This video is produced by north London Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! as a record of our unremitting and principled campaign on the streets and in the communities against the plan for a sell-off at Whittington Hospital. The proposal, launched in January of this year, to sell-off £17 million worth of buildings, halve in-patient beds to 177 and cut jobs by 570 and put a cap on maternity services of 4,000 a year, has now been cancelled. In July the hospital board was forced to tell the local press that this original plan was ‘just and idea’. There can be no doubt that the mobilisation of local protest against the sell-off plans must have influenced this retreat which is to be seen as a victory for the people.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Worked with the Defend the Whittington Hospital Coalition from the start. While we supported all actions we argued within the Coalition for a more grassroots approach, People should be encouraged to make their own petitions to take round their areas for example. We also believed that the Coalition was in denial about the impact of the Private Finance Initiative and the Foundation Trust Status that the NHS had inherited from the Labour government. These pathways to the privatisation of the health service were at the core of Whittington’s plans as surely as they were central to the proposed closure or reduction of Lambeth Hospital in south London where there was a simultaneous public protest.
So fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Took the campaign to the streets where we found that the vast majority of people are opposed to cuts, privatisation, splitting up the National Health Service into Trusts and support the cancellation of PFI debt.
While the Whittington Hospital Board has retreated on its planned sell-off, we continue to campaign for a good, local general hospital. We know that structural changes are planned under the heading ‘integrated care’ which the Trust claims will ‘attract new businesses and achieve ‘financial security’. The car-part company Uni parts and the business consultancy Ernst and Young have been brought in to help Whittington gain Trust status by 2014.
The fight against cuts in the NHS must continue. While it was useful to have the support of the five local Labour MPs in support of Whittington Hospital they cannot be trusted to give us back our NHS. They might find the threat of hospital closures a useful band wagon for the next general election but the Labour Party supports the marketisation of the health service as much as the ConDem government. The unions failed to fight for jobs at the Whittington. They will not oppose new proposals to assess the ‘skill set’ of the workforce across the hospital. They have played the role of redundancy negotiator in the past period and there is little pressure, so far, for them to ‘come out fighting’.
The future is not bleak. Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Gained massive support and saw huge community opposition to the neo-liberal agenda of cuts and privatisation on the streets of north London. We will continue to fight.
We want our NHS back.
