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Plans for NHS are 'Economics of the Madhouse'

Ritchie Hunter | 28.11.2005 11:47 | Health | Liverpool

Public meeting in Liverpool calls for local campaign to save NHS services.

“The vast majority of people in the NHS are appalled at what’s going on. There’s £1 billion+ going into PFI (Private Finance Initiative) schemes on Merseyside, but there are always going to be cuts in services under this type of scheme. The drive to privatise the NHS is all about Blair’s flirtation with Bush, and the market economy.”

So said Dr Alex Scott-Samuel, speaking at the ‘Keep Our NHS Public’, a meeting of between 60-70 people held at the Friends Meeting House, Liverpool, on Thursday 24th November.



Bill Barry, a full-time official from UNISON, spoke of the 18 changes to health provision that had happened in the last 18 years. He described this as the, ‘Economics of the madhouse’.

“Working for the NHS is still ‘special’ precisely because it is a public service,” said Jill George, an Amicus member, who works as a speech and language therapist. “The set of values that says, ‘We care about people’ is under attack, and 250,000 health workers will be ‘outsourced’,” with massive job losses. “If we let this go ahead we are going to pay a high price, and so are our children and our children’s’ children. This winter is going to be incredibly difficult. Just as we need more services we are going to see hospital closures.” She called for the TUC to organise a massive demonstration, and a plan for industrial action. “This is a campaign that we can win; have got to win.”

Julie Hodgekiss, Wigan and Leigh Director of Public Health, told the meeting how having ‘choice’ had meant that her Primary Care Trust (PCT) was forced to spend 8% of its income on services at an independent health centre not even in their area.

The present integrated system of the PCTs will change to one of multi-providers, with patients ‘shopping around’ for their health care. Baby clinics, leg ulcer dressings, speech therapy, physiotherapy, chiropody, family planning, or any of the other community services that the PCTs provide are under threat from these changes.

In the discussion it was suggested that the name of the campaign: ‘Keep Our NHS Public’ should be changed because, “People aren’t bothered if the NHS is private or not, as long as it’s free at the point of delivery.” In response examples were given of the rise in MSRA since hospital cleaning was privatised, and of the inconsistency in Home-Care services. “People know that you don’t make profits out of the sick”, it was pointed out.

It was raised about the state of Wallasey hospital, which is on the point of closure. But campaigns have been successful, in Manchester, in Oxford, and in Kidderminster, where a hospital doctor was elected MP.

Jane Calveley, the chairperson, closed the meeting with announcement that a local ‘Keep Our NHS Public’ campaign group is to be started.

Anyone wanting to get involved with this campaign can email: keepournhspublic@yahoogroups.co.uk Or log on to: www.keepournhspublic.com

The first meeting of the new local group is on Monday 5 December, at the Crown, Lime St, Liverpool.

Further reading:



Ritchie Hunter
- e-mail: ritchie@catalystmedia.org.uk
- Homepage: http://www.keepournhspublic.com

Additions

But back to health issues...

09.12.2005 22:06

I'm flabberghasted by the news concerning the NHS in the North-West, where I'm from.

Living now in West Yorkshire, Huddersfield is facing having several of its NHS services relocated to Halifax (8 miles away), where there is a Private Finance Initiative privatised hospital.

I also notice, from a separate indymedia thread, that a campaign is active against cuts to Cambridge NHS services. There, the excuse is overspending. So, its as if they may as well erase a few of their customers so they can stick to their budget, sort of medieval.

I'm in agreement that the potential of the Stop The War campaign was inhibited from the inside as well as the outside, but I do believe regionally separate grassroots campaigns can benefit from linking together.

Same mangy, money-sniping policies, different location. Joint education, if information and tactics can be communicated between regional campaigns and they are compatible in terms of general ethos.

Threatened NHS units here:
At Huddersfield Royal Infirmary: - Crisis maternity (a life of more than one is at risk in these cases),
children's ward (in future Huddersfield is to send sick children to Halifax if they need to stay for more than 48 hours)
the breast clinic (established from donations and campaigning from the local community)
planned general and orthopaedic operations are to be conducted in Halifax

Also, the entire of St. Lukes' Hospital is up for closure, the central site for Huddersfield's mental health service. It includes acute and forensic (long-term) inpatient care, but also houses the community psychiatric nurses and outreach headquarters, a ward for Alzheimers care and neurology.
How it will be replaced it as yet unclear to me.
Tesco is said to have expressed an interest in the site.

Tomorrow, Huddersfield will host a demonstration of our opposal to these planned cutbacks, which will wake a load more people up to what's on the cards.

I hope you all have success, wherever this virulently servile bureaucratic species tries to wield the scalpel on the NHS.

René Thomas
mail e-mail: weallpoo@yahoo.co.uk


Comments

Hide the following 4 comments

excellent news

28.11.2005 12:58

great stuff, good to see 'bread and butter issues rising up the agenda, hope to see such groups springing up all over the country. One concern though, although it is a very broad based campaign, it looks like the usual suspects are involved in this, thats ok, but if they try to take it over,asthey did the STWC, then it would be very very sad.

sick man of europe


if only they'd do nowt everything would be fine

29.11.2005 15:21

Agree with the last commentator, if only the usual suspects, Socialists etc would stop organising all these high-profile, relevant, effective campaigns... then all attention would focus on half-a-dozen anarchists occupying a cupboard in Lewisham, and capitalism would fall!

a nonny mouse


hey nonny No!

02.12.2005 13:49

just a reply to a nonny mouse re. her/his claim that socialists are actually helping all this stuff.

i am not an anarchist, i am not a socialist but i have been active in the 'movement' (if you can really use a singular term for the mess it's in at the moment) for quite a long time for a 21 year old (about 6 years). during that time i've had experience of activism in Liverpool, Manchester and London, and by far the most loving, positive and thoughtful people i have ever met were anarchists.

This is not to say that the tactics anarchists use are necessarily the best in all respects, but socialism in britain is essentially a game of catch-up. it is a reactionary grouping of people who methodically apply extremely basic assumptions to complex situations and then act upon them, invariably culminating in an 'a to b' march or a rally if you're lucky and if the police are nice and agree to it.

I know it is different in liverpool, but the london anarchists are usually the only people who are prepared to take on community issues and help others, alongside maintaining their ideals. note, they do not try and dominate the proceedings or turn things into an anarchist only party and they certainly do not do it to try and get more members to sell their shitty rags.

My experience of liverpool is of a socialism that is strong but alas ideologically stuck in the 1970s but without the militancy of that era. The crushing of any popular radical trade union movement has left liverpool, once a sturdy left wing city, with a few stragglers who have not let go, and some youngsters who have been brainwashed into thinking Trotskyism is anything but red fascism, just like any USSR style of governance is.

i regret to say that this has all meant that socialism is effectively reactionary (not helped by the SWP and Respect i admit, and i must add that i do not assume that everyone is a member of those two infamous groups).

I am completely in support of the campaign mentioned but this form of politics cannot be perpetuated and is already running out of steam. By suggesting that anarchists are worse, i completely disagree. Perhaps tactically their methods are less obvious, but they respect the fact that actions aren't just about getting people to go on demos, they are about creating pockets of resistance (legal if possible, illegal if necessary) that can use spaces as a form of creating new possibilities rather than narrowing down possibilities for fear of not gaining members.

resistance is not about membership, nor is it about the perpetual cycle of 'government does something, we resist it, government does something, we resist it'- no it is about trying to break that cycle by doing creative, unexpected things. things that might just show a glint of a possible - and better - future.

andreas


Same old SWP/Labour Party campaign containment!

10.01.2006 02:45

In Liverpool it was the same old SWP/Respect bandwagon who can't seem allow any campaigns to be organised unless they jump on board and take the leadership and control positions. Hardly a grassroots campaign, it's a tops down (possibly even from the state itself) approach as usual. Jane (SWP/Respect) chairing the meeting and all the other speakers from the audience were so obviously prearranged SWP/Respect members a very typical stage managed piece of political theatre of SWP and Liverpool Trot' tradition. I saw the first person to put their hand up to speak and she, who I knew not to be a SWPer, was one of the last to be allowed to speak after all the SWP/Respect members spoke, at the end while hands were still up, who were probably not SWP/Respect members, the chair said no more speakers, then allowed another selected speaker to sum up without that person having even put her hand up.

All the speakers hand picked to speak were keen to tell us they were either Respect or Labour Party and that included the top table speakers. We had Alex Scott Samuel, claimed to be a socialist but is also a Labour Party member. So he can simultaneously subscribe to the party (and pay annual membership fees to) which is actively privatising the NHS while actually opposing it. Someone else claimed they were a NHS senior executive and didn't want to adversely affect their job promotion prospects by coming out against the NHS privatisation moves. We were due to be preached at by Peter Kilfoyle but he didn't turn up.

Yes this is going to be about as radical as all the previous SWP front organisations (DCH, StWC, Globalise Resistance) that always end up damping down radical forms of action. It ends up leading members of the public who genuinely join up down dead ends of political action from which they end up being demoralised and drop out of politics usually.

Sadly it was the same old StWC, SWP, Respect crowd, they must be overloaded with all the campaigns they're monopolising just here on Merseyside while also running a political party and a social democracy coalition.

Red Flag


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