Dear fellow health workers,
We would like to invite you to a meeting of healthcare workers on Saturday 23rd of May and Sunday 24th of May in Bristol to discuss the current struggles and general tendencies in the health sector from a revolutionary socialist perspective. We think it is time to create political collectives within the sector that argue and organise for self-organisation of struggle and a fundamental social change.
You can book your place here. The venue is in central Bristol, if you need help finding affordable accommodation, please get in touch.
At the weekend we want to share concrete experience of day-to-day struggles in healthcare settings and reflect on the political potentials and limits of the recent NHS disputes and also their wider historical and international context. On Saturday evening we will hope to have a social event and meal together, and there’s also the possibility of a film and speaker on a healthcare related topic.
The current inviting circle comprises colleagues working as health care assistants, GPs, medical students, hospital catering workers, medical researchers, and advanced practitioners from Bradford, London, Cardiff, Norwich, and Bristol. Some of us are involved in the ‘Vital Signs’ project in Bristol and some in the BMA, Workers for a Free Palestine, and also other healthcare projects.
What we share in common as health workers is that we are at the centre of the current social crisis. During the pandemic it became clear that the fragmented public and private health sector, the detached politicians, and the global pharmaceutical companies were unable to coordinate an effective response, but as health workers we lacked the coordination and social power to enforce an alternative and better plan.
The health sector is also at the centre of the global trade war, such as when the US government enforces tariffs for pharmaceutical products or demands access for US companies, such as Palantir, to NHS IT contracts. The intensifying drive for protectionist measures also affects the migrant colleagues in the sector, who become under increasing pressure through changes to visa and residency regulations and the general hostile environment created both by the current government and the far-right.
In the medium-term the health sector is also drawn into an international process of militarisation of society, when military planners request closer collaboration between the civilian and the military medical sectors. Modern wars, such as in Ukraine, are highly dependent on the support of a medical deployment that patches up thousands of injured soldiers to send them back to the frontline. In Gaza, health workers are becoming a prime target of military attacks, while the current war in Iran and the wider Middle East might escalate into a global conflict. The process of militarisation will also draw scant welfare resources away from the working class, and health workers bear the brunt of the consequences of that.
We think we have a wider social responsibility, not just because of our immediate work, but also politically as a large group of workers who collaborate in a complex network that reaches from community clinics to tech labs, from hospital wards to university lecture halls.
We will send out a preliminary agenda in April and all suggestions for this are welcome at the email above. In the run-up we will have shorter Zoom meetings to coordinate the preparation which of course you are also invited to.
With care & solidarity in struggle,
Some angry healthcare workers
