Junior Doctors and Teachers Come Together to Discuss Coordinated Action

Following a successful rally in support of Junior Doctors and the future of the NHS, Leicestershire Against the Cuts held a well-attended public meeting on Monday night to discuss how we can build linkages between unions and community groups in defence of all public services.

With the government refusing to talk to Junior Doctors and vast chunks of health services being gifted to private corporations, it is vital that everyone does all they can to unite behind the doctors. Indeed, earlier in the day, the British Medical Association (BMA) released their latest report which confirmed the deep rooted nature of the crisis facing the NHS.

The BMA’s report found that in 2014/15 £6.9 billion was spent on procuring services from independent sector providers, which is a 5.4 per cent annual increase. More than two-thirds of doctors therefore were rightly “uncomfortable with private providers delivering NHS services, with the most common concerns being that it destabilises and fragments NHS services.”

Speaking at Monday’s meeting, Dr May Tiet, a BMA rep who works at Glenfield Hospital gave a powerful and moving speech. “Our services are overstretched; it’s unmanageable, and none of us want to watch the NHS be torn apart,” she explained.

“What the Tories want to do is devalue us, turn us into cheap labour, stop us working effectively, and then put down privatisation as the only solution. And you’re expected to trust a Health Secretary who writes a book about how to privatise the NHS, and then denies it.

“I don’t want to work in a NHS where one day our patients are going to have to work out whether they are going to call an ambulance or pay a gas bill. That to me is the day that the NHS dies. The NHS is a public treasure and it’s not for Tories to sell. Hunt can drag me down through the bushes and I will not go down without a fight, and nor will the rest of us.

“We will carry on fighting, but we need your help. All we ask is for you to stand with us. Join us on the pickets, spread the word, follow us on twitter, and spread it out to the rest of your friends and family so that they can see what the truth is. This is our NHS and it’s our time to fight for it.”

Showing the related nature of the struggle for the NHS and for our education system, Jane Nellist, who is on the National Executive of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) spoke next.

She pointed out how “The government have declared war on the Junior Doctors and the NHS, but is also been waging a war against education workers and teachers in particular.”

Jane took hope from the struggle being waged by the Junior Doctors who have planned a serious strategy of escalating strike action. She said the manner in which the doctors had launched their battle against the government “has been a beacon of how to wage a campaign and how to fight.”

“So I am very pleased that my union, at their conference a few weeks ago, announced that we will have a discontinuous ballot – which means we can take more than one day of strike action… But what we would like is if other unions would join us.”