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NHS at 65, Lewisham & the DLR – 2013

NHS at 65, Lewisham & the DLR: Friday 5th July 2013 was the 65th anniversary of the founding of our National Health Service and I photographed three events connected with this, two in Westminster and one opposite Lewisham Hospital where campaigners were fighting to keep services. And on the way back from Lewisham I took some pictures though the window of the DLR train, mainly as we went past Deptford Creek.

The National Health Action Party was a publicity stunt and single issue parties such as this are never likely to make much widespread impact on British politics. But given the strength of the recent Labour rebellion over Starmer’s attack on the disabled I wonder if a new left of centre political party might result in a radical change in our political system, with possibly a significant number of Labour MPs deserting the sinking ship in favour of a party which represents traditional Labour values. We could then have two different parties fighting out the next election.

NHS 65: GMB – Westminster

The GMB trade union came with three vintage ambulances to protest outside Parliament where trade unionists in vintage ambulance uniforms posed with MPs including Dennis Skinner and Sadiq Khan warning that the NHS is at risk.

I’m afraid I’ve forgotten who the other MPs were, but you can see a couple more in the pictures on My London Diary I took as the photographer for the GMB posed and photographed them. I have a personal antipathy to posing people, though I might occasionally deliberately attract their attention and even very occasionally ask them to keep still or look at me. But generally I see my role as recording what is happening rather than directing it. And here what was happening was that people were being photographed.

Later I went with them (and the ambulances) as they took 65th Birthday cards for the NHS, with the message inside “Do Not Pension Off Our NHS’ to the Ministry of Health, then still in Richmond House on Whitehall.

More at NHS 65: GMB.

NHS 65: Lewisham Hospital

In the memorial garden opposite the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign were holding a lunchtime party to celebrate the 65th Birthday of the NHS, and as a part of their campaign to keep this busy, successful and much needed hospital open.

The plans for its closure were not related to the hospital’s performance in any way but because the health authority needed to make drastic cuts to meet the disastrous PFI debts of a neighbouring hospital.

There had been a massive community campaign to save vital NHS services at the hospital, backed by “Patients, NHS staff, Lewisham Council, MPs, schools, pensioners, families, businesses, faith groups, charities, unions, students and health campaigners” – the whole community including the Millwall Football Club.

Later at the end of July 2013 the High Court ruled in favour of the Judicial Reviews by the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign and Lewisham Council and quashed the Government’s closure plans. And ten years later in July 2023 on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the NHS a newly engraved community bench was unveiled to celebrate the victory. I’m sorry I wasn’t present to record that occasion.

More at NHS 65: Lewisham Hospital.

DLR Views – Deptford-Canary Wharf

I decided to travel back from Lewisham into central London by taking the DLR to Canary Wharf where I could change to the Jubilee Line because I could try to take some pictures from the train, particularly on the section where the viaduct goes alongside and over Deptford Creek.

There are many problems in taking pictures from trains. Finding a reasonably clean window is the first, and avoiding reflections another. It was easier back in the 1970s when there were windows you could pull down and lean out! And now apparently AI can remove reflections, though I’ve yet to try it.

DLR Views

NHS 65: Rally & Camarathon – Westminster

On the 65th Birthday of the NHS, Dr Clive Peedell began a 65 mile ultramarathon to David Cameron’s Witney constituency to bury the NHS coffin and launch the National Health Action Party plan by doctors and health professionals to revive the NHS.

Dr Clive Peedell posed in a Cameron mask with the coffin and wreath and had come with a small group of supporters, including one wearing a mask of his coalition partner Nick Clegg. Campaigners accuse both of deliberately running down our NHS, with more and more NHS services being delivered by private healthcare companies.

After posing in front of the Ministry of Health, the campaigners crossed Whitehall to stand in front of the gates of Downing St before processing behind the coffin to Parliament for more pictures, ending with some street theatre involving severed hands and speeches by several distnguished health professions including the Chair of the Royal College of GPs in Old Palace Yard.

I left before Dr Peedell and two others set off on his long run – though I’m sure others would be carrying the wreath and coffin. The event had clearly been set up to attract the media, but received little publicity.

On My London Diary you can read a long statement by Dr Peedell about how the “2012 Health and Social Care Act, will result in the NHS being increasingly dismantled and privatised” with the Labour Party whose “previous pro-market, pro-privatisation reforms, actually set the platform for the current changes” had failed to sufficiently oppose. Health professionals had “formed the National Health Action Party to raise awareness and inform the public about what is happening to their NHS” and had today “set out our own 10 point plan to reinstate, protect and improve the NHS“.

Much more on My London Diary at NHS 65: Rally & Camarathon.

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March for Clean Water, London, 3 Nov 2024

March for Clean Water: On Sunday 3rd November 2024 I joined thousands of marchers gathering at Vauxhall overlooking the River Thames for a march demanding urgent action to end the pollution of our rivers and sea.

Much of this pollution is by illegal discharges of sewage by the privatised water companies who have failed to make the investments needed since the regional water authories were sold off to private companies in 1989.

Opinion polls then showed that just under 80% of the UK population were against water privatisation back then, and now over 80% are in favour of bringing them back into public ownership.

Back in 1884, Joseph Chamberlain got it right when he argued “It is difficult, if not impossible to combine the citizens’ rights and interests and the private enterprise’s interests, because the private enterprise aims at its natural and justified objective, the biggest possible profit.”

Private water companies were largely taken over by local authorities by the start of the 20th century and under the 1973 Water Act passed by a Tory government under Edward Heath these were amalgamated into the 10 Water Boards each based on the basin of one of our major rivers, “responsible for water extraction, water supply, sewage treatment and environmental pollution prevention,“

Unfortunately government failed to provide them with the money to properly carry out their functions, and the situation was made much worse after Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 when she made it very much harder for the water boards to borrow money for capital projects.

This left the water authorites unable to meet the new EU standards for “river, bathing, coastal, and drinking water quality” which would have required according to Wikipedia “from £24 to £30 billion.”

In light of this, the Conservatives went ahead with privatisation despite the huge public opinion against it. It was hardly a sale, more a getting rid of their liabilities at a token price of £7.6 billion, at the same time taking over the existing debts of £5 billion and gifting the companies a present of £1.5 billion. So the sale only raised £1.1 billion.

Privatisation made England & Wales the only countries in the world to have “a fully privatised water and sewage disposal system.” Something we have been both paying for and suffering from, SInce privatisation water prices have risen by 40% above inflation and in 2017 “research by the University of Greenwich suggested that consumers in England were paying £2.3 billion more every year for their water and sewerage bills than they would if the water companies had remained under state ownership.”

And while we have paid more, the shareholders of at least some of those water companies have done very well out of it – as have many of the top managers who have got huge bonuses despite the many failings of the companies they have run.

Since privatisation investment in the water industry has decreased by around 15% and the companies have built up debts of over £60 billion – rather less than their payouts to shareholders of £78 billion. Huge amounts of treated water is now lost through leaks as our water systems have not been properly maintained and expanded to meet new demand.

And sewage. More and more untreated raw sewage has been dumped in our rivers. What was supposed only to happen when unusual rainfall overwhelmed the sewers now appears to have become a normal occurence in some areas. We should have been investing in increasing separation between drainage and sewage, particularly in new developments but nothing has been done.

We are still largely working with a Victorian system of drainage with a hugely increased population, installed when few homes had baths, washing machines and showers were unheard of and far fewer homes had even one flushing toilet. Demand for water has increased greatly per person.

The march in London on 3rd November was organised by River Action, “an environmental charity on a mission to rescue Britain’s rivers from the deluge of pollution that has left the majority of our waterways in a severely degraded ecological condition” and it reflected this, backed by a long list of other organisations.

Although sewage outflows are the major source of this, agricultural wastes particularly from intensive animal farming are a huge source of pollution in our rural areas and there are still some other industries which pollute our rivers.

We need to bring the water companies under public control and also reform or replace Ofwat and the Environment Agency which have clearly failed in their roles.

You can see more pictures from the march in my album March for Clean Water.

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European Social Forum & Rosary Crusade -2004

European Social Forum & Rosary Crusade: Two very different things happened on the streets of London on Saturday 16th October 2004.

European Social Forum – Speakers’ Corner, Oxford St and Carnaby St

Saturday was the second day of the three day European Social Forum, held in London from 15-17 October 2004. This brought together trade unionists, socialists, peace campaigners and greens from all over Europe to demonstrate that “another europe is possible”, but apparently left many complaining about how the event had been organised and manipulated.

I chose not to attend the more serious sessions of talks but to photograph the more creative activities outside these on the streets of London.

On the Saturday people met at Speakers Corner before marching down Oxford Street, which I called “the Temple of Mammon” and commented it “must rank as about the most depressing place on earth”.

I left them protesting on Oxford Street to go to the Rosary Crusade and then rejoined them on Carnaby Street where the GMB union were protesting together with the French CGT outside the Puma store because of their use of sweated Labour. More recently I’ve photographed protests outside Puma because of their support for Israel and teams from occupied Palestine in the Israel Football League.

Also in Carnaby Street were members of ‘No Sweat‘, the grassroots campaign group which has highlighted the use of sweated labour to produce clothing sold in the UK including by Burberry. And providing some loud music to make sure the protests were noticed were a large samba band including many from both Sheffield and international guests, particularly from France.

The police began to get rather restless and I overheard one commenting to a member of the public “they’ve been pissing about for six hours and it’s time they went home”. And I wrote that “muscled officers in baggy black fighting gear were flexing muscles and grinning stupidly, obviously relishing the likely opportunity for a little action, as officers and demonstrators argued the toss.”

Eventually the police allowed the protest to keep moving and it returned to Oxford Street, for protests outside Niketown at Oxford Circus and then at the Virgin Megastore. I went inside expecting some of the protesters to follow, but left in a hurry as the store security on police advice lowered the shutters closing the place down as the demonstration arrived outside.

The previous day I and other photographers had been a little harassed by police and at this point I thought it sensible to slip away. The police were doing a great job of stopping all road traffic in the area with a large number of police vans blocking the road, but I was able to walk past along with shoppers still using Oxford Street shops and into the Underground. I had agreed to go for a meal with others at a Nepalese restaurant near Euston and didn’t want to be late.

More about the three days of protest for the European Social Forum on My London Diary.

Rosary Crusade of Reparation – Westminster Cathedral

A very different event was taking place outside Westminster Cathedral, where the annual Rosary Crusade Of Reparation procession was preparing to leave on its way to Brompton Oratory.

I talked with some of those taking part and was assured that “the future is latin”. Having masses the people can follow in their own language has not been popular with some traditionalists.

The event started with Bishop Fernando Arêas Rifan from Brazil intoning “Credo in Unum Deum” using the loudspeaker on a police van. The creed was continued by the congregation, led by several Knights of Malta and the traditional Catholic Family Alliance.

More pictures on My London Diary.

NHS Birthday Celebrations

NHS Birthday Celebrations: Today the National Health Service marks its 75th Anniversary, founded thanks to the efforts of the Labour Party and in particular Aneurin Bevan, following on from the 1942 report by Liberal economist William Beveridge which had proposed wide-reaching social reforms to tackle the “five giants” of “Want… Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness” (Idleness meaning of course unemployment.) The pictures in this post come from the 65th anniversary ten years ago today, Friday 5th July 2013.

Beveridge was opposed to means-tested benefits which he stated were unfair on the poor, and although the wartime coalition government set up committees to look at how his reforms could be put into practice they were from the onset opposed by many Conservatives and some on the Labour right.

But Labour stood in the 1945 elections promising to put the proposals into effect, and after their victory passed the National Insurance Act 1946, the National Assistance Act 1948, and the National Health Service Act 1946 and other Acts to do so, founding the UK’s modern welfare state.

Bevan was the wizard who integrated the multifarious per-existing medical services into the single functioning state body of the National Health Service, though he had to make many compromises to do so, working against considerable opposition both political from the Tories and from the medical bodies which were dominated by old men, many with fixed ideas.

The 75 years since then have seen many changes in the NHS, not all for the good, with both Conservative and Labour governments determined both to penny-pinch and bring in private enterprise to profit in various ways from our health service. The last 13 years have been particularly tough for the NHS, with disastrous reforms brought in and cuts which have made it impossible for NHS workers to provide the services and care they desperately want to do.

Covid of course didn’t help – and the failure to provide proper protective equipment, with too many contracts going to cronies who didn’t deliver – and fraudsters – was a real disaster, killing far too many health and other key workers. Despite a magnificent effort by health workers too many died, and the only reward for the huge efforts made by the NHS was claps.

Currently we have a government which refuses to talk sensibly with workers across the health centre, instead simply saying that the below inflation rises it is offering – essentially wage cuts – are fair. It obviously hopes that by provoking strikes and getting its friends in our billionaire owned right-wing press to condemn the strikers for the cancellations, increase in waiting lists and possible deaths it will get the public on its side against the NHS.

Instead we need policies which will engage with the problems the NHS faces after years of underfunding, overwork and shortages. The recently announced workforce plan at least is a plan to do something, though it seems unlikely to prove workable. The shortage of doctors, nurses and other medical staff has been clear almost since the start of the NHS, and certainly critical for many years.

We need to both increase the number of training places and tackle some of the other causes. Private hospitals rely on publicly funded doctors and nurses – and should at least have to pay the training costs for those they employ – although personally I’d prefer to see them being brought into public ownership. As well as poaching staff they also cherry-pick offering care for simpler cases but largely passing back more critical care to the NHS.

There needs to be an end to the expensive and somewhat unreliable use of agency staff, at least by the NHS setting up its own temporary staffing organisation and also by ending payments for work at above normal rates. The NHS also needs to become a much friendlier employer in terms of flexibility of shifts etc.

And of course we need to remove the caps on training for doctors, nurses and other staff, and to provide proper bursaries to cover both fees and maintenance for these vital workers. The proposed ‘apprenticeship’ scheme for doctors seems unworkable as such, but all medical course are already in some part apprenticeships, including some on the job training. Finding the additional mentors needed for more work-based schemes seems an example of cloud-cuckoo land thinking, and the setting up of a two-class system of doctors seems highly undesirable.

Importantly too we need to drastically reduce the bureaucratic workload of all doctors and health staff at all levels. Theoretically the increased use of IT could play a role in this – although the NHS has been disastrously shafted by its IT providers in the past, promising much but delivering mainly greater complexity. So far bringing in IT has increased the amount and time spent in form-filling at the expense of treating patients, partly because the various levels of administration up to the government has seized the opportunity for the greater demands it makes possible.

I was born before the NHS and looking at it in recent years I’ve sometimes wondered if my own death will be due to its stuttering demise. I hope not. But the NHS is certainly not safe in the hands of the Tories, and little that we have so far seen about Labour’s plans give me confidence it will be safe in theirs.

The two events I photographed on the NHS’s 65th Birthday were all concerned with its problems and doubts about its future, The GMB trade union came to Parliament with 3 vintage ambulances saying the NHS Is At Risk, campaigners at Lewisham Hospital celebrated hoping and fighting to keep their busy, successful and much needed hospital open and stop it being sacrificed to meet the disastrous PFI debts of a neighbouring hospital. I’d taken my bike to ride to Lewisham, and made a leisurely ride through Deptford on my way back to Westminster.

At the Ministry of Health, then still on Whitehall, Dr Clive Peedell was about to begin his 65 mile ultra-marathon run to David Cameron’s Witney constituency where he was to ceremonially bury the NHS coffin and launch the National Health Action Party plan by doctors and health professionals to revive the NHS. Their 10-point plan included “policies to restore the duty of the Secretary of State to provide comprehensive NHS care, and return the NHS as the preferred provider of services.”

More about the events on the 65th Birthday of the NHS – from which all the pictures in the post come – are on My London Diary.

Hospital Law Change, Living Wage Protest

On Tuesday 11th March 2014 I attended two protests, the first at Parliament against a change in the law on closing hospitals, and the second calling for a living wage for cleaners at Chelsea College.

Stop Hospital Killer Clause 119 – Parliament

Hospital Law Change, Living Wage Protest

Unite, GMB, the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign and other hospital protest groups protested outside Parliament against Clause 119 inserted to change the law over hospital closures into the Care Bill, which was having its third reading in the House of Commons.

In 2014 the High Court ruled that health minister Jeremy Hunt had acted illegally in proposing a downgrading of maternity and A&E services at Lewisham hospital because the neighbouring Queen Elizabeth Hospital Woolwich was going bust.

So Jeremy Hunt decided to change the law, and inserted Clause 119 into the Care Bill to give the special administrators overseeing an English NHS Trust in financial difficulties powers to close, merge or alter the services at any other hospital to balance the books without any proper consultation or regard to the social and health effects.

It was a measure which went entirely against the whole idea that local people and local GPs would be in control of health services in their own areas, something which had been stated to be at the centre of Tory/Coalition health policies. The local commissioning groups it says will be at the centre of local health provision will have absolutely no say over what happens to the services that they commission when this clause is invoked.

Though many saw these local groups rather as ways to make the continuing process of passing the NHS over to private companies easier than providing any real local control.

Clause 119 was a panic measure drafted in a fit of pique after Health secretary Jeremy Hunt was defeated in his attempts to raid the thriving Lewisham Hospital to meet the huge PFI debts of some other hospitals in South East London. The attempt to close Lewisham with the deterioration in services for the people in the area provides a clear and obvious example of why actions of this kind should remain illegal.

Lewisham’s closures were stopped by powerful local opposition which brought doctors, local councils, Millwall Football Club and the whole local community out onto the streets – and also making donations to enable Hunt to be taken to the courts. And taken again to fight his unsuccessful appeal against the original decision.

The protest on 11th March 2014 began with a period of silence to mark the death early that day of RMT General Secretary Bob Crow. Speakers at the rally included a member of the Shadow health team, other MPs, consultant Jackie Davis of the National Health Action party, Rachael Maskell, Unite Head of Health, and several NHS activists including Jill from Lewisham and Sandra from Charing Cross.

Stop Hospital Killer Clause 119

Pay UAL Cleaners a Living Wage – Chelsea College of Art

A short walk down Millbank, just past Tate Britain, took me to UAL Chelsea College of Arts where GMB and the University of the Arts Students’ Union were calling on the College to ensure that their cleaners, employed by Bouygues Energy & Services, are paid the London Living Wage.

The cleaners were then being paid on the national minimum wage, which for those over 21 was £6.31, less than three-quarters of the London Living Wage, calculated annually by the Greater London Authority, then £8.80 per hour.

The protesters went to call on Vice-Chancellor Nigel Carrington, who after a few minutes came out to talk with them. He told them he thought that they had some good points, but that he did not employ the cleaners and could not grant them the living wage. He also said that he cleaners were paid more then there would be less money to spend on other things, including the student courses and provision.

The protesters responded that many organisations insist that contractors pay the living wage to all employees, and that contracting out of services is simply a way to exploit employees – paying lower rates and giving them worse conditions of employment – while keeping the institutions hands clean.

They were told they could go in to the staff forum meeting so long as they put down their banners, placards and megaphones, and the students decided to do so. The rest of us left.

Pay UAL Cleaners a Living Wage

Visiting Starbucks

I’ve been a coffee drinker most of my life, and there was a time long ago in my late teens when breakfast meant a large mug of black coffee, a cigarette and Miles Davis. And though I gave up smoking when I reached majority (which was 21 back then) I still have the black coffee though now with rather more carbohydrate in muesli and a slice of homemade brown bread. And since my wife and I have rather different musical tastes we listen to the news.

The coffee I drink now is a Fair Trade blend from Traidcraft – they have a range of ground coffees and most are good, though your taste may vary. With a small metal filter that sits on top of a mug its almost as quick as using instant coffee, though I usually have a cup of that (also fairly traded) when I finish writing these posts in the morning.

*Journalist Polly Toynbee (right) was among the protesters*

Back in the last century when I was making long walks around London, often in the suburbs, on the winter days I preferred I always took with me a Thermos of strong black coffee. Back then coffee shops were rare, and if you could find it, coffee bought on the streets unreliable. My top priority back then in choosing a camera bag was whether I could fit the flask in.

But since then I have occasionally bought a coffee (though it pains me to pay £3 for something I could make better at home for 30p), but have avoided Starbucks – because they don’t pay their taxes. Of course the are not unique in this, but they are one of the best known of tax avoiders, and had then paid no tax in the UK since 2009. So when I joined the longish queue inside the Conduit Street Starbucks on Saturday 8th December it was I think my first time, and I was rather hoping that the protest would begin before I reached the counter.

“As noon approached, there were more protesters and photographers standing around inside the store, as well as some seated drinking coffee. Around a minute after noon, one of the protesters got up and started the protest, reading out a lengthy document about Starbucks’ failure to pay tax, and how the amounts that companies including them were avoiding paying were around five times the total of the cuts in services so far made by the coalition government. She announced that they were setting up a crèche inside this branch to compensate for all those and other family services that the government had closed.”

“The protest continued with more speeches and some chanting of slogans calling on Starbucks to pay up. After around 10 minutes a police officer came into the branch and wrongly accused the protesters of behaving in an intimidatory manner towards the staff and customers, which they clearly had not. Nor had they been asked to leave by the store manager. But they were told this was a disorderly protest despite this, and threatened with arrest if they stayed, although at no point did he make clear under what law they might be arrested.”

“The protesters allege that Starbucks uses a whole number of tricks to avoid paying tax. One is to use a Starbucks company in a tax haven to lend them the money to fund their UK operations at a rate 4% above the LIBOR rate – the excessive interest costs the UK business but makes fat profits for them in the tax haven. Another is to buy their coffee beans at high prices from a subsidiary in Switzerland, which pays only 5% tax on them rather than the 24% they would pay in corporation tax in the UK. They also pay 6% of their total sales as a ‘royalty’ to their Dutch company – and they have a secret low rate tax deal with the government in the Netherlands.”

“Several of the speakers talked about the real hardships being faced particularly by women and the disabled in the UK because of the cuts in services. The losses in tax through tricks like those they say are used by Starbucks – Corporate Tax Avoidance – costs the UK £70 billion, which they compare to the benefit cuts of £15 billion.”

I left with the protesters after the police threats, when they continued to protest with a large and noisy crowd who had been unable to get inside, and walked the short distance to Vigo Street, where another protest was taking place inside and outside the Starbucks branch there, and I took more pictures through the large windows and on the street outside.

Later I went to another Starbucks protest at the Euston Road branch, a part of the UK Uncut Day of Action against Starbucks arranged by the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). I found a small group of UK Uncut supporters at the meeting point but there was no sign of the LRC, and after 15 minutes the action began without them as a dozen or so people walked into the branch, took out a poster and began the action. By the time the LRC arrived the doors were locked and they protested outside. A couple of police officers then got out of their van on the opposite side of the road and walked across and were admitted into the coffee shop. There were a few minutes of polite and friendly conversation and the protesters then walked out to join those protesting outside.

The protesters point out that Costa Coffee who have a lower annual turnover than Starbucks in the UK were paying each year “several times per year what Starbucks are offering to cover several years of dubiously legal tax avoidance. Starbucks have avoided paying perhaps ten times what they are now offering.”

Now its time for a coffee.