Save the NHS: Please Sign Petition and Ask Your MP to Attend 2nd Reading of the NHS Reinstatement Bill This Friday, Mar. 11

Image and text from a flier made by the Campaign for the NHS Reinstatement Bill, promoting a Private Member's bill put forward by Caroline Lucas MP in 2015 and currently supported by 77 MPs.There are so many horrible aspects to life in the UK under the Tories that it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of them all, unless you’re unfortunate enough to be affected by all of them — the unfettered housing bubble, for example, and the similarly unregulated private rental market, coupled with a sustained assault on social housing; the assault on the unemployed and the disabled; the demonisation of Muslims; the hard-hearted approach to the current refugee crisis; the refusal to tackle the tsunami of anti-immigrant hysteria that has gripped the country since the global banking crisis of 2008 and that has, in fact, more often than not been deliberately stoked by the media, largely with the complicity of politicians; the endless widening of the gap between the rich and the poor; the Prime Minister’s failure to challenge his own right-wingers and UKIP by refusing to call a referendum on Europe, which any credible leader would have done; and, of course, the remorseless assault on the NHS.

As I mentioned last May, just before our thoroughly depressing General Election, when our sole Green MP, Caroline Lucas, launched a Private Members’ Bill, the National Health Service Bill (HC Bill 37), generally known the NHS Reinstatement Bill, with the support of eleven MPs from four other parties (including Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell), “Ever since the Tory-led coalition government passed the wretched Health and Social Care Act in 2011 (after David Cameron blatantly lied to the British people, by falsely promising ‘no more of the tiresome, meddlesome, top-down re-structures that have dominated the last decade of the NHS’), privatisation of the greatest and most important institution in the UK, the NHS (National Health Service, founded in 1948), has been increasing to an alarming degree.”

As I also noted last May, I have been involved in trying to save the NHS ever since the Tories first got back into power in 2010. As I stated, “I campaigned against the passage of the Health and Social Care Act at the time (see here and here), and then became heavily involved in the successful campaign to save my local hospital, in Lewisham, in south east London, from savage cuts (see here, here and here). [In 2014] I campaigned to resist the Tories’ spiteful response to Lewisham’s success, which became known as the “hospital closure clause” (see here and here), and covered the People’s March for the NHS, a grass-roots initiative that involved a recreation of the Jarrow March from the 1930s to save the NHS (see here and here).” Read the rest of this entry »

Back to home page

Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
Email Andy Worthington

CD: Love and War

The Four Fathers on Bandcamp

The Guantánamo Files book cover

The Guantánamo Files

The Battle of the Beanfield book cover

The Battle of the Beanfield

Stonehenge: Celebration & Subversion book cover

Stonehenge: Celebration & Subversion

Outside The Law DVD cover

Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo

RSS

Posts & Comments

World Wide Web Consortium

XHTML & CSS

WordPress

Powered by WordPress

Designed by Josh King-Farlow

Please support Andy Worthington, independent journalist:

Archives

In Touch

Follow me on Facebook

Become a fan on Facebook

Subscribe to me on YouTubeSubscribe to me on YouTube

The State of London

The State of London. 16 photos of London

Andy's Flickr photos

Campaigns

Categories

Tag Cloud

Abu Zubaydah Al-Qaeda Andy Worthington British prisoners Center for Constitutional Rights CIA torture prisons Close Guantanamo Donald Trump Four Fathers Guantanamo Housing crisis Hunger strikes London Military Commission NHS NHS privatisation Periodic Review Boards Photos President Obama Reprieve Shaker Aamer The Four Fathers Torture UK austerity UK protest US courts Video We Stand With Shaker WikiLeaks Yemenis in Guantanamo