Below is the text of a leaflet that Socialist Appeal activists working in the NHS are distributing on picket lines and inside workplaces, calling on other health workers to get organised and mobilise around a bold socialist programme.
If you would like to be involved in a campaign to kick capitalism out of the NHS: sign up here; download this leaflet to print and hand out to your colleagues; and get in touch with reports about the impact of privatisation and austerity on health services in your area – or about the fightback against this.
The NHS is in crisis. Everyone knows it. And for those of us working in it, we feel it every single day.
People are dying as a result – as many as 500 per week, by some estimates.
We need to end this. But first we need to understand why this catastrophe is occurring.
Funding for the NHS has been cut to pieces. And stepping in like vultures are private health companies. These leeches are already hoovering up as much as 25% of public healthcare spending. This means tens of billions of pounds of money is going straight into the parasites’ pockets.
This is just the beginning too. A poorly-functioning NHS – one that feels like it’s on the brink of collapse – provides the perfect excuse for further privatisation by the Tories, or even Starmer’s Labour.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, for example, has repeatedly advocated utilising the private sector to ‘bolster’ the NHS.
We must be clear: the problem is capitalism.
Profit-making, private interests, and the market have been allowed to seep into what should be a genuinely public service. Funding cuts too are the result of austerity, as the capitalists force us to pay for their crisis.
Already we, as NHS workers, are starting to fight back.
The struggles by junior doctors and other health workers are part of a struggle for the very future of the NHS itself.
The creation of the NHS, 75 years ago this summer, was an historic concession won by the working class. It must be defended by any means necessary.
Now we must turn these defensive struggles into an offensive struggle. This means fighting for a bold socialist programme that can kick capitalism out of our NHS.
This means fighting for:
- Full reversal of all funding cuts, funded through expropriation of the billionaires and bankers.
- Full renationalisation of the NHS, under the control and management of health workers.
- Nationalisation – without compensation – of all outsourcing firms and private healthcare companies, to be integrated into the NHS.
- A crash recruitment and training programme, under trade union control, to end staff shortages.
- An above-inflation wage rise for all NHS staff, with future pay increases linked to prices.
This will not be easy. But all of the gains that our class has made have been fought for – including the NHS. Now we must fight once more for its future.
