Socialist Alternative

Is the NHS facing breaking point?

July 16, 2021

Tom Barker
Jade Ritchie 1991-2021: “a determined class fighter and an incredible comrade”

July 14, 2021

Caroline Vincent
Black football fans like me know the struggle against racism must be built from the ground up

Daniel Rollins, West Yorkshire Socialist Alternative
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July 13, 2021

Sarah Wrack
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Batley and Spen: Labour win masks deeper crisis for Starmer’s ‘New Blairism’

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West Yorkshire Socialist Alternative

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Is the NHS facing breaking point?

What does “breaking point” in our NHS actually look like?

After more than a decade of real terms funding cut, it has become normal to hear claims that the NHS has, or is, reaching “breaking point”. Here in my home city, Leicester, we heard reports from back in December 2019 of patients waiting in the back of ambulances for up to six hours because of a lack of capacity. As of November 2019, there were already 4.4million people on the NHS waiting list – a 5.7% increase on the previous year!

Add a pandemic into the mix, and it was always clear that the NHS could crumble.

It has also been common to hear how the NHS is reaching breaking point because of understaffing. Before the pandemic, there was more than 100,000 vacant posts in the NHS, with more than 40,000 of these in nursing. These problems were driven by the hostile environment nurtured by the government; the cuts to the nurses’ bursary; the loss of increments for NHS workers, and the fact that many NHS staff have seen a real-terms pay cut of up to 20% over the last 11 years!

However, the fact that the NHS still exists, despite all these unbearable pressures – the fact that it is still providing services – for some, seems to stand in contradiction to these claims. Indeed, the persistence of the NHS is something which the government has actively tried to claim credit for, in their claims to have “protected the NHS” throughout the pandemic for example.

But breaking point was never going to be a single event, like a ship capsizing. Breaking point was always going to be a process and what we have seen over the last 18 months is a serious acceleration of that process.

Breaking point in the NHS was the many hundreds of NHS workers who died because they did not have access to adequate PPE; breaking point was patients being denied life-saving treatment because of a complete lack of capacity due to decades of cutting beds and selling land. Breaking point is the number of health workers now living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to the experiences of the last year.

In the wider picture, breaking point was the more than 150,000 people now dead due to covid – the highest per capita figure in the world, despite the fact that we are the sixth richest economy in the world!

And how do the government respond to all this? Is it to reward our NHS workers? To pay them what they deserve? No. It is to offer a pathetic 1% pay increase – in reality, a real-terms pay cut – to those who have spent the last year putting themselves in harms way to protect us.

And how do they respond to the structural problems that our NHS has faced, particularly over the last 18 months? Do they plough money into the public sector, which is responsible for both the vaccine and its successful roll out? Again, no! The government responds with more privatisation! The Tories’ new Health and Care Bill, which had its second reading in Parliament on Wednesday, poses a serious danger to the NHS as a public owned organisation. The Bill divides the NHS in England into 42 different ‘integrated care systems’, each with its own tight budget with the principal aim of driving down the costs of health care. While the Bill is promoted as reducing privatisation in the NHS, the reality is the opposite. Private companies are even being allowed to sit on the integrated care system boards in each area – thus partially running the NHS.

And we need to understand the development of this bill in the context of the last 18 months because the purpose of privatisation could not be any clearer. Profits for the few, misery for the many. Just look at the disaster of test and trace: £38 billion squandered on a vitally important service, which should have saved lives! Apparently having learned nothing from this failure, late last month the Tories went ahead and awarded Serco yet another contract, this one worth £322 million, to run more test and trace centres!

But we should be clear that this is not just about incompetence. The government isn’t simply making mistakes when it hands swathes of our services to profiteers, who have no idea and no experience of how to run them. This government’s pandemic response, and its approach to our NHS in general, is dripping in ideology. A decent pay rise for NHS workers would cost a fraction of the money wasted on test and trace. It would also pay for the student nurse bursary more than 50 times over. But this government is not interested in policies which would benefit ordinary people. They are using this pandemic to hand our services over to their mates in the private sector.

A reckoning over this government’s continued mishandling of the pandemic is already overdue. The national day of action on July 3, with protests taking place at 70 different locations across the UK, showed widespread support for NHS workers and opposition to privatisation. We need to build on this momentum.

This means building support in our communities, in our workplaces, in our trade unions, to mobilise people to fight back against this government and this system. Back in January, education workers provided a glimpse of the latent power of organised workers when they forced the government to retreat from their deadly reopening of schools, saving lives in the process. This was a direct result of pressure from below which pushed trade union leaders into action. Similar pressure will need to be mounted on the leaders of health unions when the government does finally announce its pay offer!

To those who say it is no longer possible to maintain the NHS, I say this: 73 years ago, despite a war-ravaged economy with huge debt, we created the world’s first universal health service. This was not handed down to us from on high, like some claim. It was the result of the enormous sacrifices that ordinary working-class people made during the war, and the insistence of these people that the old conditions would no longer be tolerated.

Much is different today, but I think we are living at a similar historic crossroads.

One thing that most people agree on is that we cannot go back to normal… normal was the problem. After all this, we must not allow a return to pay cuts, to underfunding our services, to scapegoating the most vulnerable in society while the billionaires make record profits. We need to build a society where good publicly funded services is a priority. Where zero-hour contracts and fire and re-hire practices are banned. Where workers are not victimised for organising in trade unions. But to get there, we will need to struggle. We know that we have the type of money for this kind of society because the global billionaire class has made out like bandits during this pandemic.

It will be a turbulent road ahead. We will lose some of the battles – but even losses will be important for us as they will sharpen our ability to fight back. We will learn how to fight effectively in the process of struggle.

But fight we must, because there is a future to win!
Jade Ritchie 1991-2021: “a determined class fighter and an incredible comrade”

I’m devastated to be writing about the tragic loss of a wonderful friend and comrade who has been taken away from us far too young, right now it’s still very difficult to comprehend. Jade was only 29 when she was diagnosed with lymphoma earlier this year. The diagnosis came as a huge shock to her, her family and to all of us. Jade was receiving treatment and remained positive throughout, logging on to Zoom meetings when she could, and she talked about how much she was looking forward to getting back into activity. This was typical of Jade- we all found her enthusiasm and positivity very inspiring.

We first met Jade in 2018- she had left the Labour Party and was looking for a genuine socialist organisation. It was obvious that Jade had a huge heart, she was committed to ridding the world of all unfairness and recognised the need to transform society; she was passionate about LGBTQ+ rights, socialist feminism and fighting all oppression. She was clearly more at home with our politics, so much so that she convinced her mum Sandra to join shortly afterwards. Both were founding members of Socialist Alternative and played a formidable role in what we have managed to build in Leicester and nationally.

Jade became the Leicester branch secretary after the founding of our organisation and joined the National Committee after our congress in March last year. She took her national role very seriously, really taking the time to prepare for meetings and to politically develop herself- we all looked forward to her excellent contributions. She was naturally quite shy but felt that Socialist Alternative gave her the space to grow and contribute; she frequently commented on how positive it was that newer, less experienced members like herself would be invited to introduce discussions at National Committee meetings. And her confidence grew and grew. Jade helped to organise our first congress and played an important role in the party building team; she played an international role too, introducing an excellent session on queer theory at the January Virtual Marxist University.

Jade passed away peacefully in her sleep in the early hours of Monday June 28th with Sandra and her dad Peter by her side holding her hand. She will be so very greatly missed. Her passing is a terrible blow- not just for the Leicester branch but for the whole organisation, and to the workers’ movement. It has left an empty space, and right now it feels very cruel and unfair for us to have lost such a determined class fighter and an incredible comrade- the world needs more people like Jade. But we can be certain that she would tell us not to mourn, and to get out there and organise! So we will continue to fight for a better world- for the kind of world that Jade wanted- with a renewed determination. Rest in power Jade.

Socialist Alternative members, including Sandra Ritchie, celebrating Jade’s life on 13 July

Below are two pages from the order of service at Jade’s funeral, the second which quotes from an article she wrote in issue 1 of the Socialist Alternative newspaper.
Black football fans like me know the struggle against racism must be built from the ground up

We have received this piece from a member of Socialist Alternative, speaking on their experiences of racism in football and stressing the need for a fighting, working-class approach to fighting racist oppression. If you would like to join Socialist Alternative, leave your details with us today!

31 million people were reportedly watching the Euro finals across the UK on television last Sunday. This doesn’t include the millions more watching on streaming services and further numbers watching in pubs and clubs across the UK. It would be an understatement to say the excitement was tangible for many football fans across the country.

For those of us who weren’t around for the World Cup win of 1966 this was as close as any of us had been to seeing England win a major international trophy. Yet, I had felt increasingly disappointed and disconnected from the England squad year after year. As this tournament rolled on it became a whisper in the ear of many fans that it may be “coming home”. When we got to tread the promised land of the Euro Final, that whisper turned into a galvanising cry of pride.

I enjoyed watching the match in the company of friends and loved ones and while we were all thoroughly engrossed in the game of football where, despite some questionable tactics, Italy were overall the better team and got to enjoy a well-earned victory. The England squad should have nothing but pride in themselves for achieving so much more than those of the “golden era” of their footballing forefathers.

Watching the match, I received a text from a friend telling me that there were some England fans trying to break into Wembley arena and were behaving violently towards stewards and Italian fans. Too distracted with my own emotional investment in the game I naively ignored this possible warning of the toxicity and misdirected anger amongst these fans. When it came to penalties, like the rest of the 31 million plus we were on tenterhooks, and like the 31 million we were disheartened at the result. With football being ultimately just a game we counted our losses and didn’t think any further of it.

With all the pubs and clubs being so full the wait for a taxi was long and during the wait, surrounded by England fans spilling out from these pubs we overheard some disgusting racist comments spewed up by several embittered England fans. Replacing the feelings of goodwill I had from an evening with friends, these bigoted remarks angered and sickened me. It dawned on me that this was going to be a huge issue and there would be more to come.

As a person of colour, I had begun to feel reconnected to the England squad this year and Marcus Rashford played no small role in this. His charity campaign In the Box helped the homeless with essential items over the Christmas period and personally visited homeless shelters with his mother to hand out boxes to those in need. More recently, he campaigned for free school meals for children who needed it after the government claimed they wouldn’t be giving these free school meal vouchers. It took a 23 year-old footballer to feed the needy where a cruel Tory government would let them go hungry. Rashford has shown that with enough grassroots effort and campaigning, change is possible and we can make this world a better place.

The memory of the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests is still strong in the minds of many in and out of the sporting world as the cry for social justice and liberation is still heard from many oppressed people in our community and those overseas. England decided to take the knee in solidarity with Black Lives Matter before each match. The sports men and women fighting for racial equality is a tale many are familiar with. Mohammed Ali refusing to fight in Vietnam, seeing the Vietnamese as brothers with the American black man in a fight against tyranny, black sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising black fisted gloves at the 1968 Summer Olympics and American football player Colin Kaepernick taking the knee during the national anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality. The Tory government encouraged the England fans to boo the team taking the knee, referring to it as gesture politics. What message does that send to the players and supporters, when those in charge of the country encourage the besmirchment of anti-racism?

These comments from the government are not the direct cause of the racist football fans but put side by side along with the torrent of abuse our black players have faced are a grim indictment of a deep societal problem that has been with us all since before we were born and before our parents were born. It’s a sickness that has trickled down from the top of capitalist society and infected our neighbours and co-workers. The comments against our black players who have served our country proud both on and off the pitch have left me cold yet ultimately unsurprised as our culture is one with a rich history of racial injustice.

You can be black and play so well at your country’s national sport that you make the national team; you play so well that you are as close as any team in decades to winning an international tournament, only to lose by a fraction in the final. Yet, when the opportunity strikes, you are reminded by this racist culture that you’re just an “other” and despite all you’ve achieved and fought for, you’ll never be anything more than that.

The young black child living in a high rise may dream of becoming a footballer on the level of a Rashford, a Sancho or a Saka but seeing this display from the minority of fans can either subconsciously or consciously enforce the idea that he can move heaven and earth but he’s cursed to be black in a white world and cursed to be second class in the eyes of his white neighbours and classmates. To those of us already grown up, it just reminds us that we’re forever destined to be the “other” in a racist capitalist world.

Despite all this, the huge support given to the abused black English players from ordinary people all over the country and from all sections of the community is reminiscent of the Black Lives Matter protests. Then and now black and white have stood together to show the racists they are in a small minority. England and Aston Villa defender Tyrone Mings has correctly called out Priti Patel and Boris Johnson who have condemned the racists, whilst refusing to support England players taking the knee. Even some Tory MP’s are openly questioning Johnson’s obvious hypocrisy.

The reaction to the racist abuse suffered by England’s players shows there is a latent movement which can be mobilised to push back racism and begin to tackle the huge and glaring racial inequalities in society. This will not come from Keir Starmer, who described the BLM protests last year as a ‘moment’. Far from being temporary, there is a long lasting legacy in society and especially amongst young people, to tackle racism head on when it rears its ugly head. Socialist Alternative will continue its work to assist in bringing together this disparate majority into a mighty movement which can not only sweep away racism but the capitalist system which feeds off it.

Socialist Alternative says:
- Black Lives Matter! Organise a mass united struggle against racism in all its forms. Rashford stood up for disadvantaged children. Now we must stand in solidarity with him and all football players facing abuse
- Kick racism out of football! Supporters’ groups need to get organised and discuss how racists can be tackled and kicked off the stands
- Racist Tories out! End the scapegoating of migrants and BAME people. Fight for decent jobs, homes and services for all
- Trade unions must take a lead in the struggle against racism, actively building it in our workplaces, communities and on the streets!
- End capitalism – a system founded on racism and oppression. Only the bosses win when workers are divided
- Fight for socialism – Public ownership and democratic planning to build a society for the millions not the millionaires