A powerful new link-up between Health Campaigns Together, NHS Support Federation, Keep Our NHS Public and the health unions is set to launch a major new SOS NHS campaign to challenge the 12-years of under-funding and growing staff shortages that have plunged the NHS into its deepest-ever crisis this winter.
The campaign will run into the new year, and combine online resources and social media with mobilisation at local and regional level, delivering solidarity and some hope to beleaguered front-line staff battling to keep services afloat.
And, while some excellent and insightful reporting by a handful of journalists in serious newspapers and trade press has been vital to chart the developing crisis, the campaign also aims to combat the complacency and superficiality of too much mainstream media reporting of the NHS, that has left much of the wider public unaware of the scale of the problem, and allowed ministers to repeat deceptive and misleading claims.
The objective is to trigger a much wider movement that can pile pressure on Tory MPs, especially in newly-won seats, to demand another government U-turn – to reopen and revise the inadequate recent Spending Review, which locks in effectively frozen funding until 2025, and gives no extra capital to repair and remodel hospitals to reopen lost capacity.
It’s vital for campaigners, opposition parties and health unions to argue now for a plan to build a sustainable, publicly owned, run and driven NHS.
Full story in The Lowdown, 1 December 2021