JUNIOR doctors are to take strike action on February 10th after rejecting the government’s proposals in negotiations, where the government was represented by NHS Health Executive Sir David Dalton.
He was parachuted into the talks by Health Secretary Hunt to push the government’s proposals through. He failed in this task. The negotiations concluded on January 29th when the BMA negotiators met their NEC, and Dalton wrote an ‘Open Letter’ to Health Secretary Hunt that was clearly an attempt to intimidate the BMA and the junior doctors.
In it he wrote: ‘I am aware that BMA negotiators are meeting their Executive Committee today and I have confirmed my willingness to continue to talk. I should note though that I do not believe negotiations should restart unless the BMA state beforehand that they will negotiate on the principal outstanding issues.
‘Should the BMA confirm that they will not negotiate and compromise on weekday and weekend plain time/unsocial hours then I will have to conclude that there is no opportunity for a negotiated settlement, and I would then need to advise you accordingly.
‘The issues around this and other outstanding contract negotiations have caused great uncertainty in the NHS and it is essential that the service finds out how things will proceed as soon as possible. Specifically, if effective implementation is to be assured for junior doctors then agreement is required by no later than mid-February . . .’
The government’s hit man concludes that negotiations should not restart unless the BMA surrenders, and a failure to surrender means ‘there is no opportunity for a negotiated settlement’ and that ‘agreement is required no later than mid-February’ – meaning that imposition of the new contract must be made by that date.’
What Dalton has publicly displayed once again is the determination of the Tories and the British ruling class to impose their terms onto the junior doctors, brushing their union aside, as a prelude to dishing out the same treatment to all other NHS trade unions, in order to prepare the way for the privatisation of the NHS.
As well as this monstrous attack on the NHS and the NHS trade unions to smash the greatest gain of the UK working class, the NHS, the government is also bringing in anti-union laws that will, in practice, end the right to strike.
What is crystal clear is that British capitalism is in desperate straits, as is the whole world capitalist system. The Tories can no longer allow the working class to have an NHS, a Welfare State or free trade unions that have the right to strike. The British bosses want to go back a century or two to a nation of coolies.
The NHS trade unions and all of the TUC trade unions cannot afford to ignore this threat to impose a contract on the doctors union, and then on other NHS trade unions, to create the conditions for smashing the NHS. The junior doctors strike is on February 10th.
All NHS trade unions and all trade unions must support their strike action by taking 24-hour strike action with them on that day. The longstanding and true trade union slogan that an ‘Injury to One is an Injury to All’ must be activated in this case by workers organising a 24-hour general strike in support of the junior doctors.
Roughly a week after the junior doctors strike action on the 10th the government, according to their man in the talks Dalton, will be issuing a decree to impose the hated new contract on the junior doctors.
If they are allowed to carry out this action, then the rest of the trade union movement will rapidly experience the same treatment or worse, using the new anti-union legislation.
Trade unionists must immediately demand an emergency meeting of the General Council of the TUC, and tell it that it must respond to the threat of the imposition of contracts and the new anti-union laws by calling an indefinite general strike.
This must bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government that will defend the NHS and the right to strike, and go forward to socialism.
