A SURVEY by the polling company Ipsos MORI has revealed that the NHS is more popular amongst workers and the middle classes than those pillars of the established order, the armed forces and the royal family, with four out of five people in the country opposed to government cuts in the service.
When asked what made them ‘proud to be British’ 52% of those polled named the NHS as the institution they were most proud of while the royal family – usually held by the right-wing press and bourgeois politicians as the very foundation of ‘Britishness’ – only managed 33%, and the BBC a miserable 22%.
This figure of 52% is actually an increase of 7% on the result of the last poll conducted on this question by Ipsos MORI two years ago.
This is significant in that this increase in popularity for the NHS has come at a time when the entire service and all those who work in it has come under unprecedented and sustained attack from the Tory led coalition and the bourgeois press.
Attacks like that made by Tory health minister, Jeremy Hunt, who claimed that the deaths at Mid Staffs hospital were caused by a ‘culture’ of brutality that he insisted exists throughout the NHS with staff having nothing but ‘contempt and cruelty’ for patients, ignoring the independent inqury that placed the blame squarely on government cuts to staffing and training and the drive by managers to make huge savings in order to prepare the trust for foundation status and eventual privatisation.
This overwhelming support for the NHS, along with every other public service, is reflected in the response to the question which asked which areas of public spending should be protected from the austerity cuts – 79% said the NHS, 51% schools and care for the elderly.
49% believed the NHS should be given more money ‘so that it can continue to provide services in the same way it does at the moment’ and only 7% backed further rationing of care. The results of this poll come just days after another one conducted by the Sarvation company into peoples attitudes towards privatisation of public services.
This poll found that only 21% trusted private outsourcing companies with 63% calling for the privateer Serco (which is being investigated for suspected overcharging on government contracts) to be banned from bidding for any further outsourcing contracts.
59% were in favour of an outright ban on the privateer company G4S which has been up to its neck in scandals relating to overpricing for prison tagging contracts, amongst other failures.
While support for the NHS has risen appreciably in the past two years, at the same time there has been a dramatic increase in the fear that the NHS is being destroyed by the government’s austerity drive with one in four (24%) saying that this is the most important issue facing the country, a much larger number than those who registered a concern back in 2012.
The picture that emerges quite clearly from these surveys is that there exists gigantic support for the NHS as a publicly owned service, free at the point of delivery, and an intense hatred of the private companies whose sole intent is to leech off it, right across society.
It is clear that any fight to defend the NHS commands the overwhelming support of workers and the middle classes and that any demand for all out action by the unions to defeat the government’s attempt to smash the NHS would win massive support.
It is the refusal of the TUC leadership to call such action, in the form of a general strike, that is allowing the coalition to carry out its policy of cuts, closures and privatisation.
These union leaders who are refusing to lift a finger to defend the NHS must be told either call a general strike or get out and be replaced with a new leadership prepared to bring down and scrap the government and capitalism to keep the NHS as the most precious gain made by the working class.