Save our NHS

“Sickness doesn’t have an age,” Unite member Jake Kraweckyj told UNITElive at this weekend’s Save Our NHS march on Saturday (March 4), which drew an estimated quarter of a million people from across the UK to London.

Jake (pictured) would know – when he was 21, he was diagnosed with advanced-stage Hodgkin lymphoma and the prognosis wasn’t good.

But thanks to the NHS, he’s alive and well. Now 25, he’s in remission and only needs a yearly check-up.

“The service I received was absolutely second to none,” he said. “There were people going well out of their way not only to make sure I was looked after and treated well but that I was comfortable. I wasn’t getting preferential treatment – they did that for everyone.”

Jake, holding aloft a placard reading ‘I didn’t survive cancer to see this’, has come to London to send a clear message to the government — that it’s time they “woke up”.

“They have to understand that everyone needs the NHS and there are loads of people who wouldn’t be here without it – I’m one of them,” he said.

Jake said that it was heartening to see so many young people at the march – and encouraged more young people to get involved.

For the future

“Young people need to get out there now,” he said. “They might be healthy at 21 but what about when they’re 51 or 61 or 71? Who’s going to be out there to look out for them? We need to fight for the NHS now to ensure it has a future.”

Unite community member Joel Christopher (pictured), 16, agreed.

“Young people are the future,” he said. “The NHS as an institution that’s free at the point of use is dangerously under threat and we cannot save it without young people getting consistently involved. Healthcare should be a human right – we cannot accept anything less.”

The hundreds of thousands of people who marched from Tavistock Square to Parliament Square, chanting, carrying banners and making noise, came together to stand up against swingeing NHS cuts and systematic privatisation that’s brought the service to its knees.

The demonstration was held after the NHS had its worst winter on record – hospital wait times have skyrocketed, bed shortages are pervasive and ambulance queues are dangerously common.

Unite paramedic Debbie Wilkson (pictured) is on the frontlines of the NHS and says that the pressure on staff is at breaking point.

Under pressure

“We’re under loads of pressure – the activity rate is going up about 6 per cent annually at the moment but there’s no extra staff and obviously no extra pay. We’ve had a massive real terms pay cut over the years. It’s been hard – really hard.”

Debbie added privatisation in the service has become rife.

“In the ambulance service, private ambulance use is increasing all the time – we’re losing contracts in the NHS to private providers,” she explained.

“We fought a long time to have an NHS that’s free at the point of use and now it’s disappearing before our very eyes,” Debbie noted.

Unite health visitor Veronica Steele (pictured), who has worked in the NHS for three decades, has also felt the strain working for a health service that faces a massive deficit in funding.

“Now, we’re always very short-staffed,” she told UNITElive. “We are expected to do more than what is physically possible for us. I’ve got to the point where I’m thinking – how can I serve my clients, how am I going to give them my best when I’m so pressed for time? I love the job and I think it’s valuable. We’re asked to do more with fewer resources and it’s become impossible.”

Unite South Durham branch secretary Barbara Campbell, who works as a specialist nurse, also attested to the dangerous lack of resources she sees on the frontline as the NHS is starved of cash.

“When staff leave they’re not replaced,” she explained. “There’s also been a lot of down-banding. “Where I work one of my colleagues was down-banded as a specialist nurse – she’s being asked to take on the same responsibilities for less pay.”

Barbara, who came down to London from Stockton-on-Tees, said she believed coming to marches can serve as a powerful catalyst for change. Like young Joel and Jake, Barbara has come to fight for the future of the NHS.

“My mum and dad didn’t have lots of money so when they died they didn’t leave me with much,” she said. “But what they did leave me with is so much more valuable — strong unions and the NHS –and I just want to fight to make sure that my children can benefit from those same things as I have.”

The greatest thing

Unite community member Lara Johnson (pictured) has also rallied in a fight for the future of the NHS, and she’s brought her two daughters, 11 and 9 years of age, in tow.

“It’s important for them to be empowered,” she said, explaining why she’s brought her children. “Especially as girls, they need to know they can shout – that they have a voice and values that they must stand up for. As a parent, it’s up to me to enable their voices and show them how they do stand up to power and make things right.”

Fighting for a well-funded NHS is a deeply personal crusade for Lara and her family – in 2014, her 8-year-old stepson passed away, and Lara attributes his death to changes made with the automation of appointments in her local area.

“It was a cost-saving change,” she explained. “Somebody made a financial decision that did not protect him. And that was before the worst of austerity has hit – it’s become even worse. You can’t put a price on lives. As a family, we’ve had to live our lives around that loss.

“We all pay into the system, we all contribute,” Lara added. “The government has the power to fund the NHS for the future. But it’s deliberately and systematically refusing to fund what is the greatest thing that’s ever been given to this country by a Labour government.”

Values

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, addressing the crowds at a rally after the march ended in Parliament Square, also shared a personal loss. Before the existence of the NHS, Len’s mum and dad lost their firstborn son when he was only three.

“He died because of a lack of healthcare,” he said. “My mum told me of the scenes in the 20s and the 30s when mothers would beg on the streets with their children in order to get a few pennies to go see the doctors.

“They drilled into me how important the NHS was – it was our parents and grandparents who fought to give us the health service. The NHS is our heritage and it’s our duty to make certain we pass on our health service to future generations.”

Railing against the government which says we can’t afford the NHS, he hit back, saying, “We can’t afford to not have the NHS.

“You bailed out the banks – bail out the NHS as well.”

Len was joined by a range of speakers which included health workers, union leaders, and leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn told the crowds that the destruction of the NHS wasn’t happening in a vacuum – he pointed to the underfunding of education, the treatment of homeless people, the treatment of low-paid workers among other issues as all connected to a moral rot that’s setting in under the auspices of a Tory government.

It all comes down to values, Corbyn argued.

“Defending the NHS is defending a basic human value and a basic human right,” he said. “You don’t walk by on the other side when someone needs support. You put your arm around them and you give them the comfort and help that they need.

“That’s what the NHS has been doing for all of us all of our lives,” he added. “Our very presence here helps to guarantee its future.”