THE head of the UK’s Unite trade union has accused the government of having a ‘sinister reason’ for ‘not doing a deal’ with nurses to end their strike action.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, said the government is looking to privatise the NHS, which is why it ‘won’t come to the table’, and she claimed ministers were ‘pretending’ that pay negotiations were going on.
It comes as NHS leaders are making contingency plans with the biggest walk-out in the health service’s history looming.
Graham told Sky News: ‘This employer, being the government, is not interested in doing a deal as far as the NHS is concerned. I have to say we are concluding now that there must be a much more sinister reason for this because this level of self-harm is unprecedented.’
She continued: ‘I think that they are looking to privatise the NHS. Genuinely, I believe that they’re looking at this as the moment they can privatise the NHS.’
She accused Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of being ‘missing in action. Now, it’s either that Rishi Sunak is not up to this job, that he doesn’t want to come into the negotiating room and to do this deal or there must be another reason as to why he’s allowing this self-harm to happen to the NHS.’
Graham said she believes it is ‘deliberate’ that the government is ‘drawing out’ talks. She accused the government of ‘lying’ on a number of issues, adding that she does not use this word lightly.
‘They are being disingenuous by pretending that there are talks going on about pay,’ she said. ‘There are absolutely no talks going on about pay. Every general secretary will tell you that.’
Health Secretary Steve Barclay has ruled out a 10% pay rise for nurses – insisting it was ‘not affordable’.
It is obvious that what the UK needs is for the trade union leaders to force the TUC general council to call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and a nationalised and planned socialist economy. There must be a meeting of the General Council NOW to call the general strike!
However, this not just a British crisis – all over the EU workers are facing bosses that want to smash all of their gains.
In Paris demonstrators started setting trash cans on fire, breaking traffic lights, and blowing up firecrackers, in protest against the planned pension reform announced by French president Emmanuel Macron.
The government intends to hike the retirement age to 64 from the current 62 and streamline the pension system making changes even some Macron supporters view as risky and likely to provoke a gigantic backlash.
Two days after more than one million people took to the streets, raising their voices against the French government’s proposed pension reforms, tensions ran high on Saturday and clashes erupted in the capital between the police and demonstrators.
‘Macron is stubborn, he is totally in the minority. There are 92 or 93 per cent of people in the workforce who are opposed to this reform,’ a member of La France Insoumise (LFI) party said of the protests.
‘The government is arrogant as usual. There is a historic mobilisation, the President of the Republic has gone on a trip abroad. These people are disconnected from reality,’ one of the protesters said.
British workers must now organise a general strike to bring down the Tories and join hands with the French workers who are now seeking to overthrow the Macron regime that wants to smash their pensions.
The truth is that capitalism is in a desperate crisis and that it must be overthrown and replaced by a nationalised planned socialist economy if workers and youth are to have a future.
The French workers are more than capable of dealing with Macron and the French ruling class, and what is happening in France today will happen in Germany, Italy and Greece in the near future.
Now is the time to build the WRP in the UK to lead the battle for a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government.
Now is the time to unite with the French, German, Greek and Italian workers to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to lead to the establishment of the Socialist United States of Europe.
We must establish a unity with the US workers who want to establish a Labour Party in the USA to put an end to bankrupt and crisis-ridden US capitalism.
Let’s make a start in the UK by bringing down the Tories with a general strike!