On Saturday 4th,
August over 2000 marchers demonstrated through the streets of Redditch in the
West Midlands to protest at the threatened closure of key services at the
Alexandra Hospital in the town. The removal of A&E, Maternity and
Paediatrics services would in essence kill the hospital as a functioning
general hospital.
On Saturday 4th
August, over 2000 marchers demonstrated through the streets of Redditch in the
West Midlands to protest at the threatened closure of key services at the
Alexandra Hospital in the town. The removal of A&E, Maternity and
Paediatrics services would in essence kill the hospital as a functioning
general hospital. The proposed
alternative is for residents to travel to Worcester (22 miles away from Redditch)
or the QE2 Hospital in Birmingham, a 40-minute journey if you have your own
transport. If you rely on public transport, you will never get to Worcester and
back in a single day.
The ‘Save the Alex’ campaign
has marshalled all its arguments, such as the fact that Worcester Royal Hospital
cannot cope with the strain put on its own A&E department but has to divert
ambulances to the Alex on occasions. But in these days of austerity the
Coalition has demanded savings of £200 million from the Worcestershire Acute
Hospital Trust. The Trust Board will not listen to reasoned arguments but will
pass on the cuts. Closures will be forced through. Unfortunately, the Save
the Alex campaign has projected itself as being a "non-political" organisation. This is
a mistake as attempts to be all encompassing only diverts the campaign away from being a
genuine anti-cuts organisation into one that is hi-jacked by fifth columnists who will simply sabotage the campaign.
The problem is that Tory MPs
demand cuts across the country but never in their own backyard, especially when it
threatens their own political careers.
The local Tory MP, Karen Lumley, has like
other Tory carpetbaggers jumped onto the bandwagon to divert blame away from
the Coalition ‘Deficit Reduction Programme’ onto Trust managers. We have also seen
the likes of William Hague at the head of a march in Northallerton to save a
local popular hospital. All these Tory MPs will do is lead delegations to
government ministers, cry crocodile tears and then when the closure occurs, will
state that “I fought hard for my people”. We have to remember that not one Tory MP voted for the
creation of the NHS in the 1940s and the only health Tories are interested is
the health of company profits.
The local Tory
party in Redditch is now worried, if not panicking, that the closure will end Karen
Lumley’s political career as the seat is a marginal. This panic was showing on
the faces of Tory party members at the demonstration who were angrilytrying to blame instead a
group of trade unionists from Worcester just because we live in Worcester as if
we had some control over the government’s purse strings. The Lib Dems were also
trying to portray themselves as not responsible for the cuts but harking back
instead to the costly PFI Worcester hospital build in 2002 which put the trust in hock
to the banks. Unfortunately, instead of taking the fight to the Tories the Labour
spokeswoman just kept her comments to the parochial and continued with the
non-political tone of the rally, unwilling to make a pledge to reverse the
cuts.
The
demonstration was a strange affair with plenty of people present, especially pensioners.
However, no trade union or Labour movement banners were to be seen. The non-political
stance of the campaign has left trade unionists, especially hospital workers,
with a sour taste in their mouths as they doubt that they can really rely on Tories to
save the hospital.
The call should be for a socialist program that would redirect the money away from those who
leech off the NHS – the banks, the PFI consortia, the pharmaceutical industry
and all the other NHS suppliers. We say nationalise them and bring them all under
workers control. In addition, the demand should be raised to bring all those workers, domestics, catering staff,
porters and maintenance, who have been transferred to profit making parasites,
back into the NHS - working in a hospital is a collective process that
has been destroyed by privatisation.
A campaign based on a fighting socialist programme could not only galvanise
the health workers and the users to save the hospital but could also offer the
only realistic alternative to the cuts.
