Solidarity 251, 29 June 2012

Save Trafford General!

The National Health Service was officially launched at Park Hospital in Davyhulme on 5 July 1948 by Health Secretary Nye Bevan. As he symbolically received the keys to the hospital, Bevan was conscious of the place the hospital would occupy in Britain’s history. Now, 64 years later, NHS bosses have been planning in secret to close it. Earlier this year the hospital was taken over from local managers by the Central Manchester Foundation Trust because they said the hospital’s finances are “unviable”. By June the new Trust bosses and NHS officials had come up with sweeping plans that would leave...

We need co-ordinated action to save the NHS

Against the backdrop of the new Health and Social Care Act, and deep cuts to NHS budgets, Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) held its AGM on Saturday 23 June. The meeting lasted just one hour but was followed by a public conference, “Reclaiming our NHS”, sponsored by a number of organisations including KONP, TUC, Unison, Unite, NHS Consultants Association, Socialist Health Association (SHA), Health Emergency and the NHS Support Federation (NSF). There were about 60 people at the KONP AGM and around 350 at the conference. Both events showed the need for more coordination of NHS campaigning efforts. The...

The legacy of PFI in the NHS

South London Healthcare NHS Trust includes Queen Mary Hospital in Sidcup, Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich and Princess Royal Hospital in Bromley. Its budget shortfall (£1 million a week) is the equivalent of employing 1,200 nurses or doing 200 hip operations a week. It is the first NHS organisation to go into the "unsustainable providers regime" — a system set up by New Labour but never used. Under that regime an administrator is brought in to run the Trust's board and to recommend measures directly to the Health Secretary about how to put the Trust on a more sustainable footing. The...

NHS: fight to reverse privatisation

Jacky Davis is a member of the council of the British Medical Association (the doctors' trade union) and chair of campaigning organisation the NHS Consultants' Association. She spoke to Solidarity in a personal capacity. It's important to understand why we lost on the Health and Social Care Bill. Until we understand we won't be able to regain the upper hand. Partly it was the simple mathematics of the Coalition. The Lib Dems are so unpopular now they can't afford to leave the Coalition, no matter the political price. And they give the Tories a very solid majority. But we also have to look at...

Help the AWL to raise £20,000

Over the weekend 29 June to 1 July Workers’ Liberty will be hosting our Ideas for Freedom conference. Unlike at some other socialist and labour movement events, the participants will not be “fed a line”, talked down to or stopped from saying things which contradict the opinions of the “top table”. It may seem staggeringly obvious, but that is not the way to create a healthy socialist culture. We will be having robust debate, discussing big ideas and arguing the fine details of theory, contemporary politics and activist organisation. You may or may not be there. You may or may not agree with us...

Fight Tory plan to axe benefits!

On 25 June David Cameron bid to shore up his support on the Tory right by floating plans to cut welfare benefits. All the proposed cuts would come on top of what’s already under way: drastic cuts in housing benefit and in eligibility for disabled benefit; increases in the state pension age; and more. Cameron pitched his proposals as an appeal to hard-pressed working people who pay taxes and end up no better off than jobless people on benefits; and as a drive to get people into jobs. He ignores six facts: • 2.65 million people are unemployed. There are 2.65 million fewer jobs than there are...

Back to that first International?

A century and a half ago, workers’ leaders from a number of European countries met in St. Martin’s Hall in London under a banner proclaiming “All men are brothers.” The organisation they founded has come to be known as the First International. Last week at the giant Bella Center in Copenhagen, a much larger conference representing many more workers was held. The organisation it formed was called IndustriALL Global Union. If I seem to be comparing the two events, it’s not to wrap IndustriALL in the glory of that legendary First International. It’s because the parallels where they exist are not...

Greece: the rise of the Golden Dawn fascists

These are the election results for the neo-Nazi movement Golden Dawn in Greece. • National Elections 2009: 0.29% (19,636 votes) • European Elections 2009: 0.46% ( 23,564 votes) • Athens Elections 2010: 5.29% (10,222 votes) • National Elections May 2012: 6.97% (441,018 votes) • National Elections June 2012: 6.92% (425,980 votes) The general shift of the Greek people to the left was reaffirmed in the June 2012 elections, where Syriza scored almost 27% and the combined electoral percentage of the left reached almost 40%. But that was not all. The “Independent Greeks” have established themselves...

Syria: sectarian lines deepen

The most recent Syria peace plan, brokered by Kofi Annan for the UN and Arab states, has failed. The UN monitoring operations were suspended in mid-June. One consequence of its failure is that the Saudis and Qatar are beginning to send significant amounts of money and weapons to the armed Syrian opposition, the Free Syrian Army. More sophisticated weapons are being channelled through Turkey and the fighting in northern Syria is intensifying. The Saudis hope by paying the fighters they will buy control and encourage dissidents in the army to defect. On 21 June the New York Times reported “CIA...

Egypt: the army and the Muslim Brothers manoeuvre

An old Labour council trick is to announce £30 million in cuts and then, a little later, declare they’ve managed to find a bit of money to reduce the cuts to a mere £19 million. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief; things aren’t as bad as were expected. Of course Meals on Wheels, Library and Children’s Services are still devastated. Activists who’ve seen it before suspect that £19 million was always the intended, real, figure. Perhaps the Egyptian military are playing a version of the same game. First, on 14 June, the Supreme Court ruled that the Islamist-dominated parliament, elected last year...

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