By Steve McKenzie (Unite Community – Lewisham, Greenwich, Bexley)
Unity on the left is a very important thing, but it is also very elusive. However, there is surely one issue that we can all unite around and that is defence of the NHS. There needs to be a massive campaign to reclaim the NHS from private interests and the profit motive. Trade unions need to be at the heart of that campaign, and its driving force.
The election of Andrea Egan, as the general secretary of Britain’s biggest union UNISON, was undoubtedly a victory for the left. It sent shockwaves through the right wing of the Labour movement. Rest assured that these elements, inside and outside of Unison, will now be moving heaven and earth to undermine Andrea. They will be trying to bring her down at every twist and turn.
Andrea’s election reflects a desire by Unison activists for genuine trade unionism, fighting back against the employers and the government, industrially and politically. This is something that is long overdue. That won’t be down to just one individual, but nevertheless her election was a big step in the right direction.
The left, particularly those in Unison, should be making it a new year’s resolution to redouble their efforts to build the left and push its agenda, and to support and defend Andrea come what may.
In UNITE, formerly Britain’s biggest union, and still the biggest affiliate to the Labour Party, we have a union that is industrially on the left, but politically is all over the place. Good on some issues, extremely bad on others. Unions like the GMB remain firmly on the right, and will continue to be a problem for genuine trade unionism, at least in the immediate future.
Although the TUC-affiliated health service unions should be taking the lead, the fact is that nearly every trade union member in the country, no matter what union they are in, relies on the NHS, on more than one occasion throughout their lives. The entire trade union movement has a responsibility to defend our health service.
Past failures
To date the NHS TUC affiliated unions, Unison, the GMB and Unite, have all played a very passive role in relation to the defence of the health service. There has been a lack of campaigning on this issue over the last few decades. The silence has been deafening.
The right wing in these unions, up to now, have been have been more concerned with being signatories to bilateral partnership agreements with the government and the NHS employers.
This in turn appears to have bought their silence for over almost two decades as the health service is run down and handed over to private healthcare companies. Very little, if anything has been done as we move ever closer to a US style health service, based on ability to pay rather than the one free at the point of need.
For over almost half a century, neo-liberal fanatics have been imposing the market economy and privatising the health service. The private health industry and their bought-and-paid-for political puppets have enacted legislation that has been integral to the task of systematically undermining and destroying the NHS.
Privatisation has played a central role in this strategy and is fundamental to their aims and objectives. Private healthcare and the profit motive are implacable opponents of the NHS and its founding principle. Healthcare free at the point of need is a complete anathema to this greedy minority who want to profit from care.
Bit by bit over the last four and a half decades politicians have been putting legislation in place and chipping away at the NHS by privatising it bit by bit.
It started with services like cleaning and catering in the 1980’s. As staffing levels and wages and conditions were driven down to maximise profits, the level of service was inevitably reduced. Later some clinical services began being handed over to private healthcare providers. Private healthcare firms would cherry-pick the easiest and most profitable work. Anything that was too difficult and unprofitable was left for the NHS to deal with.
PFI – turbo-charged by New Labour
At the turn of the century, the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which had been introduced by the Tories, was turbo charged by the new Labour government.
The future of the health service was mortgaged to the private sector. For just over £13 billion worth of new builds and improvement projects, the public ended up paying back over £80 billion
Most of that was interest payments that went into the coffers of private finance and building companies. Billions that should have been spent on more doctors and nurses and healthcare facilities.
The list could go on and on about the state of the NHS and the dramatic reduction in the level of service in recent years – massive waiting lists, with patients waiting months and sometimes years for operations; unacceptable waiting times in Accident and Emergency; the length of waits for an ambulance; patients cared for in corridors.
The question is what should the unions be doing about it. It is not a matter of Andrea Egan and the left in Unison, even if they had the full backing of Sharon Graham and Unite, waving a magic wand and all of a sudden a campaign is there. It has to be built from the grassroots upwards.
Resolutions calling on the TUC to organise a massive demonstration in defence of the NHS should be on the agenda of every union conference this year. Leafleting every town centre and every hospital in the country on a regular basis is a must. Public meetings should be taking place. In and of itself this is not enough but we have to start somewhere. One step at a time.
[Featured photo – Unison members at Tolpuddle, 2016 – wiki commons]
