By Matt Hirst
Resident doctors (formerly junior doctors) have begun taking strike action after an insufficient pay offer from the Labour government. This is the first national strike against Starmer’s Labour, making this a significant round of workers’ action which could act as a beacon for others.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting, and indeed now Keir Starmer, have engaged in the most dishonest attacks on the BMA union, claiming the doctors’ action will disrupt the health service. Yet they have nothing to say about the rampant underfunding and chaos which has come from the systemic running down of the NHS under successive Labour and Tory governments. Far from undermining the NHS, this strike is part of the fight to save it.
Establishment attacks
Much of the media has relentlessly repeated their main line of attack. They have focussed on how the doctors had managed to secure a prior 22.3% pay rise over two years from their previous strike. The clear implication is that the doctors are being ‘greedy’. However the doctors are simply fighting to reverse the real-terms pay cuts taking place over the last 16 years.
These narratives are, in reality, not about the doctors. It is about trying to discourage any workers from taking action, coming straight from the Tory austerity playbook with the false idea that workers must accept attacks on their pay and conditions for the sake of the ‘national interest’. But we’re not all in this together, as record profits for the NHS bosses show!
Coordinate action across the health service
Alongside the doctors, nurses in Unite the Union in Wales have also met the undemocratic strike threshold in their indicative ballot, and members of the Royal College of Nursing across England, Wales and Scotland are currently balloting their members on whether to accept a below-inflation 3.6% pay offer. Should these unions reach the threshold, it will be imperative to coordinate strike action to be as effective as possible.
Socialist Alternative sends solidarity to resident doctors, and will be actively building support for them on their picket lines. The NHS is at a stage of collapse, and we cannot rely on a Labour government to rescue it. It falls to the health workers who keep it alive to save it, as part of a coordinated working-class fightback.
