A STARK reminder of what the real face of privatisation means for the public services has been provided this week with the revelation that the private company which is paid vast sums to run the out-of-hours GP services in Cornwall, Serco, has instructed its staff to delay calling ambulances in response to emergency calls in order to meet commercial targets.
This case illustrates exactly what the drive to privatise the health service and the other social services really means in practice – the lives of the working and middle classes mean nothing, only profit at any cost
This was the point forcibly driven home earlier this month when the head of the NHS confederation, Michael Farrar, called for closing hospitals and cutting beds, all in the name of making the NHS ‘sustainable’ – that is affordable for a capitalist system that is intent on plundering the NHS budget to finance its collapsed banking system and pay for its wars to steal the oil wealth of the Middle East and Africa.
The attack on the NHS is mirrored by the same attacks on all other vital services that are viewed by the Coalition as just a drain on the economy.
Across the country they plan to close 75 Fire Stations and cut hundreds of fire appliances with thousands of firefighters’ jobs on the line.
In London this means 12 stations closing and 520 firefighters facing the sack.
When the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority came out against these cuts the Tory mayor of London, Boris Johnson, arrogantly announced that he would use all his powers and issue a ‘Mayoral Directive’ to overrule them and impose the cuts by diktat.
There is enormous hatred amongst workers and the middle class for these attacks on vital services.
Thousands will be marching tomorrow over the proposed closure of Lewisham Hospital, just as hundreds of firefighters demonstrated on Monday against the savage cuts to the fire service.
But all the anger and hatred will not deter the Coalition government from carrying out the cuts that are vital to keep this rotten bankrupt capitalist system staggering on.
The capitalist class are prepared to go to war in order to drive through the smashing up of the NHS, the fire service and the entire Welfare State.
To this end, Cameron is preparing to change the law to allow a foreign national, the American ‘super-cop’ Bill Bratton, to become the London police chief.
Bratton made his name with the brutal policy of ‘zero tolerance’ as head of the New York police, and Cameron has long wanted him to impose this policy of urban warfare against workers and youth fighting against the destruction of their services.
Bratton will join his fellow ‘foreign mercenary’, the Canadian Mark Carney, who has been installed as Governor of the Bank of England to carry out the economic war against the working class.
What is clear is that Cameron and the Coalition are under no illusion that they can drive the cuts and closures through peacefully. They are preparing to fight it out with the working class.
This is why the working class must develop a policy to use its huge strength to defeat this attack and go forward to socialism.
All the talk from union leaders about supporting occupations and considering a general strike must be immediately transformed into action. The hospitals and the fire stations that are threatened with closure must be occupied and put under workers control to keep them open.
Such occupations must be defended by strike actions by the trade unions and the building of Councils of Action in every locality to organise a general strike.
Its aim must be to bring down the government and replace it with a workers government, not a Labour government led by Miliband which will carry on with Tory policies to prop up the bankers and bosses.
The only way to defend the NHS, the Fire Service and all of the gains of the Welfare State is to organise a socialist revolution to get rid of capitalism and bring in socialism.
