THE Health and Social Care Bill is set to become law within weeks.
This is after the LibDem ‘revolt’, which the Labour bureaucracy was telling workers would lead to the Bill being dropped, evaporated without trace, leaving the Cameron-led coalition to have its way, winning a series of House of Lords votes on Tuesday night, while three Labour amendments were defeated.
The government amendment to the Bill, aimed at bringing the bill into law without further delay, was agreed. It had been suggested in a letter written last week by LibDem leader Clegg and ‘Gang of Four’ veteran Baroness Shirley Williams.
Earlier, in a letter to LibDem MPs and peers, also signed by Baroness Williams, Clegg set out five changes they wanted to see in the bill. Clegg added that ‘once these final changes have been agreed, we believe conference can be reassured that it has finished the job it started last March and the bill should be allowed to proceed’.
The trade union bureaucracy and Labour politicians such as Burnham, who as Labour’s Health Secretary pushed a number of privatisation measures through the NHS, had been seeking to divert the struggle to smash the Bill into a campaign to get the LibDems and their peers to amend it to the point where the Tories would drop it.
This policy has now collapsed in a heap leaving the Labour leaders completely exposed. Their policy now is that the Bill once it is law has to be carried out and must be obeyed, with all of the consequent privatisations and hospital closures that are threatened, to end the NHS.
No amount of demands for the publication of the risk assessments connected to the privatisation measures can cover up this debacle and stop the Bill becoming law.
In fact, it is the case that most people know that the risk assessments are horrific. As well, the vast majority of the people understand that without the NHS life will be intolerable.
The Labourites and union leaders may well seek to replace their failed pro-LibDem campaign with suggestions that civil disobedience should be used Ghandi style. This is however, only another form of acceptance that the Bill will become law and will be operated.
The big issue remains, defending the NHS, stopping the Bill becoming law and if it does mobilising to smash it, to be able to save, maintain and develop the NHS.
The fact is that the working class through its trade unions has the power to stop the bill and smash it.
The trade union leaders and the Labour party leaders know that this is the case, but since they support capitalism and bourgeois legality they would prefer to see the NHS scrapped than launch a real struggle to bring down the government that is seeking to privatise it.
What must be done is that the trade unions must be mobilised for an indefinite general strike to bring down the coalition government and bring in a workers government to maintain, and develop the NHS, instead of privatising it.
Trade union leaders who refuse to organise strike action to smash the coalition must be removed and be replaced by leaders who are prepared to do what is necessary to defend the NHS.
The issue is simple. The working class is completely opposed to the privatisation of the NHS, and the ending of the Welfare State.
If capitalism can no longer afford these gains, then workers consider that it is capitalism that must go, not the NHS or the Welfare State.
Bourgeois law is just a means for enslaving the working class.
There is not a moment to lose. Cameron has declared that he intends to push through NHS privatisation regardless of what people think or want. This arrogant Tory and his government must be brought down with a general strike.
