I was really pleased to be part of the student bloc for much of the 50-60,000 strong TUC march in Manchester on 29 September against the Tories as they met for their conference.
Among many other contingents were activists from Manchester University, where there is a vibrant group called Manchester Save Our NHS.
The important thing about protests like this is to feel positive and buoyed up by is size and passion and take that feeling back to your student union and workplace, and build local campaigns to defend the NHS.
Use the success of this demo to keep working hard, and get students who are studying in the NHS (medical students, nurses, paramedics, physios, social workers, mental health and psychotherapy students…) interested in the political issues surrounding it.
Earlier this month I attended a meeting held by Medsin and NCAFC at Goldsmiths University, which put a lot of plans in place to start more student action around the NHS.
One of these plans is a week of action around NHS cuts and privatisation from 23-30 November.
But “saving the NHS” just won’t cut it for me. The NHS has always had some private interest, and the privatisation of some services goes right back through the Labour years and the legacy of the Private Finance Initiative.
What we need is truly public. That means that the control of resources should be in the hands of the NHS workers, and not related to the interests of private interests, research funding, or multi-national pharmaceutical companies
You can sometimes see a small scale version of this when NHS workers go on strike — nurses and paramedics manage their own shifts and cover the services they know are vital themselves, through their own democratic process.
Making demands for a democratically controlled NHS might seem far-fetched, but the privatisation that the Coalition have already brought into the health sector is pretty revolutionary too.
And most people are unaware of the changes that have already been rail-roaded in through the back door — with the “National Health Service” now being used simply as a brand name to badge any number of private providers.
• Manchester Students Save Our NHS
• Students for the NHS or Pete at nhs@medsin.org
• Rosie's blog
