THE Health Services Journal (HSJ) has just revealed that the NHS Trust Development Authority (TDA) officials are keeping confidential (that is well hidden) until after the general election, information showing which NHS trusts are unlikely to have a future as independent organisations – in other words, are unlikely to be privatised – which trusts need more ‘work’ on them before they are put out to private management, and which trusts have no future at all, and will no doubt be recommended for closure!
The TDA has told the HSJ that it will not publish a list of the categories it has given to the 90 NHS organisations it oversees until the summer, after the May election.
The manoeuvres of the TDA, to keep the future well under wraps until the election is over, emphasise the importance of the position being put by WRP candidates in this election, that all hospitals threatened with closure must be occupied by the trade unions and the closures stopped, and that there must be a workers government that will reopen every closed hospital, halt the new closure plans that are to be announced and provide the NHS with proper funding.
This position has the support of millions of workers who have made it perfectly clear that they do not consider that workers and their families can live in safety and security if the bankers and bosses are allowed to dismantle the NHS.
However, this is not the position of the Labour Party. The party that brought in the NHS is refusing to pledge to reopen closed hospitals and maternity and A&E departments, as well as refusing to pledge that it will halt the closure of threatened hospitals.
West London workers are among the millions of workers who are very angry that their hospitals are being hacked to pieces.
Central Middlesex Hospital has had its A&E and Maternity Unit closed. Hammersmith has had its A&E closed, Charing Cross is to be demolished and a hotel built in its place!!! Ealing hospital is on six weeks’ notice of having its A&E and Maternity Unit closed!
This has produced a state of emergency in West London, with millions of people desperately worried about their own and their children’s health care.
These hospitals must not close. All the threatened facilities must be occupied and kept running. The trade unions must see that this happens, and that we go forward to a workers government.
This is the policy of the WRP and its Acton and Ealing candidate Scott Dore.
On Wednesday, the Labour Party candidate, Dr Rupa Huqe, when asked by News Line if a Labour government would reverse the Tory policy of closing Ealing A&E and Maternity and Charing Cross Hospital A&E, replied: ‘We can’t say yes.
‘We’ve been promised a review. Andy Burnham has told me that Labour will not reopen what’s closed already but anything that’s not closed can be reviewed.’
Her colleague, Ealing Labour Councillor Hitesh Tailor said: ‘One of the difficult things about the closure of the maternity is that GPs are already referring mothers elsewhere.’
This policy is the kiss of death for millions of west London workers, and spells out that Labour cares more about getting rid of the huge deficits that the bankers and bosses have created, than seeing to the interests and the needs of the working class, the class that creates all of the wealth.
In fact, Burnham was one of the gang of Blair privateers that began bringing the capitalist market into the NHS in the first place! Now he is part of a Labour leadership that puts the interests of the bosses and capitalism first.
News Line urges workers to vote WRP in the areas where we are standing, and to occupy the hospitals that are threatened with closure to keep them open.
Because we want to get the Tories out, we also say that where our candidates are not standing to vote Labour, but without a single illusion in the reformists without any reforms.
We urge workers and youth to join the WRP to build up the revolutionary leadership of the working class. If Labour wins we must be prepared to bring them down with a general strike on the first occasion that they seek to impose austerity or cuts on the working class, or agree to a hospital closure, and go forward to a workers government and socialism.
