- Opinion
Let’s hear it for the Darlo Mums!
The Mothers’ March for the NHS reaches Nottingham today, and with good weather and good luck those tired limbs will make it to London a week on Saturday.
Retracing the steps of the famous Jarrow March of 1936, the mums of Darlington, County Durham, are taking their protest at Tory dismantling of the health service to the capital.
They tramped through rain and shine in Yorkshire last weekend, before heading for the Midlands and the Home Counties.
And the Darlo Mums are winning support from people everywhere.
“The reception has been amazing,” marcher Joanna Adams told me.
“Their sense of purpose sometimes made me cry.
“The NHS is more than just a public health service. It’s the core of what makes us civilised and good folk.
"I can’t help but be horrified that profit should be how it’s determined in the future. I can’t stand by and see that happen.”
Tory MPs demand “more and more reform”.
That’s precisely what the Darlo Mums’ protest is all about: privatisation dressed up as reform.
The NHS is being privatised bed by bed, operation by operation, ward by ward and eventually surgery by surgery and hospital by hospital.
That’s the aim of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, which compels health service commissioners to put NHS services out to tender, and makes it easier for Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to close or downgrade a hospital.
Fight: The Peoples March for the NHS - and the 1936 Jarrow March
A disturbing picture is emerging. Private health hospitals now get up to 40% of their work from the NHS – work that could and should be done for patients and not for profit.
Eighteen per cent of A&E units and one-third of NHS walk-in centres have closed.
Three new Coalition laws to encourage privatisation are on the statute book since 2010, and 70% of NHS contracts go to the private sector.
Along with the privatisation of hospital cleaning, laundry and catering services, key medical services, including cancer care, have been handed over to the privateers.
And if they can’t make it pay, they just walk away, leaving the NHS to pick up the pieces.
The Darlo Mums fear that the health service – “owned by us, loved by us, our most prized possession” - is being systematically pushed to the edge of collapse, making it privatisation-ready if the Tories get back into power.
The 11 Darlo Mums, who have 13 kids between them (and another on the way), aren’t celebrities.
They are ordinary wives and working mothers doing something extraordinary for what they believe in – the NHS, which has nurtured them and their families – and the rest of us – for 66 years.
“The NHS is safe in our hands” declared vote-hunting David Cameron before the last election. Can there have ever been a bigger political fib?
No more top-down reforms, he promised, before imposing a £3billion reorganisation of the NHS so his rich City pals could profit from the sick.
A shake-up for a shake-down, you might say.
These mums are shaking the conscience of the nation.
You can follow their progress as well as registering your support on 999callfornhs.org.uk.
As Darlo Mum Linda Hughes put it: “Health is not a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder.”
Hear, hear. Mirror
No comments:
Post a Comment