VICTORY! Massive vote against privatisation

[First published on our website: February 2007]




Brighton & Hove council housing tenants dealt a huge blow to New Labour's rampant privatisation agenda by joining the 104 other local authorities by voting by a massive 77% to stay as council tenants and reject a new private housing association as their landlords.

Brighton Socialist Party members played a key role in persuading the occupiers of the city's 13,500 council homes to vote no in the ballot conducted by the council. The council spent over two million pounds on glossy information and propaganda but failed to obscure the blatant facts exposed by anti-privatisation campaigners - that privatisation means higher rents, loss of secure tenancies, no guarantee of repairs being carried out and the loss of democracy in the way the council housing stock is managed.

The mood of the tenants was clear once the council's propaganda was exposed. People are aware that privatisation means a worse deal for customers, employees and big rewards for the fat cats in charge of the privatised companies. People know that privatisation is a vehicle for the neo-liberal parties and their cronies and they have demanded, as with the NHS campaign, that public resources such as council housing should stay public with direct investment and better democracy brought in to support the run down resources.

The campaign was fought on the doorsteps of Brighton & Hove, with our dedicated supporters visiting tenants to explain what a vote for privatisation would mean for them. Socialist Party members, armed with our ideas and solutions, were welcomed by tenants sick of council propaganda and officials who wouldn't even dare to visit them for fear of the reception they would receive. The cowardly and scaremongering tactics of the council were in contrast to our clear and concise message - giving the tenants the facts about the con of privatisation and showing them that alternative approach was possible. The response was overwhelming and led to the landslide victory.

But tenants are disillusioned with the council as landlords following a systematic running down of homes with repairs not carried out and promises broken. However, they are aware that social housing is a key asset won by the working class and will fight to maintain it. And this fight will go on as the Labour-led council, in alliance with the Tory councillors, will continue to try to force through the privatisation by whatever means necessary.

With this result it provides a platform for the anti-privatisation movement to go further and demand the Forth Option - the direct funding of council housing by central government. And with the upcoming local elections it proves only to highlight the need for proper working class representation. The three main parties, and the Greens, have been proven to be unable to stand up for the working class of the city, and we can use this opportunity to raise the need for a Campaign for a New Workers' Party showing that socialist ideas provide the only answer to the attacks of the neo-liberal parties.

If you would like more information about us and the Defend Council Housing campaign, come along to one of our activities and get in touch.

Vote NO! Reject privatisation

[First published on our website: December 2006]

Brighton & Hove city council has over the past three years fought a bitter and dirty battle to try and con the council tenants of Brighton & Hove into voting for a sell-off of their council homes to a privately-run housing association.

The council has tried to persuade tenants to agree to a stock transfer of Brighton & Hove's 13,500 council houses and sheltered homes as the only way that much needed repairs and investment can take place. Yet what they do not say is that the quality of housing has been purposefully run down by successive councils who have siphoned off tenants' rents to fill holes elsewhere in their mis-managed budget. In fact, nationally there is a surplus of £2 billion per year from council rents, which would easily cover all the necessary council house repairs in the country!

The government has stated that all councils in the UK must seek to move the control of their housing stock into private hands, in order that funds are released and in order to carry out improvements. What they haven't said is that this money isn't guaranteed and that the new owners will have to try and raise it themselves first, which will inevitably lead to rent rises, as has happened in the majority of local authorities who have already been through the transfer process.

Housing associations do not offer a safe future for council tenants. The facts show that they provide less secure tenancies, are liable to suffer financial difficulties and takeovers, and fail to deliver the promises made to tenants. Brighton & Hove council know this too and so have tried the hard sell technique to persuade tenants. They have even installed their own stooges at the head of the supposedly independent Tenant Participation Advisory Service!

What's more, the council has spent over £2 million on the transfer process, including £850,000 on their propaganda and £33,000 on a fancy DVD. Just think what improvements that money could have paid for!

But these gimmicks aren't fooling anyone. The truth is that moving from the council as a landlord to a private company means increased rents, less secure tenancies, no guarantee that the repairs promised will be done and the loss of democracy. At least with the council, no matter how bad they were, you could still vote them out!

The Socialist Party opposes this privatisation of public housing and has joined forces with the national Defend Council Housing (DCH) organisation to campaign for a NO vote in the forthcoming ballot of council tenants within Brighton & Hove.

During the last round of ballots, the NO votes have been increasing in number, by so much that most ballots are rejecting privatisation. In Tower Hamlets and Crawley, the councils have even abandoned their ballots knowing they can't win!

The privatisation of council housing is just the latest in the long line of public assets flogged off by the Labour government to private companies.

Remember - A NO vote is a vote against privatisation and a vote for the Forth Option - the increase of investment in decent quality, affordable, democratically-run public housing

Second Brighton march to stop the privatisation of the NHS

[First published on our website: 1 July 2007]



On Saturday a vocal crowd of around 70 people turned out for a demonstration called by Keep Our NHS public in Brighton. This was a protest against the cuts and closures that are being pushed through across Sussex including plans to shut down accident and emergency centres, and to raise public awareness that is the privatisation of our NHS that is driving the changes.

Despite the heavy rain the demonstration made its way through the centre of the city receiving much support from the public who had braved the weather to head out. Chants included "Public health not private wealth" and hundreds of leaflets explaining the truth behind the private contracts suffocating NHS funds were handed out to the public.

The 'reconfiguration' of hospitals across Sussex will see accident and emergency centres closed and downgraded in major hospitals surrounding Brighton. Haywards Heath, Shoreham, Worthing and Eastbourne hospitals are all under threat.

Many services will be centralised to the Royal Sussex County in Brighton, a hospital already strained, having a major part of its A&E provision privatised with staff still bracing themselves for job cuts this year. On top of this appalling cut in health provision, we have seen in the past few weeks that the PFI-built New Princess Alexandra Children's Hospital having to begin to pay rent to its private builders even though its is still not ready, and mental health services across Sussex will be made into a foundation trust - another form of privatisation.

Despite the overwhelming public support for a publicaly-owned and publicaly-run health system, the Labour government is determined to bring the market into the NHS so profit decides. This process, if not halted, will signal the end of the NHS as a public health system.

Keep Our NHS Public will continue to support the hospital workers and raise the arguments against privatisation. We will now be continuing our work towards the national demonstration called by the health unions in London on 13 October

Fundraising gig for NHS campaign

[First published on our website: 28 June 2007]



On Wednesday 27 the Prince Albert Pub in Brighton played host to a sell out benefit gig in aid of the local Keep Our NHS Public campaign in which Socialist Party members play a leading role.

Two local bands - Sweet Nothing and Dirty Dig - generously playing for free, and entertained the packed out room with angular punk and classic blues rock being the order of the day. With tickets at just a fiver each, the gig easily sold out and raised £500 to keep the campaign running and producing material in a period when the battle to defend the NHS from privatisation is as bitter as ever.

The gig came about as the Brighton Keep Our NHS Public group desperately needed funds to continue its campaign against the cuts, closures and privatisations being carried out on the health services in Brighton and the surrounding area. Socialist Party comrades lead the campaign group and it was encouraging to see a turnout that included many Socialist party members, health workers, socialists and people new to the campaign. With this captive audience, it also provided an opportunity to raise the profile of the campaign, to build for the demonstration the following weekend and explain the views of the Socialist Party concerning the need for an end to privatisation of the NHS and the introduction of a publicly owned comprehensive health care system, free of all charges.

Public meeting gathers support

[First published on our website: 6 June 2007]

On Tuesday 5 June over 40 local health workers, trade unionists and campaigners attended a successful public meeting to discuss concerns over private sector involvment in our NHS and plans to decimate local health services.

The meeting was organised by the local branch of the Keep Our NHS Public campaign group which has been at the forefront of the battle locally to protect public interests in local health services.

Platform speakers included John Lister, a national health campaigner from Oxfordshire, Socialist Party member and chair of the local Keep Our NHS Public group, Phil Clarke and Mick Malloy, Brighton's GMB Health representative.

Phil Clarke opened the meeting by describing the role of the Keep Our NHS Public campaign and the current situation in Brighton and the surrounding towns regarding private involvment in the NHS. One example included the current and ongoing PFI fiasco which will see the local trust struggle to meet the inflated repayments for a new children's hospital which guarantee large profits for the contractor, Kajima. In total, the local NHS trust will end up paying about five times the £37 million value of the building! That's £163.3 million! Or five new hospitals!

The main thrust of Phil's contribution centred around concerns over the creation of privately-run 'minor' A&Es. The Strategic Health Authority's plan is to leave the only NHS-run A&E department at the county's busiest hospital, the Royal Sussex in Brighton, with privately-run Urgent Care Centres (UCCs) operating in towns across Sussex. As part of this development, these UCCs will only be able to treat the very minor, and profitable, injuries while people in critical conditions will have to travel many more miles to reach the only A&E in the region. From as early as next year patents may find themselves directed to a privately-run UCC to take over part of the Royal Sussex's A&E site with tenders invited from the private sector for £30 million of depleted NHS funds over three years!

These insane, life-threatening and wasteful plans to involve the private sector in the creation of downgraded minor injury clinics, follows another example of this current obsession with privatisation in the local region.

The local health trust, which is already £15 million in debt, is paying £18 million from its funds to US private health firm Mercury Health in Haywards Health. They are being paid in total for only carrying out half the number of operations they are contracted to do because they are cherry-picking the easiest cases! That's money for nothing!

And all of this is occuring while 500 jobs are under threat and 109 beds are set to close at the Royal Sussex alone!

John Lister followed Phil's contribution by speaking passionately about the campaigns going on up and down the country in defence of a publicaly-owned and run NHS. GMB Health representative Mick Malloy gave a firm and supportive speech in appreciation to the work of the local campaign for building solidarity amongst campaigners and health workers. In particular, he drew attention to two GMB health reps present at the meeting who have been the only compulsory reduncies so far. Mick suggested that the health authority is obviously on the defensive up against a strong campaign group if it is sacking those it knows can win if united action is taken by health workers, trade unionists, socialists and community campaigners.

New people interested in joining the local campaign gave their contact details and now the build up is underway for the group's second public demonstration on Saturday 30 June

NHS union members attacked in Brighton

[First published on our website: 1 February 2006]

The Royal Sussex County in Brighton is the hospital that many services will be centralised to, as the NHS on the south coast is butchered. But it has had the loss of 10 per cent of its workforce hanging over it for months.

The planned compulsory redundancies have been put off until the summer, although shrinking the number of agency workers and the use of 'natural wastage' continues. But this has not stopped the workers' organisations in the hospital coming under attack.

In the last week two GMB reps were frog-marched off site by security, having been informed they were the first compulsory redundancies. These long-standing trade unionists had to sneak back in later to inform their colleagues of what was going on.

The GMB branch at the hospital has begun the process to ballot for strike action to combat this clear case of victimisation. Staff morale is at an all-time low and their confidence will have to built up if these attacks and the job losses are going to be stopped.

Brighton Socialist Party, through its active involvement in the local Keep Our NHS Public group, will be building local events to support the union and health workers. What is also needed is a national demonstration against the destruction of the NHS that would show these workers that they are not alone. A date for a national protest must be named soon.

The first united demonstration

[First published on our website: 29 November 2006]



On Wednesday 29 November 150 health workers and campaigners from local groups across the southeast gathered outside a Brighton hotel to demonstrate against job losses, cuts and closures in the NHS. People from campaigns in Worthing, Hastings, Eastbourne, Crawley, Chichester, Brighton and Haywards Heath rallied together to form the first united demonstration of its kind to protest collectively against New Labour's neo-liberal mis-management of our National Health Service.

The South East SHA (Strategic Health Authority) is the unelected public body that chooses how to spend the region's health budget. They were inside the Brighton Metropole Hotel for the day, along with 500 managers and market consultants, deciding how to close our hospitals and divert NHS money to private companies.

Josephina, a welfare rights caseworker who walked out of the conference to join the demonstration, said: "They were speaking in a smug and insulated world of their own, telling us lies and rubbish about 'patient choice' and the need to involve private companies in health provision. We all know what they really mean: cuts to our health service and privatisation of the NHS."

Over the past months anger has been growing across Surrey, Sussex and Kent with thousands attending meetings and rallies all over the region at concerns to close hospitals and wards and downgrade services. Local Socialist Party members called for the need for regional co-ordination when we intervened in these early demonstrations and was part of the main thrust our own successful Keep Our NHS Public march, also in Brighton. At the end of October campaigners and Socialist Party members from across the three counties met and the united 29 November demonstration outside the SHA conference was planned.

An organiser from the Brighton Keep Our NHS Public group said: "This is part of the first steps in bringing together all the groups across the region who are against the market reforms that are ruining our NHS. What is happening locally is part of a wider plan to decimate the National Health Service. Therefore, the need to link up all of the local campaigns, right up to a national level if possible, is crucial in building a strong, united and confident voice that can successfully defend our publically-owned NHS."

The demonstration proved to the campaigners themselves that the unity of their cause against those inside the SHA conference was a sign of strength, and confidence grew as hundreds of passing cars and vans honked their horns in support.

Leaflets publicising the recent success of action taken by staff at Whipps Cross Hospital were handed out to health workers at the demonstration who were inspired by the brave fight that their colleagues had fought. Campaign for a New Workers' Party leaflets were also well received by politicised campaigners desperately seeking an alternative to the same old prescription of privatisation and cuts offered by the main parties.

In these developing stages, as the NHS campaign grows, the Socialist Party must play this important role in uniting people and workers from all local campaigns, and to build the confidence in their movement to save the NHS.

Thousands march to save NHS - Now build for further action

[First published on our website: 1 November 2006]



Thousands of people descended on parliament on 1 November to demonstrate their anger at the devastating cuts and closures to the National Health Service. They came from all over the country. From Yorkshire to the south coast. From areas where the local hospital, which thousands rely on, is due to close, or from one of the towns where the accident and emergency or birthing unit and other wards are to be axed.

Nurses came in their uniforms and marched with banners saying: "Save Our NHS." And hundreds waved the Socialist Party placards calling for a national demonstration. The march was to the TUC lobby of parliament, but lobbying parliament is not enough.

No part of the NHS is safe in this government's hands. 20,000 jobs are to go. Cuts are planned across the board as hospitals are forced to 'balance the books', which means in ordinary language, making slashing cuts. Meanwhile, the private health care sharks are waiting in the wings to buy up NHS services. That's why the march to parliament was clear in its demand to stop privatisation. These cuts are about the privatisation of the NHS from top to bottom. The London region of the National Pensioners' Convention had done an important job in caling the demo and using it to bring together NHS campaigners from all over the country.

Denise Wood, from Hinkley and Bosworth Pensioners explained why she was there: "The NHS is the jewel in our crown. Without it, we are nothing. I think all the nurses and other health workers who have come on this demo should be proud of being here at the beginning of a massive, national campaign."

The calls for a nationally co-ordinated campaign which can unite local groups and trade unionists are becoming stronger and this organisation is coming together at grass roots level.

Two weeks ago in Nuneaton eight campaign groups from around the country met to set up People United Saving Hospitals (PUSH). They have called another national meeting for 2 December.
Vanessa Casey, one of the organisers of PUSH, told the socialist: "This is a brilliant demo. We've had a great response on the streets and we've met loads of people from different campaigns from all round the country. We have invited every local campaign to come to our meeting on 2 December and we want to have an inaugural day of action across the country on Friday 15 December."

The response from Wednesday's demonstration for this co-ordinating meeting was tremendous. We now have to campaign to make it as big as possible. The main call of those backing the Nuneaton meeting is for the unions to immediately name the day for a mass national demo.

Let's build on the march and lobby of parliament. Hundreds of people signed up to be part of a national campaign. Now lets give them the opportunity to do just that.

KONHSP Brighton demonstration

[First published on our website: 14 October 2006]

"People are going to die because of these reforms!" exclaimed one woman in the build up to Brighton's first organised demonstration against NHS cuts which took place on Saturday 14 October.

The local Keep Our NHS Public campaign attracted 200 working class people from across the city to the march with the Brighton branch of the Socialist Party playing a key role in the publicity and organisation of the event.

With the loss of up to 500 jobs (10% of the Royal Sussex hospital's workforce) and 109 beds, and with vital orthopaedic and cardiac services being cut to the bare minimum, this anti-cuts anti-privatisation demonstration was crucial in allowing local people to display their concern over New Labour's handling of public health services.

Following Tory-led non-politicised demonstrations in nearby Chichester, Worthing, Eastbourne and Haywards Heath which local Socialist Party members intervened in, the Brighton demonstration was the first to call for the unity of all local campaigns and the first to offer a political working class perspective to the local struggle with many names added to the Campaign for a New Workers' Party petition. This call for united action must be the next step in the campaign to build the national demonstration in London on 1 November and to save our NHS from the hands of the privateers.

Welcome

Welcome to the message and news board of the Brighton and Hove branch of the Socialist Party.

Set up in January 2008, this site will advertise all our up-coming branch meetings, activities, reports and discussions all of which are open to anyone who wants to get involved. Our contact details can be found in the left hand column.

Get in touch and sign up. Workers of the world, UNITE!