Resident doctors began five days of strike action yesterday following the overwhelming rejection, 83% to 17%, of Labour health secretary Wes Streeting’s latest pathetic offer to resolve the long running dispute over pay and jobs.
The British Medical Association (BMA) met with Streeting on Tuesday, in a final attempt to reach an agreement, only to find he was more interested in whipping up his hate campaign and war against resident doctors than reaching any agreement.
Streeting has been vocal across the media in denouncing resident doctors and the BMA, using the same inflammatory language utilised by previous Tory governments!
This latest strike, Streeting claimed, could prove to be ‘the Jenga piece’ that forces the NHS to collapse.
Streeting also denounced the BMA as ‘juvenile’ and said: ‘These strikes are self-indulgent, irresponsible and dangerous,’ and urged resident doctors to cross picket lines to break the strike.
Starmer joined the attack yesterday calling the five-day strike ‘dangerous and utterly irresponsible’.
In an article in the Times newspaper, Streeting whipped up a frenzy claiming that the number of patients in hospitals in England could triple by the peak of the flu season and compared the crisis to that experienced during the Covid pandemic.
Streeting was corrected by Dr Chris Streather, regional medical director at NHS England, who told BBC Radio that despite a surge in admittance: ‘It’s well within the boundaries of what we can cope with.’
This doesn’t suit the line being promoted by Streeting and the Labour government who are working overtime to lay the blame for the crisis in the NHS firmly at the door of resident doctors and the BMA.
Pay rises for resident doctors of 28.9% spread over three years have been completely eroded by inflation and have left their pay about 20% lower in real terms than the level of 2008.
All the BMA is calling for is a long-term plan to address this effective cut in pay plus a guarantee of new specialist training places.
Speaking from the picket line outside St Thomas’ Hospital in London yesterday, BMA resident doctors leader, Dr Jack Fletcher, said: ‘What we’re not asking for is a huge stonking pay rise in one go’ adding: ‘What we are asking for is to stop these real-time pay cuts that the government are recommending for doctors.’
In addition to pay, the resident doctors are demanding Labour act on the acute jobs crisis.
This month, evidence emerged that thousands of doctors were turned away from Internal Medical training posts, with places now so restricted that candidates could have a PhD, have authored a medical textbook chapter, and published a scientific paper and still not get an interview!
It is not striking resident doctors who are bringing the NHS to its knees. It is Streeting and the Starmer government. Streeting and Starmer have never hidden their desire to privatise the NHS. They have declared that the ‘NHS is broken’
In January, Streeting announced a ‘back to basics’ plan for the NHS. He warned that this meant the ‘NHS must learn to live within its means’, and that the ‘culture of routine overspending without consequences was over.’
Last month, Streeting announced 18,000 NHS staff sackings in England, as he drove to slash NHS jobs and fling open the door to the private health companies to take over the health service completely.
Faced with British capitalism drowning in around £3 trillion of national debt the Starmer government is determined to privatise the NHS in a massive cost cutting exercise that will result in the destruction of the greatest gain made by the working class.
The strike by resident doctors is a struggle to defend the NHS itself and it requires the active support of the entire trade union movement. Trade unions must demand an immediate recall of the TUC to organise a general strike to bring down the capitalist Starmer government and bring in a workers government.
A workers government will nationalise the main industries and banks, building a socialist planned economy that will provide for the health needs of every worker. This is the only way to keep, defend and develop the NHS!
