A BLOC of twelve trade unions have joined together to campaign against the Labour government’s health service ‘reforms’, that is the Brown-Blair programme for privatising the NHS.
The campaign includes both TUC trade unions such as the TGWU, Amicus, UNISON and the GMB, and non-TUC professional trade unions such as the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).
The unity of these powerful organisations brings together every section of the NHS workforce, from consultants, to doctors, nurses, midwives, and ancillary workers.
The union leaders are now calling for an urgent meeting with Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.
However, a lot more will be required than another meeting with the Health Secretary.
The same organisations had a meeting with her last Wednesday. At this meeting it was made pretty clear that the government intends to proceed with its plans for NHS privatisation, and if anything is speeding up its privatisation drive.
The least that the campaign can do is to begin its defence of the NHS by calling a day of action, and a national demonstration, to demand that the government halts all of its privatisation plans and expels the private sector from the NHS.
This must be an action not just for health workers but for all workers, and for all NHS patients and users of the NHS.
The major TUC trade unions are massive organisations, organising the majority of the TUC’s seven million affiliated members.
All these members must take part in a day of action and national demonstration along with all those who depend on the NHS – launching a mass movement of tens of millions of workers.
However, the trade union leaders are not proclaiming from the rooftops about the alliance they have formed, and were yesterday trying to keep as low a profile about it, and what it is going to do, as possible.
A TUC spokesman said that he had no idea about what the campaign would be doing except for arranging another emergency meeting with Health Secretary Hewitt.
The reality is that it is the mounting anger of the membership of the trade unions against NHS privatisation that has forced the forming of a campaign, and it will take aggressive campaigning and action by the membership of the trade unions to force the leaders to call mass actions.
The formation of the 12 union campaign will be welcomed by every NHS worker, since it brings the entire workforce together to oppose the privatisation drive. Up till now both government and the management have been able to take different sections of the NHS workforce on separately and to use one section against the other.
Workers in the NHS trusts must bring all their organisations together to oppose all of the attacks that are being levelled against them. They must call local days of action, strikes and demonstrations to rally whole communities for the defence of the NHS.
They must also bombard their union offices and leaders with resolutions demanding action to defend the NHS, starting with a national day of action.
This will at the least show the enormous power of the working class.
However, the Labour government like the leopard will not change its spots and will carry on with its programme to smash the Welfare State.
A Day of Action must muster the forces for the calling of an indefinite general strike to bring down the Blair government and smash the privatisation programme by bringing in a workers’ government that will carry out socialist policies.
The trade union leaders are determined to never call such an action. This is why building up the leadership of the Workers Revolutionary Party in all of the NHS trade unions, to remove and replace these leaders is a vital part of the struggle to defend the NHS and carry the struggle through to victory.
