Dear {contactfield=firstname|reader},
NHS Fightback invites you to an online Zoom meeting Tuesday 18 November at 7pm: “Defeat Starmer-Streeting budget cuts and privatisation! For a unified fightback by NHS workers!”
As our recent NHS Fightback statement explained, the upcoming 5-day strike by resident doctors on November 14-19 must become the spearhead of a broader fight. This cannot be entrusted to the British Medical Association (BMA) leadership which attempted a sellout with Streeting and vetoed strike action throughout the summer. Health union officials from the Royal College of Nursing, Unison and GMB are likewise blocking action against de facto pay cuts and backdoor privatisation.
50,000 resident doctors in the BMA have waged a two-year battle for pay restoration. They are now also fighting to end widespread unemployment facing doctors in the NHS.
They are confronting Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting, frontman for Starmer’s cuts and the drive for corporate control and privatisation of the NHS.
Streeting has denounced resident doctors in terms not heard since Margaret Thatcher’s screed against the 1984-85 miners’ strike, declaring that NHS doctors are holding the country “to ransom”. Such attacks aim to legitimise the Starmer Labour government’s clampdown on NHS staff as they fight deepening austerity.
Labour’s 10-year health plan is a death warrant for the NHS. It is based on shrinking the workforce, saddling health workers with greater work targets, and a tighter squeeze on budgets that will force Trusts to go bust. A new “care model” aims to shift patient treatment from hospitals to neighbourhood health centres developed through Private Finance Initiatives: notorious for leeching billions in profit from the NHS.
NHS staff and the entire working class must defeat this assault on public healthcare, defeat plans to curtail the right to strike, resist jobs cuts and reverse decades of pay erosion and unsafe workloads.
BMA and health union leaders speak about the need for “constructive engagement” not opposition to the Starmer government. Opposition to their plans must be organised by rank-and-file NHS workers across all grades and departments to mobilise our collective strength of 1.4 million.
NHS Fightback rejects the mantra of “unaffordability” levelled against the resident doctors’ demand for pay restoration. The billions squandered on private profiteers and hiked up military spending must be redirected to the NHS and social care: this is a political struggle against a right-wing government of big business, genocide apologists and warmongers.
