20.04.1995

Dark at St Barts

Communists campaign outside Dundee Royal Infirmary against closure

WHILE THE wards at St Barts are standing empty, waiting lists are getting no shorter and on occasion patients are being left on trolleys for hours at the Medway hospital due to lack of beds. Similar situations exist all round the country thanks to the government’s health policies.

A nurse in Luton told us:

“Although Luton and Dunstable is not threatened with closure, everyone knows its service is way below what people here need and should expect. It is being run down because of lack of funding, rather than being improved. It’s the same story everywhere”.

Nurses are being offered below the cost of living pay rises exemplifying the government’s true attitude. Life is cheap and should be cheaper, not a view that will lead to adequate healthcare for all.

Over 200 ancillary and clerical staff from UCH and Middlesex hospitals sent this message to the government when they took one day strike action. The strike was against proposed ‘multi-skilling’ by which management intends to ‘free’ workers up to do the work of three people for the pay of one.

Small local hospitals are being closed on mass around the country. For most people this replaces easily accessible, local and more personal care with great impersonal, underfunded health factories that the government has chosen to build in order to take advantage of economies of scale. There is still time to save St Barts if enough pressure is brought to bear.

Ann Widdecome claimed in Kent Today (April 12) that “ever advancing surgery and medicine have created levels of demand which no party is able to satisfy.” Take us back to the good old days when life was nasty, brutish and short but at least nobody complained seems to be her underlying message. The health service is underfunded - even Germany and France spend twice as much on healthcare as Britain. Longer life, better health and modern technology means labour productivity has vastly increased. In comparison to this the cost of healthcare is insignificant. Or it would be if the government was capable of mobilising it.

The campaign to save St Barts is high on the agenda of the Communist Party’s election challenge in Kent as it is throughout the country. In Manchester both Withington and Booth Hall are threatened with closure.

Manchester branch of the Communist Party will be joining healthworkers and local activists in giving Virginia Bottomley the reception she deserves when she visits Manchester on Friday April 28.

Phil Railston