THE eleventh hour climbdown by Tory health minister Jeremy Hunt over imposing new contracts on junior doctors has wounded him and exposed the weakness of a Tory government when confronted by a section of workers who refuse to back down from a fight.
Late on Monday talks at the conciliation service, ACAS, between the Department of Health, NHS Employers and the BMA representing the 50,000 junior doctors, announced that Hunt had made an ignominious retreat by agreeing to direct ‘meaningful’ negotiations over the introduction of new contracts.
Desperate to avoid the first of three days of unprecedented strike action by the doctors both Hunt and the employers agreed that the legal time limit on calling further industrial action be extended by four weeks, meaning that the strike ballot could be invoked up to 13 January 2016.
This represents a retreat by Hunt who has continually boasted that he would impose the new contract by diktat as a prelude to forcing similar wage cutting contracts throughout the NHS. Just four weeks ago Hunt was proclaiming that the issue of the contract was not up for discussion but would be implemented regardless of the BMA strike vote, and that there would be no further negotiations.
Two weeks ago Hunt explicitly ruled out any talks with the unions at ACAS. Later it was announced that preparations had been made for army doctors to be drafted into hospitals as a strikebreaking force. All this fell apart last week when Hunt performed an abrupt U-turn and announced that he would meet the BMA at ACAS in order to avert yesterday’s strike, saying: ‘Achieving a negotiated solution on the junior doctors’ contract has been my objective from the outset.’
This blatant lie fools no-one – Hunt has been forced to retreat but is insisting that he still retains the option of imposing his contract on junior doctors should the new negotiations fail to reach agreement. For their part the BMA has made it clear that it also retains the option of implementing the strike action if Hunt does not back down.
While nothing has been finally resolved in this fight, and the Tories, though wounded, are still driven to smash the wages and conditions of all NHS workers, it is a huge lesson for the working class about the true nature of the Tory government – would-be dictators who turn out to have feet of clay when confronted with the strength of the working class.
Hunt is not the first Tory minister to be forced to perform a U-turn. George Osborne suffered the same fate over working tax credits in his autumn statement, along with a retreat on cuts to police spending.
Osborne, of course, is determined to cut the welfare budget in other areas to make up for these defeats to his plans but it shows just how weak this Tory government really is. It is a government mired in scandal, being ripped apart by accusations of bullying, sexual harassment and even blackmail of its own MPs, and now exposed as the paper tigers they really are.
The political weakness and crisis within the Tory Party is itself a reflection of the huge crisis of the bankrupt capitalist system they represent. Both are only kept going by the steadfast refusal of the reformist leadership of the Labour Party and trade unions to bring them down.
The Tories only survived the tax credit crisis when Labour instructed its members in the Lords to abstain on the ‘killer’ motion that would have buried the issue. The lesson for the working class couldn’t be clearer – the Tories are on the ropes and now is the time to finish them off completely.
This means demanding that the TUC leaders either follow the lead of the junior doctors and call a general strike to kick them out and replace them with a workers government and socialism, or face being removed and replaced by a new leadership prepared to take this decisive action to win not just a battle but the war itself.
