#OurNHS “Save Our NHS” national demo on Saturday 4th March called by Health Campaigns Together & The People’s Assembly. Assemble at 12pm, Tavistock Square, London, then march to parliament.
Marxist World supporters will be present selling our publications and handing out leaflets with our brief take on the situation:
Comrades, the National Health Service is under attack. The threat of losing it is a very real possibility. Yet the revolving door of Conservative ministers and advisors to the boards of companies they have helped enrich has continued unabated. The former Special Advisor For Health now sits as Executive Vice President of the PFI partner Optum.
The spectre of Theresa May placing large parts of the NHS in a trade deal with the United States drifts just over the horizon, aided by Lansley’s Reform of 2012. In the meantime, the chronic under-funding of the NHS is being felt. Patients have had to endure increased waiting times, removal of provision of services, hospital closures and decimation of staffing levels whilst the 14% wage cut has immisserated NHS staff and their families.
Many have argued that this assault is a by-product simply of the ideological leanings of the Conservative party. However, as Marxist World have explained, the crisis of profitability, the engine which drives capitalism, is ultimately responsible. Whilst we fully support the demands of the national Save Our NHS demonstration called by the People’s Assembly and Health Campaigns Together, a much wider reaching programme must be implemented in order to safeguard our vital services.
We call for:
1. The repudiation of all Private Finance Initiative (PFI) debt and the services that have been outsourced to be taken back into public ownership, with no compensation for the corrupt profiteers like Optum.
2. The NHS to be run under workers’ control to prevent the possibility of a future government overturning the above outlined reforms. Hand this responsibility to a series of committees under a National Committee for Health, with majority representatives from the trade unions involved in the workplace and the wider community, elected by the workers within the NHS and the wider community.
Ultimately these sorts of measures will be decried as madness and unaffordable by the hawkish profiteers of business that run our society. However, if their system is unable to provide a free effective health service, we must ask can we afford capitalism? Instead we must move towards a Socialist Power in society governing in the interests of the workers and poor.
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