Saturday, March 03, 2007

"NHS Together" Day of Action

This is a picture of our UNISON General Secretary, Dave Prentis, kicking off the "NHS Together" day of action at a lunch time protest in Kingston hospital (London Region) surrounded by all sections of hospitals including nurses, consultants, the hospital Chaplin, midwives, medical secretaries,physiotherapists ,OT staff and nursing students.

Dave Prentis pledged to ensure that UNISON would work with all NHS Unions and patient groups to defend the NHS, "We are determinded to win this battle" and urged all hospital staff to play their part"I want all our members and those in the NHS Together Alliance to take pride pride in the NHS and join the numerous NHS Together rallies and marches taking place cross Britain (today) 3rd March). In over 100 events.

Kelly Green, UNISON Nursing Student Representative, was one of 30 nursing students present. "We have been told by our University that there may be no jobs for us in the NHS when we qualify in 3 months time, and that we should look to the private sector, go abroad or even consider jobs "similar" to nursing. This is not why I or my nursing colleagues went into nursing, we know the NHS needs us and we want to play our part in rebuilding our NHS. However, after three years we are facing a very uncertain future, The Government needs to act, and act now"

UNISON Nursing students say "Let us work". Michael Walker UNISON Regional Officer
says "we are launching this national campaign in Kingston, because health care workers in Kingston are fully committed to defending our NHS, a health service we believe is still the best in the World"

Nora Pearce UNISON Branch Secretary states
"We are proud the Dave Prentis UNISON General Secretary has decided to come to Kingston to launch the campaign, our members are fully behind UNISON and the NHS Together campaign UNISON is also demanding jobs for nursing students on the point of qualifying from Kingston university, many of whom have no jobs.


5 comments:

Micky H said...

Good, positive reporting, John.

It's a shame the press didn't do it justice today, but then if they had they would only use it to attack Labour rather than to make the case for the Government to listen to the users and workers in the NHS.

In any case, there's no question that the local campaigns have a hundred times more impact than your typical one-off national demonstration in London. They will be reported in the local press, and will bring together people who are not used to getting involved in politics (maybe some who don't even see this as a political issue and would never dream of going to London to march alongside a load of wild-eyed Trots bawling at them through megaphones).

And it will put pressure on politicians locally, where they know votes really count.

I used to know an MP who once said to me, 'A march in London is a shout at an institution. A march in my town speaks to me.'

Kate A said...

We've had several local demos and been involved now in two regional demonstrations to defend our local health services. What people working in the health service desperately need is to feel like they are part of a big movement. Its utterly demoralising for people to be fighting against what is clearly a major government policy to destroy the NHS and break it up for private profit and only see around them a few hundred people. A national demo (not the only tactic, but an important one) would enable us to see that we are united together across the country to stop it.

I just don't think its true that people see a political difference between being on a march or rally in London and being on a march or rally in Birmingham or Leicester or Manchester.

What is true is that local demos don't get national coverage in the press. Most people I know don't buy a local paper and don't listen to local radio so unless we do something to get in the national media, we don't reach them at all.

John Gray said...

Hang on, hang on Kate, we have major differences with the present government but there is no policy to break up the NHS! That is just extremist nonsense. It is however, clearly the aim of Cameron and the Tories to do this if they are elected. They are the real enemy. Make no mistake about that. I must admit that I personally have a "problem" with "demos". I have been on loads of demo's in my time. Most of them (not all) have been pretty boring, dispiriting and ultimately pointless. Bearing in mind how the government (rightly in my view) are able to ignore "massive" demos about "Kill the Fox" and "Stop the War", surely in this day and age, there must be a better way to make a point rather than marching in rain being shouted at by idiots with megaphones??? However, I don't have the answer.

Kate A said...

I don't think that its "extremism" to say that the government's policies are to break up the NHS for private profit. That is what the sell-off of NHS Logistics was about. That is what the creation of Foundation Hospitals is about. That is what Commissioning a Patient-Led NHS is about. All policies of this government and all policies that our union opposes.

For sure the Tories are worse, and as a Labour Party member, I am working to prevent a Tory administration that will attack working people. But that shouldn't blind us to the damage being inflicted by "our" government now.

A national demonstration isn't the be-all and end-all. And I've certainly been on my share of fairly miserable demos. But it does surprise me that there is such an immediate knee-jerk reaction to condemn all such proposals. This issue is one where I really feel a national focus is needed and is currently missing from our campaign strategy. We took over a hundred people from my branch to the NHS demo in Birmingham on March 3rd - which meant that we made up almost a quarter of the entire attendance. That does nothing to boost the campaign that we're running against the closure of 8 wards and the shedding of almost 1000 jobs in my local hospitals because people just don't believe that such small local and regional actions will have any impact on a national government policy.

BTW, the Birmingham rally wasn't reported in our local press in the East Midlands because they didn't consider it "local" enough for them. And it wasn't reported in the national press either because it wasn't big enough to bother with. So we lost both ways round.

John Gray said...

I just don't agree that this government is planning to break up the NHS for profit - we will have to just agree to disagree on that. It is obviously a point that you think is true and feel passionate about. However, the problem is if we were to plan a campaign around this view of the world then the whole "NHS Together" campaign will be just dismissed out of hand.

If there is a national demo (which no doubt I will go on if I possibly can), it will attract either a lot of people or flop (which will be reported). But if a lot of people attend, then... so what? Demo's don't change government policy.