SEVENTY-FIVE thousand junior doctors began their 72-hour strike yesterday, they are continuing it today and are being joined by hundreds of thousands of teachers, civil servants, Tube drivers and other workers on strike tomorrow.
There was militant determination on hundreds of picket lines all over London and around the country.
Over 2,000 doctors converged on Downing Street in central London in the afternoon, chanting: ‘Claps don’t pay the bills! What do we want? Fair Pay. Want us to stay? Restore our Pay!’ and ‘Overworked Underpaid Underpressure.’
BMA member Anna Athow told News Line from the demonstration: ‘This is an enormously enthusiastic crowd completely determined to defend the NHS. All the unions must come out together, we can’t let the health workers come out on their own that’s for sure.
‘There’s going to be a huge march on Wednesday when the other unions come out as well. The country is on the brink of economic collapse. There has got to be a general strike.’
At Homerton Hospital in Hackney, east London Dr Andrew Myerson said: ‘I’m striking because 10 years ago the NHS was the best healthcare system on the planet.
‘It was the cheapest for taxpayers and it got the best outcomes, but if you look at what has happened in the last 10 years, our waiting list is the worst in NHS history, with 7.2 million waiting for care.
‘We’ve got a government that doesn’t care about the health of the people and we now have 500 people dying unnecessarily every week from avoidable delays and from inability to access emergency care.
‘People are also dying at home waiting for an ambulance or dying in the back of an ambulance or collapsed in an A&E department after a long wait.
‘We’ve seen too many patients suffer because the government refuses to listen to calls to fix the system and they refuse to address the haemorrhaging of staff.
‘That’s why we’ve been pushed into this situation to strike. Going on strike is our only hope to defend our patients, colleagues and our NHS.’
At St Thomas’ Hospital opposite Parliament there were lively shouts of ‘What do we want? Fair pay! When do we want it? Now!’
Junior doctor Stuart Innes told News Line: ‘We’re not asking for a pay rise, just the restoration of our pay to what it was.
‘After 10 to 15 years of government cuts we can’t staff our rotas. After many years in medical school and many years as a junior doctor, many people are leaving for Australia or New Zealand where they can get better jobs, conditions and pay.
‘We haven’t hit A&E targets for years. Emergency and primary care are really struggling and the blame lies with the government.
‘They have completely refused to engage with the health care team. (Health Secretary) Barclay didn’t attend Friday’s meeting at all. That’s how much they care about staff and patients. We have fewer IT beds than any other European country.’
At Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith, Ben Walker said: ‘We are on strike today, because we want fair pay.
‘Junior Doctors’ pay is 26% behind, especially when the rate of inflation is more than 10%.
‘We don’t want to strike, we want to be with the patients to help them get better. But with an attempt to get a better pay offer, negotiations have fallen on deaf ears.
‘We will continue to strike until our pay demands are met.’
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