LABOUR Party leader and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has given the BMA doctors a 48-hour ultimatum that they must call off their ‘reckless’ strikes.
Making a direct threat to the Resident doctors, Starmer threatened that if they reject his ultimatum he will withdraw his previous offer to provide at least 4,000 new specialty training posts.
The six-day strike over trade union demands for a 26% pay rise is scheduled to start next Tuesday, following the Easter bank holiday weekend.
Writing in the Times, the Labour Prime Minister said: ‘Walking away from this deal is the wrong decision. It is a reckless decision. And doing so without even giving Resident doctors themselves the chance to vote on it makes it even worse.’
Last week, the British Medical Association rejected the government’s 7.1% offer having been given permission by their members to take whatever action was necessary to win their demands.
The BMA chairman, Doctor Jack Fletcher, said that the proposed increases for the next financial year meant a longer period with pay ‘that barely treads water’.
The union has demanded restoration of pay levels the doctors enjoyed in 2008 – equivalent to a 26 per cent increase.
It is obvious that Labour intends to foist what would be wage cuts onto the Resident doctors.
Now is the time for trade unionists to demand and campaign for the recall of the TUC Congress to discuss and decide on what action must be taken to prevent what would be savage wage cuts, that would merely be a prelude to the mass sackings of doctors determined to take forward their strike action.
Now is the time for the historic trade union call to be heard up and down the country that an ‘injury to one is an injury to all’ to come into its own.
The TUC Congress must be recalled to give its full support to the Resident doctors.
The TUC must be forced to call a general strike to defend the NHS and back the Resident doctors by bringing down the current Labour government and replacing it with a Workers Government that will carry out these vital socialist policies.
Up and down the UK, workers and youth are facing major state attacks on jobs, wages, benefits and what were basic rights – all are now under massive attack.
The time to take decisive action on these issues is NOW, while the working class has the power and the strength to carry out, not just a few changes, but to carry forward the much needed socialist revolution in the UK.
Meanwhile, as the trade unions are under attack, hundreds of thousands of youth are being driven into forced labour schemes of one kind or another – working for a pittance.
Now is the time for the TUC Congress to discuss and take action over the crisis in living standards and growing attacks on the jobs, wages and basic rights of the working class and its youth.
The ruling class is trying to return the country’s youth to some new ‘dark ages’ where they can be super-exploited by bosses desperate to continue making huge profits out of their super-exploitation.
The Labour government is now getting ready to confront the trade unions and battle this out.
This is why it is absolutely vital for the TUC Congress to be recalled to discuss and vote for the organisation of a general strike to bring down the Starmer Labour government that is betraying the working class on a daily basis, and replace it with a Workers Government that will immediately expropriate the bosses and bring in a nationalised and planned economy based on the concept of ‘from each according to their ability to each according to their need.’
The dog-eat-dog Tory society must now be overthrown by the nationalisation of the banks and the major industries under workers’ management who will build a society based on the needs of millions of working class families and youth.
This is the only future and the only way forward out of this huge world economic crisis that is destroying the lives of millions.
Victory to world socialist revolution!
