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From The Socialist newspaper, 27 June 2018
Fight to save Devon hospital services
Totnes NHS demo, photo South Devon SOHS, photo South Devon SOHS (Click to enlarge)
Alex Moore, Torbay and South Devon Socialist Party
Dartmouth Hospital was closed with 16 beds last year on a promise to provide some beds at Riverview Care Home. But it turns out Riverview is owned by a hotel group and they only built it so they could later apply for a 'change of use' and turn it into a hotel!
The deal with the local NHS clinical commission group (CCG) - if there ever really was one - collapsed and now there is no provision in the town. Over 500 turned up at a meeting called by the CCG to demand the hospital be reopened.
To add insult to injury the sale value of the hospital in this prime site is only £2 million. This is a riverside plot on the embankment with potential to cram in many properties and a few hundred yards along the embankment family homes go for more than a million each. People are furious and rightly so.
On 11 June 250 turned up to endorse setting up a 'health action' group. I gave my greetings from Save Our Hospital Services and was well received but unfortunately the meeting was dominated by speakers who wanted to "keep politics out of it" and think the way to win is not to ask for too much in the first place.
But then the meeting came alive when someone said: "Where I come from people stand up and fight. It was our hospital and we want it back - we want it back and made even better!" That is telling it as it is I thought, so at the end of the meeting I asked her and her friends to join me in the pub for a chat.
Lynn told me more about the background to the closure and her feelings about the meeting: "They shouldn't take the crumbs, they should take the cake, after all we made it and no one is entitled to take it away.
"This was all planned and now the plan is being implemented. The full responsibility falls on the Tory party who want to asset strip the NHS."
Now Lynn and her friends are coming along to our next Socialist Party public meeting.
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In The Socialist 27 June 2018:
NHS SOS
30 June NHS demo: prepare for a mass movement
Gosport opioid deaths scandal: we need democratic control of our NHS
Socialist Party news and analysis
Walk out on 13 July against 'Kid Cager' Trump
Tottenham block evacuations a test for 'Corbynista council'
The bosses are 'dishonest' - not Militant and its supporters
International socialist news and analysis
The gathering new world disorder
Turkey's 'strongman' Erdogan tightens grip on state power
Socialist Party women
Workplace news and analysis
PCS union pay strike ballot - win the vote, win the claim
Unite union conference - drive out the Tories!
East Dunbartonshire council workers strike to stop pay and leave cuts
Unison union conference: delegates can't be cowed
NHS Mid Yorkshire strike suspended
NSSN conference, 7 July 2018: fighting back against the Tories and bosses
Homes and Communities Agency workers vote to strike over pay cuts and inequality
Socialist Party reports and campaigns
Thousands snap up issue 1000 of the Socialist
Fighting for rights for Windrush generation and other migrants
Fight to save Devon hospital services
Support growing against incinerator in Washington
Hull unions organise 'Engage for Change' festival
Huddersfield set to lose two town centre post offices
Opinion
Prison: life inside a living hell
Blairite cuts and restructures make social work dangerous
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