

At our stalls, we discovered that the people of Dewsbury wanted to learn more about why the cuts were being proposed, and wanted to fight them.

We arranged a public meeting, attended by around 70 people, with Socialist Party health workers speaking.

Since then we have formed the Save Our Local Hospital Services group, involving Socialist Party members and other people from Dewsbury and surrounding areas who want to stop cuts to their NHS services.

Group members attended every Mid-Yorkshire Trust public meeting, challenging the trust to open up their accounts to public scrutiny to see (and question) where the money has been spent.

We have had several well-attended public meetings in different areas and the group has now arranged a demo on 27 October giving everyone a chance to show their opposition and to stop these cuts being implemented.