‘Striking does work’ say resident doctors from first day picket lines

On the resident doctor’s picket line at St Thomas’ hospital (Photo: Alan Kenny)

Thousands of resident doctors defied government abuse and fearmongering to begin a five-day strike on Wednesday morning.

Health secretary Wes Streeting had tried to morally blackmail the medics, saying a strike could “collapse” the NHS. And he insisted that his latest offer should end the dispute.

But the BMA union rejected his bullying and this week voted to go-ahead with the strike in England.

On a picket line outside St Thomas’s hospital in central London, doctors chanted, “Patients need doctors. Doctors need jobs.” That slogan resonated with Sarah, a striking resident doctor who joined the picket line.

“I studied medicine for six years, and I’ve done five years of training so far. Never in my life did I think I would be facing imminent unemployment,” she told Socialist Worker.

“It’s unimaginable because I see my neighbours and my family who can’t get a GP appointment or see the consultants they need.”

Resident doctor’s picket line in Sussex (Photo: Christian)

The internal medicine doctor, who is now hoping to specialise, said it was “mind-blowing” that all her training could go to waste.

“I have more than £75,000 worth of debt so far, but that’s ok because we are all really passionate about what we do. We want to care for patients at their most vulnerable time,” she said.

“But there are not enough jobs for doctors.”

The 4,000 new training jobs that Streeting promised in his offer are in fact “re-purposed and recycled”, Sarah explained. “These jobs already exist in the NHS—they’re just labelling them as ‘training’. There will be no extra jobs in real terms.”

The strength of feeling over this issue was behind the whopping 82 percent vote to reject the government’s latest offer. It is also behind a shift in rhetoric from the employers.

In the summer, NHS bosses were confidently telling journalists that the strike was crumbling, with less doctors participating.

That lie is shown up by the bosses’ new line. They now say so many doctors are on strike that the entire system could collapse.

Daniel Elkeles, head of employers’ group NHS Providers, said the strikes are “like having the worst possible Groundhog Day,” and that patients will suffer. But it’s patients, and the future of the health service, that motivates the strikers.

Thomas, a psychiatrist, was also on the picket line. The lack of jobs and its wider impact were at the front of his mind.

“The competition ratio to enter psychiatry training has this year reached 22 applicants for every place,” he told Socialist Worker.

“There’s a huge demand for psychiatrists from the general public. Yet there aren’t the jobs for us. That’s extremely demoralising for colleagues that have worked really hard, performed research and done lots of work additional to their clinical role.

Striking doctors in Hull (Photo: Paul Power)

“That’s not just frustrating. It’s a serious threat to their wellbeing because they face genuine unemployment.

“We’re now in this ridiculous situation where nearly a third of doctors who finish their training are essentially gig economy workers,” Thomas explained.

It forces doctors take on temporary, “ad hoc locum shifts where they can”. Thomas said that a shortage of trained specialists will be “terrible for patient care”—and it will be made worse as doctors leave Britain.

“Medicine is an international market,” he said. “We are already seeing record numbers of doctors leaving for countries such as Canada and Australia.

“But nearly all my colleagues would prefer to stay in Britain, work in the NHS and deliver the care that they’ve always wanted to.”

Sarah is optimistic about the future of the strike. “We were told that there will be no new offers, but surprisingly there was a new offer. So that’s a change. Striking does work,” she said.

But with the government digging in its heels, and its friends in the press smearing the strikers, the BMA must prepare for a tough fight. And it must look for potential allies.

More than a million health workers, in all manner of jobs, are furious at low pay and the deliberate running down of the health service. That’s one important reason left winger Andrea Egan has just won the leadership of the biggest NHS union, Unison.

If all those workers were to take inspiration from the doctors to launch their own campaigns, it would create a massive crisis for the government. It would be an unbeatable force.