NHS Logistics was taken over by DHL on 1 October – the Blair/Brown government’s first privatisation of an NHS department so far.
The supplier of over 43,000 lines of products, including syringes, bandages, medical equipment and food to NHS facilities nationally, NHS Logistics now also supplies profits to the German parcel delivery privateer.
The 1,000 NHS Logistics workers who fought valiantly and garnered massive support from the trade union movement during two 24-hour national strikes on 21 and 26 September – the first official national strikes in the NHS for 18 years – are left wondering how come the trade unions failed to stop the privatisation of their jobs.
This is especially the case since, at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester on 26 September, the second of the strike days, the Blair/Brown cabal overwhelmingly lost two votes against their NHS privatisation policy, with NHS Logistics strikers and other trade unionists demonstrating outside.
On the picket lines at the five NHS Logistics distribution centres around the country there were calls for general strike action to defeat the privatisation.
Paul Harper, the Unison Branch Secretary at Maidstone Distribution Centre, said: ‘The TUC promised us there would be primary action and demonstrations.
‘This is a national issue, not a local one. I would like to see them keep their promise, but we are waiting.
‘I’d like to see a demonstration on the 1st of October especially if they ignore the Unison motion at the Labour conference today.
‘It would be good if the TUC called all its affiliated unions out on the 1st.’
Tony Owens, UNISON Shop Steward, said: ‘It would be helpful if the TUC would call joint action to win the dispute quickly.’
Prior to the strikes UNISON had warned that privatisation of NHS Logistics would be a disaster for the NHS.
UNISON Head of Health Karen Jennings said: ‘Our members at the five NHS Logistics depots voted overwhelmingly for the strike action.
‘They have a very strong sense of loyalty to the NHS . . . There can be absolutely no justification for privatising this service.’
On eve of the Labour Party conference, Dave Prentis the Unison leader pledged: ‘We intend to make the NHS the main issue.’
He said: ‘With 20,000 redundancies now announced or likely over the next year, staff are deeply hurt by the recent comment from the health secretary that this is the “best year ever” for the NHS.’
To Health Minister Andy Burnham, Prentis wrote: ‘DHL’s bottom line is their profits not patients. This is a privatisation too far.’
During the debate on the Wednesday Prentis said: ‘Five thousand people walked out on the streets in Nottingham last week spontaneously, 10,000 in Gloucester, and you even get the Secretary of State in Glasgow with a placard defending his A&E unit.’
The UNISON resolution calling for a halt to NHS privatisation was overwhelmingly carried on a card vote, while the NEC statement supporting the government’s NHS policy was defeated with only a handful of delegates voting for the government’s policy to privatise the NHS.
The Labour government suffered a massive defeat at the Labour Party Conference, its own party conference!
The whole nation was poised for the expected UNISON-led trade union action to stop the privatisation of NHS Logistics.
All they got was a pathetic display of political cowardice by UNISON leader Prentis and the rest of the trade union bureaucracy.
Instead of a call to arms the pathetic Prentis bleated that the vote was ‘so overwhelming that we believe that there is now pressure on the government to do something about it’.
He also let on: ‘You would not believe the shenanigans that have gone on this week to try and defeat our composite.’
Following the votes Prentis and the TUC bureaucracy did not lift a finger to stop the privatisation and DHL, on the following Monday, was able to go ahead with its parties in the NHS Logistics canteens to celebrate their privatisation!
The twin votes at the Labour Party conference against NHS privatisation emphasised for all to see just how great is the isolation of the Labour government in its own party.
The Labour government ignored the resolution, as expected.
The trade union leaders betrayed their members by refusing to act on the resolution that demanded no more privatisation, and let the first privatisation of a part of the NHS take place.
The working class are now looking at their leadership with hostility and anger.
They won a victory over privatisation at the Labour Party conference on the Wednesday and then their leaders collapsed like a pack of cards, allowing the Blair/Brown Cabinet to step up its destruction of the NHS.
The new NHS chief executive has decreed that 60 hospitals face ‘re-configuration’ in the period ahead.
These 60 will lose their Accident and Emergency Departments and maternity departments, and be left as shells.
‘Re-configuration’ means that patients will be confined to their homes, left to sink or swim.
Tens of thousands of NHS workers face the sack, while this year’s newly qualified nurses cannot find employment.
Now is time for action to defend the NHS.
Councils of action must be built in all areas and all threatened hospitals must be occupied.
The TUC must be made to call a general strike to bring down the Blair/Brown government to go forward to a workers’ government that will stop NHS privatisation and carry out socialist policies.
Central to carrying through this programme of action is the building of a new leadership inside the trade unions that is not frightened of using the great strength of the working class to defeat the bosses and going forward to socialism.
The situation of the present leadership of the trade unions is, having won a great victory at the Labour Party conference, based on the hostility of their members to privatisation, they recoiled in dread of victory.
The reformist trade union leaders are wedded to capitalism and fear nothing so much as winning, and what their members will demand of them if they do win.
There is nothing new in this.
Early in 1919, in the great strike wave following the First Imperialist World War, Prime Minister Lloyd George met with the leaders of the Triple Alliance of Miners, Railway workers and Transport workers, an enormously powerful trade union group.
He told them: ‘Gentlemen, you have fashioned in the Triple Alliance of the unions represented by you a most powerful instrument.
‘I feel bound to tell you that in our opinion, we are at your mercy.
‘The army is disaffected and cannot be relied upon. Trouble has occurred already in a number of camps . . . if you carry out your threat and strike, then you will defeat us.
‘But if you do so, have you weighed the consequences?
‘The strike will be in defiance of the government of this country, and by its very success will precipitate a constitutional crisis of the first importance.
‘For, if a force arises in the State which is stronger than the State itself, then it must be ready to take on the functions of the State itself, or withdraw and accept the authority of the State.
‘Gentlemen, have you considered, and if so, are you ready?’
On behalf of the reformist trade union bureaucracy, Robert Smillie, President of the Miners Federation, said: ‘From that moment on, we were beaten and we knew it.’
The reformist trade union bureaucrats today are even more reactionary than their early 20th century forefathers.
They are queuing up to betray the working class and help the Blair/Brown government smash up the NHS and the rest of the Welfare State.
Only a Marxist leadership which recognises that capitalism has reached the end of the road and that what is required is a workers revolution to replace it with socialism, can win any of the struggles today.
Only the WRP is building the Marxist leadership required. Join today.
