TODAY’S strike by junior doctors must be supported by the entire trade union movement and the working class.
What is at stake in this dispute is nothing less than the very existence of the NHS, a service that ranks as the greatest gain ever made by working people, a gain that has their universal support.|
It is this gain that the Tories are determined to smash as they attempt to drive through the wholesale privatisation of the NHS and every other public service in order to achieve chancellor Osborne’s boast that the Tories will shrink the size of the state back to that of the 1930s.
This is back to the time where there was no free health service, every visit to a doctor had to be paid for, and only the wealthy could afford decent medical treatment. Central to this drive to dismantle the NHS and hand it over en masse to the private multi-national health corporations is the imposition of the new contract on junior doctors.
The planned new contract has at its centre the ending of the concept of weekend unsocial hours attracting a premium payment. By reducing the hours deemed ‘unsocial’ the Tories intend to make huge savings on the wage bill and also establish the principle of seven-days-a-week working for a flat rate of pay.
Cuts in pay and a return to the conditions that existed in the past of junior doctors working in excess of 120 hours a week – with all the risks to patients this entails – are essential to make the privatisation of hospitals attractive to the healthcare companies.
It is not just junior doctors that will face having their contracts torn up and new, privateer-friendly ones imposed. Next in line will be consultants, nurses, porters, cleaners, admin staff – in fact every NHS employee will be subjected to the same treatment.
It is for this reason that health minister Jeremy Hunt refuses to back down on this point. The entire Tory strategy is dependent on beating back the doctors and opening the way for a dictatorial rule over the pay and conditions of every NHS worker. This will also be the green light for every other public sector worker to face the same attack or even worse.
This is why it is vital that the junior doctors are not left to confront the Tories on their own – their fight is a fight on behalf of every working person in the country. The actions of the BMA leadership, in refusing to allow motions calling for strike action at the recent GP conference on the grounds that such action would be illegal, was a clear signal that the union bureaucracy is determined to prevent GPs and other sections of the union coming out in support of the junior doctors.
Equally, the leadership of all the other health unions, along with the TUC, have given purely verbal support. They have refused to call their members out on strike in solidarity with junior doctors and to defend the NHS.
What is crystal clear is that the Tories, driven by the devastating effect of the world crisis on a bankrupt British capitalist system, have decided that capitalism can no longer afford the ‘luxury’ of the NHS, and that it is to pay for bailing out their bankrupt system.
The working class on the other hand is reaching the conclusion that it can no longer afford to prop up a decaying capitalist system and a Tory government intent on destroying all its gains.
The key to the situation is the building of a new revolutionary leadership to replace the hopeless reformists in the leadership of the unions who live in terror of a fight against the Tories.
A leadership that will immediately organise a general strike to kick out the Tories and overthrow this historically redundant capitalist system by going forward to a workers government and socialism. This is the only way to defend the NHS. We call on every worker to join the WRP today to build this revolutionary leadership.
