Will the Socialist Health Association be the next victim of Starmer’s Purge?

The SHA’s ‘crime’? Opposing Streeting & Starmer’s support for the Privatisation of the NHS

The Socialist Health Association, formerly known as the Socialist Medical Association, has been affiliated to the Labour Party since 1931. The SHA was formed to campaign for a National Health Service. Not surprisingly they are strongly opposed to the plans of Starmer and Streeting to turn the NHS into a British version of American Medicare & Medicaid, dominated as it is by insurance companies and private companies who make rich pickings at the expense of patients.

We know that Starmer, Streeting and the other cuckoos in Labour’s nest are ‘business friendly’, but the NHS must be off limits to the hedge fund owners, venture capitalists, US health care companies and other capitalist vultures.

It is some measure of how right-wing Starmer and his supporters are that they would even think of disaffiliating an organisation which was one of the original campaigners for a national health service, free at the point of delivery. The SHA has been affiliated to the Labour Party for nearly 92 years.

People may remember that when Starmer was elected leader of the Labour Party he pledged that

Public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders. Support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water; end outsourcing in our NHS, local government and justice system.

Starmer meant none of this. He lied, lied and lied again in order to get elected and once Leader he junked every single one of his promises.

On 11^th January 2023 the SHA issued a strong statement in response to a statement by West Streeting, Shadow Health Secretary, supporting greater involvement by private companies in the NHS. ‘SHA response to use of private health companies’. Its subtitle was blunt and to the point: ‘Statement on Wes Streeting’s NHS proposals and acceptance of donations from John Armitage and MPM Connect.

Gurinder Singh Josan

The response by Starmer’s supporters in the form of Gurinder Singh Josan CBE has been to allege irregularities in the recent SHA elections of its Officers and Executive.

In a tweet of 29 January 2023 Josan alleged

·        constitutional breaches

·        attempts to manipulate result

·        breaches of GDPR

All the things that Starmer and his cronies have turned into a fine art. For supporters of Starmer to allege breaches of the GDPR and the SHA’s constitution after all the attempts by them to rig elections and their loss of members’ data demonstrates that satire has lost all meaning for them. As for attempts to manipulate the result, we only need recall their attempts to fiddle the result of the trigger ballots of Ian Byrne MP and Apsama Begum MP.

In a statement issued by the pro-privatisation candidates, including Jewish Labour Movement clone Neil Nerva, they withdrew from the elections and called on the Returning Officer and the SHA Officers to resign and then called on the Labour Party

Statement from right-wing slate (p.1)

‘to give consideration to the undemocratic nature of one of its affiliated Socialist Societies and to take appropriate action to review the affiliation’.

They also called on the SHA Officers to self-refer themselves to the Information Commissioner’s Office!

Statement from right-wing slate (p.2)

The right-wingers complained that the National Secretary of the SHA, Harry Stratton, had lobbied SHA  members in support of the socialist slate of candidates, having done precisely that themselves!

Knowing full well that they would lose, the Privatisation Slate then withdrew from the elections.  Unfortunately they left it too late.

The four successful socialists who were elected as Vice Chair (the Chair, Secretary and Treasurer being elected unopposed) gained an average of 707 votes. The unsuccessful privatisation candidates gained an average of 122.5 votes! In other words the socialist candidates secure 5.77 votes for every vote that the right-wing candidates obtained!

Clearly the vast majority of SHA members prefer to keep the NHS public and not turn it into an auction for the highest bidder.

The three victorious officers, Chair Mark Ladbrooke, Secretary Harry Stratton and Treasurer Esther Giles issued a joint statement celebrating their victory. It read,

“SHA members recognise that accelerating moves to integrate private providers into the health service will drain funding from the NHS and turn it into a mere brand for a mess of private corporations- all extracting shareholder returns and cutting services in order to do so.

“Big corporations have captured top NHS bodies with the intention of funnelling NHS resources into their pockets. They train few- if any- staff and maintain a parasitic role in the sector. Members of Labour’s front bench are deeply mistaken if they believe these businesses will resolve the catastrophic problems caused by decades of neoliberal austerity and service cuts.”

Two years ago Gurinder Singh, who is close to Tom Watson and the far-right Labour MP John Spellar, was subject to complaints of bullying a blind fellow Muslim UNITE member alongside Spellar. Singh is also close to local Sandwell Tories.

Unsurprisingly the reaction of property dealer Gurinder Singh (owner of Josan Estates Ltd.) and his friends is to try and disaffiliate the SHA and then set up a new organisation from which socialists will be barred.

All of this takes place in the context of the refusal of Starmer and Streeting to support the nurses and ambulance workers in their fight to decent pay and conditions and their attacks on the health unions over their proposals for reform.

What You Can Do

On Labour’s National Executive Committee there are 11 trade union representatives. They are:

Div. I – Trade Unions: Mark Ferguson (Unison)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Nicola Jukes (TSSA)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Isabelle Gutierrez (Musicians’ Union)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Michael Wheeler (USDAW)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Wendy Nichols (Unison)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Andy Kerr (CWU)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Gavin Sibthorpe (GMB)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Jayne Taylor (UNITE)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Kathy Abu-Bakir (GMB)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Ian Murray (FBU)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Mick Whelan (ASLEF)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Joanne McGuinness (USDAW)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Tony Woodhouse (UNITE)

Most of them have supported Starmer’s purge of the left and socialists in the Labour Party. Union members must demand that they oppose any attempt to disaffiliate the SHA. For any trade union member to support the attempts of Gurinder Singh, Starmer and Johanna Baxter to disaffiliate the SHA would be the equivalent of supporting the privatisation of the NHS.

My own union UNITE has two representatives. I shall be moving at my branch that they are instructed to oppose any attempt by Starmer and Streeting to disaffiliate the SHA and thus further the privatisation agenda of the Right. I urge you to do the same.

If there is any Socialist Society that should be disaffiliated it is the apartheid supporting, racist Jewish Labour Movement.

Tony Greenstein

The NHS is dying before our eyes and all we are doing is watching and waiting

 Dr Bob Gill explains how privatisation is destroying the NHS as Starmer & Streeting support its takeover by vulture capital

If you want to understand why it is that the NHS was so unprepared for the COVID pandemic and why it is that we have unprecedented waiting lists, then watch this 20 minute video of Dr Bob Gill who explains it all quite succinctly.

The NHS was the greatest achievement of the post-war Attlee government. Gone were the days when if you couldn’t afford to see a doctor or pay for drugs you simply had to suffer in silence or hope that a charity cottage hospital would treat you.

We live in the age of neo-liberalism, which is another way of saying that everything public is bad (except the Police/Army and Monarchy of course) and everything private is good.

Dr Bob Gill

Yet we cannot rely on the Labour Party under Starmer to oppose privatisation. His shadow Health Secretary West Streeting openly supports the involvement of private companies on the pretext that it will help cut waiting lists.

Yet this is a lie. The way to cut waiting lists is to train more doctors and nurses, build more hospitals and transfer the money from our increasing ‘defence’ (i.e. war) budget to health care. Private firms are interested in one thing only – profit.  And where does that come from?  Money that would otherwise go into the NHS (and also further exploitation of NHS workers).

Streeting is a brazen liar. Why else would John Armitage, a hedge fund founder and manager, who has given over £3 million to the Tories, give £15,000 to Streeting? The Electoral Commission’s register of donations shows that Streeting reported receiving this donation in January 2022.

Armitage, number 138 on the 2021 Times ‘rich list’, is co-founder and director of the Egerton Capital hedge fund. Among its almost £19bn of investments, Armitage’s fund owns shares worth almost £834m in UnitedHealth (UH), a vast US private health corporation that has spent millions lobbying US politicians for its interests.

UH has played a key role in the ‘americanisation’ of the NHS that began under New Labour and continued apace under the Tories. See Shadow Health Sec Streeting takes large sum from Tory donor with huge private health interests.

Not only Streeting but Starmer himself has received £12,500 from Armitage. Now why would this be? The answer is clear. Starmer intends to continue from where the Tories left off. Nothing could better illustrate the political bankruptcy of the Labour Party today and yet the ‘Socialist’ Campaign Group says next to nothing. It refuses to call for Starmer to stand down whereas the Labour Right had no such problems when Corbyn was the leader.

But the NHS trade unions have also been pathetic. UNISON and GMB have stayed silent. Indeed it is difficult to know whether or not the GMB is even concerned about the effect of privatisation on its members.  UNITE has called out Streeting over his receipt of Armitage’s donations but it has not done much else.

If anyone is in any doubt about what a catastrophe a private insurance health system is they should look to the United States where some 46 million adults don’t have private health care insurance.That is almost  1 in 5 adults. What that means is that if you are seriously ill you cannot get treated until it is classified as an emergency and then you can be admitted via an A&E.

Yet even if you do have private health insurance you often end up having to pay for extras, things like drugs and other extra charges. The insurance companies, mindful of their own profits, haggle over the nature of the treatment and sometimes simply refuse to pay out if, for example you don’t get their permission for treatment in advance or if you go to a hospital that isn’t on their list. These are the benefits of privatisation.

Contrast this with Cuba, 50+ years under a blockade from the United States. Despite its lack of resources child mortality rates (under 5 years, infant and neonatal) in Cuba have been lower than in the USA for many years. WHO figures for 2016 for under 5 child mortality (U5M) show that Cuba has a U5M rate of 5.5 per 1000 live births, whereas the USA has a U5M rate of 6.5 and Costa Rica has a rate of 9.7.¹ Cuba has the second-lowest U5M in the Americas behind Canada with a rate of 4.9.

Despite the fact that one-fifth of its population are excluded from coverage, the USA spends more per capita on health care than any other country. Why?  Because each stage of the insurance process sucks up money, the process of billing, accountants etc. add to the cost plus of course the mega profits at each stage.

So privatisation not only costs more but it is less efficient all round yet Starmer and Streeting want to increase the privatisation of the NHS and the trade unions that NHS workers belong say and do next to nothing.

That the GMB says nothing is not surprising.  They have been found by the Report they themselves commissioned to be institutionally sexist (and it implied institutionally racist too). A corrupt, right-wing union, the main concern of Gary Smith, its General Secretary and those around him is their own perks and privileges. And defending the apartheid State of Israel.

We can already see what the future holds for the NHS from the crisis in dentistry.  9/10 dentists cannot offer appointments to adults on the NHS and 8/10 can’t do the same for children. The BBC has revealed that we are at tipping point. The British Dental Association has said that the BBC’s research is ‘the most comprehensive and granular assessment of patient access in the history of the service’.

People are resorting to pulling out their own teeth without anaesthesia yet our so-called  Opposition says nothing about this because it’s more concerned with rooting out a non-existent anti-Semitism.

I recommend watching Bob Gill’s video because what it shows is frightening.

Can't Pay Won't Pay Launch Meeting in Brighton Packed out - the Message is Clear - Heating is a Right Not A Privilege

UPDATE

The meeting organised by Don’t Pay UK/Can’t Pay Brighton tonite (30 August) was packed out.  Over 150 people attended. One of the largest meetings I have attended at the Friends Meeting House. 

There were speakers from the Trades Council (Andy Richards & Matt Webb), Sheila Hall and the 2 co-chairs (Nehaal and myself). People broke up into groups to plan organising on a local basis. 

Here are some photos of tonite. The message was very clear – we can’t pay and we’re not paying. It’s time to return the private energy companies to public hands and we don’t care for the fact that the capitalists don’t like it. Starmer and Truss are 2 sides of the same rotten coin. The present situation is unacceptable and it has to change.

Tony Greenstein     

Heating is a right not a privilege - We need to relearn the lessons of resistance and fighting back

There is no energy or cost of living crisis – there is a crisis of capitalism

Nehaal co-chair and Sheila Hall (nearest)

Privatisation is Legalised Theft

The Energy Cap is predicted to DOUBLE in 6 months. There is only one solution – taking energy back into public ownership without paying the parasites a penny compensation. Privatisation of energy and water under Thatcher was nothing less than legalised theft. We need to reclaim what is ours.

Privatisation of British Gas, Water and Electricity between 1986 and 1990 meant the transfer of assets that the tax payer had funded to the City of London for a song. Neo-liberalism and free market economics dictated the transfer from public to private. The consequences are there for all to see.

The policies of all governments since has been a simple one. The transfer of wealth from poor to rich. During COVID we saw naked corruption by the government. The number of billionaires increased by 24 to a record 171 in 2021. In 2022 this increased by a further 6 to 177.

The richest 250 people in the UK this year are worth £711bn compared to £658s billion in 2021. You will also be glad to hear that

Rishi Sunak and his partner Akshata Murty made the list for the first time, as their joint £730m fortune put them at number 222.

Privatisation means that the sole aim is the maximalisation of profit above all other considerations. The only duty that the energy companies recognise is to their shareholders, i.e. themselves.

Profits have gone sky high. Eon, one of the big 6, has made profits of €4.06bn (£3.4bn) in the first half 2022 with CEO Leonhard Birnbaum being paid a mere €1.2m (£1m) in 2021. The National Grid made profits of £3.4bn in 2021-22. CEO John Pettigrew trousered a handy £6.5m. RWE made profits of €2.6bn (£2.2bn) in the first half of 2022, CEO Markus Krebber ‘earning’ €4.3m (£3.6m) in 2021. Ørsted made profits of €1.75bn (£1.5bn) in the first half 2022, CEO Mads Nipper receiving a paltry €2m (£1.7m) in 2021. All of the above, except the National Grid, are based in Germany or Denmark.

Centrica, which owns British Gas, made profits of £1.3bn in the first half 2022 and CEO Chris O’Shea took home a meagre £775,000 in 2021 having generously waived his £1.1m bonus. SSE, another of the Big 6, made profits in 2021/22 of £1.2bn, CEO Alistair Phillips-Davies picking up a far from generous £4.5m in 2021. Uniper, another German company, made profits of €1.2bn in (£1bn) in 2021 with CEO Klaus-Dieter Maubach picking up €1.9m (£1.6m) in 2021.

Scottish Power, which specialises in pouring untreated water into the sea, made profits of £925m in the first half 2022 with CEO Keith Anderson being paid a mere £1.35m in 2021.

But this is to leave out BP and Shell who are predicted to make profits of £40bn this year. A report found that Shell and BP have channelled £147bn to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks over the past decade, with rival North Sea producers and the big six energy suppliers contributing another £47bn.

Over in France however, where EDF has been nationalised the price rise has been kept to 4%.  The French government has forced them to take a £7bn hit. Instead they make their money in the UK.

As Skawkbox reported Norwegian energy users are being charged only 6% of UK variable rate – on a 3yr fixed  deal. The current variable rate is lower still – less than 1% of the UK price. UK households face paying 52 pence per Kilowatt-hour (kWh) on variable tariffs plus exorbitant ‘standing charges’whereas Helgeland energy in Norway is offering its customers a fixed THREE-year deal at just 3.2 PENCE (37 øre) per kWh, with a monthly standing charge of just £2.51:

And for those who are not looking to lock in the price for three years, the rate is even lower –just half a penny per kWh. Helgeland’s variable rate customers don’t even pay a standing charge at all and clients in north Norway are VAT-exempt

. This is just 1% of what British people are paying.

As the article in Skwawkbox  put it

‘We are being ruled by criminals – and the so-called ‘opposition’ is part of the same gang wearing different rosettes to create an illusion of choice while the Establishment laughs all the way to the bank.’

But as the song said, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The predicted price cap for next January and April are eye watering. The Cornwall  Institute has revised its earlier prediction that the price cap next January will be £4,649.  They now estimate it will be £5,387 (the Independent estimates £5,632).

And that is not all, next April, just 3 months later Cornwall estimate that the price cap will rise to £6,616.  Energy consultancy Auxilione go one better - £7,700.  In other words in just 6 months the price will have doubled. In 18 months the price rise will be a staggering 503%.

Why is this taking place? According to Alex Lawson, BP and Shell are not merely content with the profits that result from drilling and selling oil.  They are actively intervening in futures trading and speculation to drive up their profits even further.  In other words it is as much speculation as much as anything else that is responsible for the present crisis.

The war in Ukraine has triggered this off. NATO, i.e. the United States, did its best to provoke the war by expanding NATO into Eastern Europe breaking all the assurances it had given Russia at the time of German reunification. War is economics by another means.

The benefit to US oil shale and gas production is immense whilst at the same time creating the conditions for massive speculation as Russia is sanctioned. Indeed the sanctions against Russia have most affected the countries imposing the sanctions.

As Bloomberg reports the Ruble is this year’s best performing currency! It drily notes that ‘the irony of the ruble performing so well while at war is remarkable’. Germany has sanctioned itself effectively as it faces major gas shortages this winter. The international energy market is a speculators’ paradise but it is the consumer who is footing the bill as the European Union                                                                                                                                     is effectively dancing to US imperialism’s tune with NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine.

The current price rise is also going to force many firms out of business as they simply cannot afford to pay the prices asked of them. This will result in higher unemployment and greater poverty.

Date                    October 21     April 22     October 22     January 23      April 23

                                                                                               (estimated price rises)

Price Rise           £1,277             £1,971        £3,549

Cornwall Institute                                                                £5,387               £6,616

Auxilione                                                                                                        £7,700

None of these predictions can be relied on because whenever someone mentions a figure it immediately increases. What we are seeing is the insanity of capitalism where production is for profit not need.  Instead of fairly sharing resources, investing in insulation and renewable energy, we see vast multinational companies making a fortune at the expense of nurses, carers and other low paid workers.

The Most Profitable Energy Companies Pay NO Tax

The French government under Macron is not a socialist government. However it realises that if it were to allow prices rises such as those in Britain then the streets would be ungovernable. The French have a tendency to riot when the rich get out of hand. The British, because of the legacy of imperialist illusions, which was what Brexit was really about, have become docile and timid.

The days of the Poll Tax riot and rebellions have been forgotten.  We need to relearn what are quite simple lessons. You don’t get anything unless you fight for it. We have an arrogant ruling class represented first by Boris Johnson and now, almost certainly, the pretty vacant Liz Truss who demonstrates the wisdom of the old saying that empty vessels make the most noise.

At the same time as the country is suffering from a cost of living crisis, the Tory Party leadership contest has become increasingly surreal as Truss’s answer to the pain of ordinary people is to call for tax cuts in order that the oil traders and speculators can keep even more of their ill-gotten gains.  Not that they need any encouragement.

Last year BP paid no tax on its North Sea oil operations. Indeed it paid in 2019 an effective tax rate of -54% thanks to rebates from the Treasury.  In 2020 the effective tax rate was -19%. Yes that’s right despite making billions of pounds in profit it was handed yet more cash by the Treasury! In the last 3 years BP has paid no tax whatsoever on its profits from North Sea oil. When North Sea oil came on stream in the Thatcher years instead of using the revenue to create a sovereign wealth fund, as Norway did, they were handed over to the private sector and the proceeds used to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. Yet too many of the working class and poor have been persuaded to vote against their own interests by diverting anger onto scapegoats such as migrant workers.

Indeed since 2016 the 19 North Sea oil companies, far from contributing to the exchequer have received net rebates of £2.4 bn. That is how the ruling class operates. Workers are expected to tighten their belts whilst the fat cats stagger away with the proceeds. 

It’s all very simple and just in case anyone gets the idea of fighting back we can always rely on the billionaire press to tell us that it is immigrants or claimants who are responsible for the crisis. Indeed anyone but those who are really responsible.

The obvious solution to the present crisis is to take back the energy companies into public ownership and end the absurd division between generation, transmission and supply – a wholly artificial market that is a private monopoly.  If we had an Opposition worthy of the name then Labour would have proposed just this.

But Sir Starmer, despite making 10 lying pledges to get elected has ratted on his promises. His main concern is expelling and marginalising the  Labour left. In 2020 he promised that

Public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders. Support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water; end outsourcing in our NHS, local government and justice system.

For some strange reason the BBC and other media were not interested in Starmer’s serial dishonesty.  It wasn’t in their interests.

What Can We Do?

This Tuesday August 30 @7 pm Don’t Pay UK and Can’t Pay – Brighton is holding a public meeting at the Friends Meeting House in Ship Street, Brighton.  It has a number of speakers but the main emphasis will be on organising in our wards and localities.

There is one and only one way of defeating these price rises which are a tax on living and that is not to pay them! The Labour Left, people like John McDonnell and the  Campaign Group make fiery speeches and then leave it at that. What we need is not words but actions.

There will be some people who will be unable to take part directly, such as those on pre-payment meters, but that is no excuse for those who can refuse to pay not doing so. As a mass movement develops it will generate its own momentum. For example we have to seriously explore the question of neutralising and bypassing pre-payment meters so that people aren’t faced with the choice of eating or heating.  Energy and warmth are our right.

There will be those faint hearts who say we cannot break the law.  This is nonsense. The law is there to serve people not the other way round.  If the law countenances people dying through lack of heating then it is perfectly valid to break that law.  If enough people do it then the blackmail of the energy companies will be broken.

It is essential that we emulate the days of the poll tax when people organised to defy the bailiffs and the police. They can cut off a few people but they cannot cut off millions of people. Unity is strength.

The Tories will no doubt increase their package of payments, which have already been swallowed up by the new price rises, but they are nothing more than sticking plaster.

If they can afford to pay Dido Harding, whose only achievement was to marry Conservative MP John Penrose, £37 bn for a track and trace system that doesn’t work and if they have money to hand over to their cronies billions for failed NHS Covid contracts, then they have the money to ensure that no one dies this winter because they can’t afford to heat their homes.

If you live in Brighton and Hove come to the meeting and help build the resistance!

Israeli Spacecraft Crashes into the Moon

The question everyone is asking - is God Anti-Semitic?

As they say, every cloud has a silver lining. ‘Small country, big dreams’ read the slogan on their spacecraft. The Zionist state could not resist trying to exploit its venture into space for propaganda purposes.  The state which fails to supply clean water for the millions of Palestinians whose land it occupies, can nonetheless spend £70 million on crashing a machine into the moon.

It is hard not to gloat at the latest hasbara failure given the way that Israel’s computer technology is used as a justification for how wonderful Israel’s racist state is.  As it was a privately funded mission one can afford a double gloat.  This is a metaphor for privatisation!

I understand that Margaret Hodge and Luciana Berger have issued a statement on behalf of the Jewish Labour Movement accusing God of being anti-Semitic. It was clearly within his power to avoid this calamity!

In a week that saw the triumph of Israel’s ultra-right in its General Election and the virtual death of the Zionist left, this is an appropriate answer!

Tony Greenstein