TODAY’S Senior Consultants BMA conference is due to hear a warning from Doctor Jonathan Fielden to Premier-elect Gordon Brown that he will ignore the medical profession at his peril.
In his speech Fielden is due to condemn the government ‘for a woeful dereliction of duty, towards patients, towards the profession and towards the future’.
He will urge ‘give us back the health service and we will rebuild it. Fail to do so and you will rightly have a long-lasting legacy to be condemned for destroying the best piece of social capital the country has ever had.’
He will state: ‘We will not stand by and let you damage patient care through rushed reforms and we will not stand by and see the Trojan Horse of the independent sector rolled in to take over the health service from within. It is not better, it is not better value and above all it is not safer.’
Fielden’s speech is however just a pale reflection of the boiling anger that is sweeping through the NHS, at the racist treatment of thousands of Indian doctors whose careers in the NHS have been terminated by the Blair–Brown government, the massive damage that has been imposed on the NHS and tens of thousands of junior doctors whose careers are also being terminated as Labour moves to downsize the NHS, and the reconfiguration (closure) of up to 100 District General Hospitals.
That Fielden rejects the Trojan Horse (independent sector) inside the NHS is good, but we must make sure that we do not merely swap one government Trojan Horse for another.
Brown is a fan of handing control of the NHS over to an independent board of governors, that will have privateers on it, including equity capitalists who are now seeking to buy up sections of the ‘independent sector’ to get into the NHS with a view to pocketing its multi-billion budget.
Brown is also a fan of NHS rationing, which an independent board of governors would supervise, along with private insurance schemes for those who can afford the more expensive rationed treatments.
The BMA leaders are looking to the senior consultants to also support these plans.
This is just swapping one Trojan Horse for another. Rationing by an independent board of governors must be rejected in favour of increasing the NHS budget by cutting the arms budget and making the equity capitalists pay taxes, and by reducing NHS costs by nationalising the drugs industry, and by having a workers government that seriously supports the NHS and the Welfare state.
The ‘we will not stand by’ theme of Fielden’s speech seeks to tap into the support that there is throughout the NHS for action to defend it.
However, it is action that is needed, not just militant words that adapt to the mood of growing anger at Labour’s policies, without doing anything.
To get this action the BMA must see to it that the new BMA chairman is elected by a ballot of the whole membership, which wants a leader who is going to fight, and not just by some little bureaucratic committee which is opposed to taking any action.
The BMA must also mobilise the NHS Together trade union alliance to defend the junior doctors by insisting that not a single doctor is driven out of the medical profession, or exported.
The programme of NHS rationing imposed by an independent board of governors must be rejected in favour of an NHS free at the point of need, administered by a workers government and run by committees of doctors, nurses and patients.
The programme of reconfiguration to close up to 100 District General Hospitals must also be rejected, and occupations to stop the closure of hospitals and A&E and maternity departments supported.
Overall, the BMA must show that it means business when it says that it will not allow NHS privatisation. It must urge the NHS Together coalition to organise industrial action to bring down the Brown government and bring in a workers government that will carry out socialist policies.
