JUST PAST noon yesterday, the decision of the High Court was announced on the three-day RCN strike.
This was to run from 8pm on 30th April to 8pm on 2nd May.
The Court announced that the strike on the 2nd May was illegal.
The judge ordered the RCN to pay the costs of the hearing, saying the union showed ‘a high degree of unreasonableness’ and that the outcome was ‘inevitable’ and that ‘instead of grasping the nettle and conceding’ it forced the case to court.
Nurses demonstrating outside the court carried pink placards saying: ‘Silencing nurses is silencing patients’ and ‘Nursing won’t be silenced.’
Pat Cullen, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, standing with them responded to the court’s judgement saying: ‘The government has had their way over nursing staff today. This is the darkest day of the dispute.
‘They have taken the most trusted people through the courts, on behalf of the least trusted people.
‘The NHS has been run into the ground and is in crisis because of this government.
‘What an indictment of this government’ to go for the ‘very people who hold the NHS together – our nursing staff.
‘We’ll continue our strike action on Sunday and Monday. We’ve had safe legal action to date.
‘Steve Barclay can continue to threaten nurses with deregistration.
‘We have to sort out this dispute and get back to work. This is no way to treat nurses in England.
‘Let’s move on now. We’ll be balloting our members for a further six months of industrial action.
‘This government can say they’ve got the upper hand. The public stood behind the nurses. The nurses stand with the public.
‘Nurses will continue to fight for the NHS, for the 7.2 million people on waiting lists.
‘Our aim is to address the terrible problems in the NHS, to get a decent NHS in this country and stop it crumbling.’
