YESTERDAY, NHS consultants began a 48-hour strike that has propelled a head-on confrontation between doctors and their union, the BMA, and a Tory government that is determined to destroy the NHS and destroy the trade union movement.
Consultants are joined today by junior doctors who are walking out alongside them in a major escalation of the industrial action that is fast approaching a fight to the finish between medical staff fighting not just for pay but in defence of the NHS.
On the same day that the strike commenced, the Tories announced that they intend to extend the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act to cover doctors and consultants.
Until now, the Tory ‘consultation process’ on implementing this law, that gives employers the power to name workers taking strike action and force them to cross picket lines and fine unions for not enforcing management demands, has concentrated on ambulance staff, fire and rescue services and passenger rail services.
The Tories deliberately avoided any suggestion that it would be used to break junior doctors’ and consultants’ industrial action, instead always maintaining that ‘voluntary agreements’ on staffing levels ensured adequate cover during strikes.
Such voluntary agreements have now been torn up, with Tory Health Secretary Steve Barclay announcing that this Act would be used against consultants and junior doctors in order to break their fight for a pay increase to make up for 15 years of Tory wage cuts.
In an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme, Barclay insisted that using the anti-strike law was now ‘necessary’.
Barclay was challenged by BBC presenter Nick Robinson, who said: ‘You didn’t plan to do this just a matter of weeks ago. You didn’t think it was a reasonable thing to do then and now you’re doing it.’
Robinson continued: ‘So, presumably, you’ve changed your mind about the BMA,’ and asked point blank: ‘Have you decided this is a battle to the political death, that one side or the other is going to win and you’re determined to fight them?’
Barclay, of course, refused to answer this directly, instead choosing to blame the BMA for ‘escalating’ the confrontation with the Tories.
In fact, Barclay had made it clear during the course of the interview exactly what the Tories intend for the BMA and every other trade union.
He was asked by Robinson if the anti-strike law meant that any doctor named by management would be sacked if they refused to cross a picket line.
Once again, Barclay ducked the question saying he didn’t expect law-abiding doctors to refuse to obey management instructions, but he insisted if there was a refusal to comply with these laws then it was the BMA that would be held responsible and liable to be dragged before the courts and fined out of existence.
What Barclay and the Tories are demanding is that the trade unions become another arm of the capitalist state whose only function is to force its members to submit to every demand and diktat handed down by the government and bosses on pain of bankruptcy.
This is a massive wake-up call to the TUC and trade union leaders who believe that the anti-union laws can be overturned through the courts or made unworkable.
The Tories have declared a war to the finish against the BMA, doctors and consultants, and every worker and trade union in the country.
British capitalism is bankrupt, gripped by the most acute economic crisis in its history, drowning in debt and determined to make the working class pay through mass unemployment, poverty-level wages and the destruction of the NHS which is now considered to be ‘unaffordable’.
The working class must force the TUC leaders to stop just talking about the anti-union laws and take decisive action bring down this Tory government.
Workers must demand an immediate recall of the TUC to set the date for an indefinite general strike to kick out the Tories and bring in a workers’ government to nationalise the banks and major industries and bring in a planned socialist economy.
Join the WRP and Young Socialists to build up the leadership required for the victory of the British Socialist Revolution – there is no time to lose.
