So I said I'd write something about the NHS 299 march at the Tory conference on Sunday to go on Sheffield Medsin's blog; this is the result.
Sheffield Medsin and Sheffield Save Our NHS joined over
50,000 people in Manchester on Sunday – including a zombie
flashmob, a brass band, and a seven-year old girl with disproportionately
large lungs who delivered the most rousing rendition of ‘When they say cut back…’
I’ve ever shouted reply to – to defend a universal health care system owned by
the public and run for its health, and to stand in solidarity with health
workers across the country facing job losses, and deteriorating working
conditions. Those behind the compound perimeter of police and private G4S
mercenaries could be left in little doubt that, as the thousands of voices
raised in song outside reminded them, they were the 1%; and the 99% outside
weren’t going to be ignored.
Not that they weren’t going to try their best to maintain
such wilful ignorance. The lack of mainstream media coverage of recent changes
to the NHS has been so predictable as to become a running joke amongst those aware
of the impacts of cuts and privatisation on the nation’s health, so it’s hardly
a surprise that Sunday’s demonstration was widely ignored in many venues – all the
more so, since the tory-police-G4S triumvirate conspired to do their level best
to prevent coverage. Where there was coverage, some worried that the
diversity of people and issues on display served to ‘muddy the message’ of
a march ostensibly publicised as campaigning to ‘save the NHS’. The idea, so
the argument runs, is that campaigning against fracking, punitive
welfare policies, or generally voicing
opposition to austerity turns an actionable list of discrete demands into
an inchoate expression of general discontent to which it is difficult to
formulate a concrete response; these ‘non-NHS’-related demands then distract
from the main opposition to the alterations to the organisational structure of
the health system.
