UNISON given go-ahead for October 13 national demo |
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Danny McIntosh |
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“It’s full steam ahead for a national demonstration to defend the NHS on Saturday, 13 October”, according to UNISON’s Head of Health Karen Jennings, writing to health branches of the largest public sector union. The demonstration will be part of UNISON’s Keep the NHS Working campaign, and “will be the focus of a public display of celebration and solidarity for an NHS that is still largely owned and run by the public sector.” It is good that the major union in the field is giving this lead, hopefully to be supported by the other unions and organisations from NHS Together. But there are concerns: two months down the line from the initial decision on the date, not much seems to have happened. There is no publicity material, and we still don’t know where the march will be, so travel arrangements have not begun. There are fears that union leaders will choose somewhere other than the natural political target of London: others fear that the UNISON leadership, so reluctant to break ranks with Gordon Brown, is simply going through the motions of convening a demonstration that is doomed in advance to fail - through inadequate and incompetent political preparation. There is precedent for this: in the early 1990s UNISON was instructed by national conference to call a national demonstration over Low Pay. They called the march in Newcastle, spent £1m on obscure and ineffective publicity, drew a relatively small turnout, and from there on used the failure as a stick to beat down subsequent calls for national protests. There seems little doubt that the momentum of the popular movement that was visibly on the boil against cutbacks, closures and privatisation last autumn and winter has ebbed somewhat in the phoney war situation since the new financial year: but the issues are still there, and a new round of controversial cuts and privatisation is set for the autumn. Karen Jennings is right to tell branches that their campaigning activity - woefully weak in some areas, where job cuts and service reductions have gone through largely unchallenged - needs urgently to be stepped up. Union members also need a firm lead, more information and confidence-building measures to ensure they vote for strike action over their insulting pay award, slashed from a wage-cutting 2.5% to an even more derisory 1.9% as a result of Brown’s intervention: again they will find widespread support if they take up this fight. UNISON branches will in many cases need support in broadening their campaigns from organizations with expertise in popularizing policy such as London Health Emergency, and from broad-based campaigning organizations such as Keep Our NHS Public. With summer holidays looming up, the countdown has already started. Let’s not waste this chance to build a really massive show of strength in defence of the values of the NHS as our most popular public service. |
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