Although it was called off at the last minute, the junior doctors’ strike showed just how close to the edge Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has pushed the medical profession. Final-year medical student DAN SELLWOOD explains why his colleagues were prepared to put down their stethoscopes in favour of a one-day walkout. Doctors and the British...
Condition Critical
The Socialist Health Association has highlighted five ways the government’s health reforms have failed to improve patient care, the criteria used by former health secretary Andrew Lansley to defend his policies against a damning King’s Fund report last month. The King’s Fund health think tank described Lansley’s reforms as “damaging and distracting” for introducing even...
People’s NHS March Arrives in London
The People’s March for the NHS will arrive at its destination in London this Saturday, 6 September, when campaigners will be joined by thousands of demonstrators for the final leg from Red Lion Square to Westminster....
An Economy for Working People
‘Building an economy that works for working people’ is the title of the next seminar in a series looking at the party’s politics and direction hosted by leading Labour MPs close to the One Nation project....
Mutualise the private sector, not England’s NHS
As the government pushes the ‘mutualisation’ of the NHS, Professor DEXTER WHITFIELD argues that all such transfers are privatisation....
ILP@120: John Wheatley – Glasgow’s Christian Socialist
From the pits to parliament via Glasgow rebellion, IAN S WOOD charts the often turbulent life and political career of John Wheatley. John Wheatley was born on 19 May 1869 in Bonmahon, a village in Waterford, Ireland, the son of John Wheatley, a miner, and Johanna (née Ryan). The Wheatley family emigrated to Scotland and...
The Future of the NHS
Martin Rathfelder, director of the Socialist Health Association, will speak about the future of the health service at Dronfield Labour Party’s May Day public discussion meeting....
ILP@120: Alfred Salter & the Bermondsey Revolution
GRAHAM TAYLOR celebrates the life and achievements of Alfred Salter, the brilliant doctor, Bermondsey MP and lifelong ILPer who helped transform an impoverished corner of south east London. His life is chiefly known from Fenner Brockway’s 1949 classic of political biography, Bermondsey Story, which describes in moving terms how the young doctor dedicated his life...
Present prospects, future hope
“We meet on a weekend of elections,” said ILP chair David Connolly as ILPers and friends gathered in Scarborough on 5/6 May for the organisation’s annual weekend school of political debate and discussion....
NHS Reforms: An insider’s view
Health care professional NELLI FINN provides an inside account of years of NHS reform, a tale of competing trusts, contracting out, cost-cutting and chronically low morale. I have been working for the NHS as an occupational therapist since 1995 and, apart from a couple of brief sojourns abroad and in the private sector, have...
Stepping stone or scam?
ANDY HANSFORD wonders whether foundation hospitals will be a fig leaf for privatisation of the NHS. The Tories tried to reform the National Health Service by setting up an ‘internal market’. The result was a failure, with a massive increase in accountants to count debits and credits in a whole new layer of contracts....
A fig leaf for privatisation
PATRICK GRAY argues that the Co-operative Party has been fooled into supporting foundation hospitals. I fear that cooperators will come to regret that the Co-operative Party has been fooled into lending respectability to the government’s wrong-headed plans for foundation hospitals. The will o’ the wisp promise of community control is completely meaningless. Mutuality may...