The Metropolis

Don't want the NHS garrotted in the night? Then get off your arse and do something

Josh Hall | Thursday 8 September, 2011 11:22

Last night, MPs voted to begin the wholesale dismantling of the National Health Service. Built as part recompense for the sacrifice made by the British population during the Second World War, the NHS was the pride of this country; amongst the very best things we had.

Yesterday the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats began its demolition, swinging a pickaxe at the Service’s very foundations.

The NHS had totemic status. As Aneurin Bevan famously said almost 60 years ago, “No government that attempts to destroy the National Health Service can hope to command the support of the British people.”

In one sense, Bevan was right: the British people do not support the coalition. Indeed, this government lacks even the thinnest veneer of legitimacy. It is a government for which the country did not vote, enacting policies that were not contained in any manifesto. It revolves around a Cabinet characterised by petulance; shot through with the myopic arrogance that only an aristocratic heritage can foster.

It is a sham, a fraud. It aspires, tellingly, to technocracy, but its intentions are plutocratic. It is the heart of old money, masquerading as the voice of reason.

The average Briton, while likely to denounce politicians as corrupt and lazy, has sufficient faith in the Parliamentary system to presume that if enough people get angry about something, that thing will change. But it is now clear that Parliament has failed us. The NHS, our most cherished institution, will be hived off to foreign corporations, and healthcare will be treated as a commodity to be sold only to those lucky enough to be in the right area, or have the right illness, or access to enough cash. Indeed, the legislation effectively obliterates the NHS by relieving the Health Secretary of any responsibility for ensuring that necessary services are provided to the public. There is no mandate for this.

It is also clear that the forms of resistance to which Britain is accustomed are no longer adequate. In truth, they never were – but the magnitude of events, the sheer aggression of this government, have underscored their impotence.

Conventional marches, planned in collaboration with the police and safely stewarded, are not enough. Letter writing and petition signing are now tactics deemed sufficient by only the most painfully, incurably naïve. The cosy forms of dissent now look more like displacement strategies; simple ways to reassure yourself that you are doing your bit, while actually doing nothing at all.

We must throw off those pseudo-subversive tics and instead begin to focus on tactics with tangible outcomes. This government now operates far outside the democratic process, and we no longer have any obligation to act as if it has any validity. We don’t need to lobby MPs; we need to sabotage them.

Conference season is all but upon us, and with it a glowing opportunity for practical direct action. There are already plans for demonstrations, but waving placards out of sight of attendees is not enough. We should be considering ways in which we can physically disrupt these events, ways in which we can prevent them from taking place.

This move away from demonstrations and towards direct action should be replicated across the country. Occupations, blockades, sit-ins: these must become the standard tools in our fight.

Plans for meaningful, coordinated strike action in the autumn appear to have stagnated – not least because of the staggering ineptitude of union leaders. The TUC’s response to yesterday’s vote was to make a photo montage. This Live 8-esque capitulation is a brilliantly stark illustration of the staggering lack of comprehension demonstrated by Brendan Barber and friends – and it is evidence that the old, top-heavy structures have failed us, both in government and in workplace organisation.

So let’s stop paying attention to them. We simply do not need stewards telling us where to march, or union committees deciding if we can strike. Hierarchies, whether in government or in organisations that ostensibly represent ‘our interests’, do nothing but work against the average person. We need a new resistance – diffuse, self-organised, and radical. Polite dissent simply no longer cuts it.

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