THE RCN (Royal College of Nursing) yesterday carried a 97% vote of no confidence in Health Secretary Lansley, with 478 for six against and 13 abstentions.
This was the RCN response to the Tory coalition’s attempt to push through the Health and Social Care Bill to slash, cut and privatise the NHS, measures calculated to destroy health care in the UK, and also see tens of thousands of nurses and other health service workers sacked, and scores of hospitals closed.
The vote was also the nurses’ verdict on the arrogant coalition’s posture that it was listening to the health professionals and the patients, while at the same time their leader in terms of health care, Lansley, refused a direct invitation to address the nurses conference, surely the best place to both speak, listen and discuss with them.
The RCN vote was a continuation of a process of mass rejection of NHS privatisation which saw the BMA conference vote with only a handful in opposition for the Health Secretary to withdraw the Bill.
This was followed up by the decision of the consultants conference that they would respond to any attempt to undermine their pension with a ballot for industrial action.
This movement to defend health care and the NHS has spread throughout the trade union movement, with the Unison trade union declaring that the Bill must be smashed and the Unite trade union opposing the Bill and specifically opposing NHS commissioning.
It has placed Labour Party leaders like Miliband on the spot.
Faced with an avalanche of opposition he was forced to say yesterday that the best way to deal with the Bill was to ‘junk it’.
His stance of last week was that he was ready and willing to give support to the coalition’s health care plans.
Now he has been forced to change his tune.
Health workers, patients and the working class as a whole must demand that their leaders act now to smash the Bill and the coalition with it.
Doctor Meldrum and other leaders of the BMA doctors trade union have been trying to ignore the resolution carried at their recent Special Representative Meeting that the health bill must be withdrawn, in favour of continuing with the hopeless ‘listening’ discussions designed to help the bill get through.
These misleaders must be called to account.
They must either oppose the Bill and demand it be withdrawn or resign from the leadership of the BMA and make way for those who are prepared to defend the NHS and put an end to this coalition government.
In fact, the TUC must at once call a special meeting of all unions, and invite the non-TUC NHS professional associations, to discuss a programme of action to get the Bill withdrawn and to bring down the coalition.
This action must include strike actions by NHS and non-NHS workers, the refusal to accept sackings of nurses and other health workers, and occupations of hospitals which are threatened with closure to keep them open.
The NHS must be defended and hospital closures and sackings stopped.
If the Tories and their LibDem toadies insist on continuing with the Bill, then the TUC must call a general strike to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers government that will safeguard the NHS and develop it to continue providing first class care, free at the point of need.
This is the only way to defend the NHS.
The whole working class is in favour of action to secure it for the future.
Trade union leaders who want to try and prop up the coalition instead of removing it must be removed and be replaced by a revolutionary leadership that will act decisively to defend their members’ interests, by bringing down the coalition and going forward to socialism.
