Workers Party of Britain

NHS at 72; reverse the devastation of privatisation

britworker
NHS privatisation cartoon by Rob Amos

The Workers Party of Britain supports the NHS anniversary events that have been organised by NHS campaign groups across the country this weekend (see below for leaflet and details).

Download and print our leaflet to take along to your local event.

The founding principles of the 1948 NHS charter – to promote health and provide universal and high-quality medical care, free at the point of use, from the cradle to the grave – remains the deeply-held desire of the overwhelming majority of the people of Britain, is in the immediate interest of all working people, and in the long-term interest of humanity as a whole.

Yet from the 1980s onward – under Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and Johnson – we have seen a steady and inexorable undermining of the NHS through marketisation and privatisation. Even in the face of Covid-19, all the government can muster are platitudes; rounds of clapping and declarations of love.

Dr Ranjeet Brar of the WPB says;

“The Health and Social Care Act 2012 is now widely perceived for what it really is: the final outright privatisation of the NHS, which makes it compulsory to open up all areas of health provision to private companies. Anyone who attempts to paint this attack on the NHS as a purely Tory or ConDem phenomenon need only look as far as the last Labour government’s record on the NHS to see that Labour is equally complicit.

“NHS funding doubled between 1999 (£49bn) and 2009 (£110bn), but much of the increase went directly into the private coffers of drug companies (£20bn a year), private contractors for cleaning, catering and maintenance contracts (formerly supplied by NHS workers), health technology companies and building contractors.”

Is more funding the solution?

The Workers Party of Britain campaigns for a properly funded National Health Service, but funding alone, when it is channelled into the hands of the privateers, will do nothing to improve the lot of the patients or overstretched NHS workers. That is why we support calls to repeal the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and put forward the following demands:

1. Oppose all privatisation of services – ‘core’ or ‘peripheral’ – and campaign for the renationalisation of all privatised aspects of NHS provision, working towards a health service that provides nationally-funded, universal and comprehensive care, free at the point of use, that fulfils the NHS’s original charter.

2. Oppose both the private provision of healthcare, and the internal market in healthcare within the NHS.

3. Scrap all PFI debt.

Events this Saturday

Local Keep Our NHS Public groups will be organising events on Saturday 4 July (unless otherwise stated) to show support for our health service and its amazing staff and to demand it be fully restored as a well-funded, universal public service (see Keep Our NHS Public website for contact info and more details of all events). Please wear a facemask and observe social distancing.

Download and print our leaflet to take along to your local event.

LONDON

NORTH WEST

SOUTH and SOUTH WEST

EAST and WEST MIDLANDS

YORKSHIRE

NORTH EAST

NORTHERN IRELAND

Click image above to download leaflet. Flip on short side and print on both sides for two A5 leaflets.