communist-party.org.uk
March 2016
unity!
Support the junior doctors! Defend our NHS! HE JUNIOR DOCTORS’ fight is not only about rates of pay, staffing and hospital fines. It is about the future of NHS itself. The Tory government is imposing additional financial and staffing burdens on the NHS in order to present it as a ‘failure’ requiring drastic ‘reform’. This reform will, of course, take the shape of more marketisation, charges to patients, more private sector provision and the outright privatisation of NHS services and facilities.
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The Communist Party of Britain (CPB) expresses its solidarity with the Junior Doctors in their struggle against the new contracts imposed by the government and calls upon all unions to act in solidarity with them to save the NHS. We therefore urge unity with the BMA and other health unions to protect free and high quality healthcare. All workers and their unions must unite to stop the Tory privatisation and destruction of the NHS. The Department of Health’s claim that the new Junior Doctors’ contract is necessary to deliver the promised 7-day NHS is a Tory lie. The 7-day NHS is already in place, except that the government is not prepared to fund it adequately, especially at
weekends, relying on overworked Junior Doctors working unsocial hours with insufficient staff support. The Tories have repeatedly attempted to discredit the Junior Doctors and their unions, showing contempt for their overwhelming rejection of the new contract. After meeting solid resistance from the overwhelming majority of the workforce, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and his government took the most antidemocratic course of action by seeking to impose it. In reality, the Tory government is acting on behalf of big multinational companies who want to privatise the NHS for the sake of profit. Very methodically, the NHS is being carved up and handed out to private companies. To facilitate this process, the government hopes to demoralise already exhausted, disheartened doctors, denigrating their efforts and their commitment and hoping they will not resist the cuts, burdens and privatisation. Privatisation is already well underway, especially in England where the government has direct control over the NHS. In Scotland, the EU Commission is forcing the SNP government to increase the role of the private sector in funding and managing new NHS projects. continued overelaf