Campaign for a national demo

SAVE THE NHS NOW!

Jacqui Berry, Medway Against the Cuts
March to save the NHS, 17 May 2011, photo Paul Mattsson

March to save the NHS, 17 May 2011, photo Paul Mattsson   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

The NHS is already being crippled by £20 billion “efficiency savings” leading to cuts in services and reductions in staffing levels, impacting on patient care.

And the chief of finance of the NHS has recently promised that £20 billion won’t be the end of it either – these ‘savings’ will have to continue for the foreseeable future.

The government’s plans will see the NHS broken up, with power given over to private companies hired by groups of GPs to make decisions about how resources are allocated.

In the face of much hand wringing from the trade union tops at the Con-Dems’ Health and Social Care Bill, Medway Against the Cuts has taken a national initiative to draw up a motion calling on the TUC to organise a massive demonstration against the cuts and privatisation of the NHS.

A copy of the motion is below. Please circulate it widely, move it in your union branch, campaign group, trades council or patients’ organisation and exert maximum pressure on the TUC to call a national demo.

A demo is not an end in and of itself but it would be a step towards building a strong, vibrant campaign of health workers, unions and service users to force the government to back down.

Send the resolutions to Brendan Barber c/o Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS and let us know at [email protected]

See www.nationaldemonow.blogspot.co.uk for more.

NATIONAL DEMO TO DEFEND THE NHS

The NHS is under attack. Nationally, health workers are being ordered to take £20 billion of cuts in services.

Now, the government’s Health and Social Care Bill has been passed which will see the break up and privatisation of the NHS.

There has been widespread opposition to the cuts and privatisation in the NHS. We are calling on the Trades Union Congress to call and build for a mass demonstration in June 2012, on the scale of the enormous anti-cuts demonstration on 26 March 2011, as a step to building a campaign involving health workers, their unions, service users and the public to force the coalition to back down.

When the NHS was first founded, it came about as a result of massive public pressure. Now we have to fight in order to keep a truly publicly owned and funded National Health Service capable of providing high quality care for all.