THERE is not the slightest doubt that the Tories, headed by Cameron, Osborne and Hunt, have picked their quarrel with the junior doctors.
It is not just that they want to privatise the NHS, they also want to make an example of what happens to any group of workers, or even sections of the middle class, that stand up for their rights against the ruling class party.
In the House of Commons on Monday Hunt promoted a number of novel doctrines, amongst which is the notion that whatever appears in a Tory Party election manifesto supersedes all existing law if the Tories are elected.
Under this novel doctrine the doctors’ strikes are illegal, as are all trade union actions that oppose Tory manifesto policies. During the debate Andrew Bridgen, Tory MP for North West Leicestershire, said: ‘Doctors are amongst the most highly remunerated public servants, far higher than members of the police or the armed services, both who are essential workers and both who are barred by law from taking strike action.
Can I ask my right honourable friend to review this situation with regard to A&E medics.’ Agreeing with a change in law which would ban the right to strike, Hunt replied: ‘His broader point I would agree with . . . it’s totally inappropriate to withdraw emergency care in the way that is going to happen tomorrow and the next day and that is why I think that doctors should be very careful about the impact this will have on their status in the country.’
On cue, the Tory press have entered the fray to state that the doctors are challenging the right of the government to rule, as was done when Edward Heath, in 1972, asked: ‘Who governs?’
The Telegraph does not reveal what happened to Heath, he was brought down, but grandly declares: ‘the question was answered decisively and to the benefit of the whole country, by Margaret Thatcher.’ The present Tory gang of political pygmies are halucinating that they are Margaret Thatcher reincarnated!
There is no doubt that they are just as arrogant, determined, rude, spiteful and peevish as the grocer’s daughter – however that was not what made Thatcher. The basis of her war with the miners was planned over four years and was based on North Sea oil and a very close relationship with a UK military that was let loose in the Falklands, with her posing as the warrior queen on an armoured car. This militarisation made sure that there were more than enough special forces to add some steel to the police in the great clashes that took place at Orgreave and other places with the miners.
Of the two however, North Sea oil was the more important. The Tories were able to survive a viciously cold winter that did not see one power cut! Nevertheless, the battle with the miners saw moments when defeat stared her in the face – in those moments she was able to call on the TUC to help her out as her memoirs ‘The Downing Street Years’ bear out.
Today British capitalism is broken, it has no coal industry, no steel industry and North Sea oil is finished. Its military is now a shadow of what it was, its navy has aircraft carriers without planes. The only asset that it has is a trade union bureaucracy, a TUC that still grovels on all fours in front of the bosses.
The issue of the hour is therefore that the junior doctors must not be allowed to fight alone, and the TUC must be made to get off its knees and call an indefinite general strike to smash the Tories and bring them down, so that they can join Thatcher and Heath on the rubbish dump of history.
It is a fact that the Tories are also not what they were. Kenneth Clarke has estimated that if they lose the referendum on June 23, the Tory government has a shelf life of 30 seconds! News Line urges all workers to lobby the TUC today to demand that it hears a delegation of junior doctors and that it takes action to stop the Cameron-Osborne-Hunt gang from behaving like dictators.
They must be brought down by a general strike that brings in a workers government. Only the WRP fights for this policy. Join it today!
