save our surgeries

Decent Housing & Saving the NHS: Ten years ago today there were protests over two of the major issues which still face our incoming government today, but which I have no faith in them facing or improving.

Focus E15 March for Decent Housing – East Ham

The housing crisis largely stems from successive governments, largely starting with Thatcher prioritising private ownership above all other ways of providing homes for people. Thatcher gave away publicly owned social housing to tenants at knock-down prices and refused to allow councils to try to replace what had been lost.

Government housing policy since have been obsessed with the idea of the “housing ladder“; housing isn’t – or shouldn’t be – about ladders to increase personal wealth but about homes, and the ladder is very definitely that in “Pull up the ladder, Jack! We’re all right” and sod those left at the bottom below.

Private renting has also moved from being a way in which owners of properties derived and income from properties they owned, to a scheme where more and more tenants are paying high rents to buy properties for their landlords. It’s a crazy system and one which should be stopped.

We have also seen a huge growth in properties which are largely built to be bought as investments, particularly by overseas investors, often being left unoccupied for all or most of the time. Clearly this needs to be made economically nonviable, not only because of the effects it has on the shortage of homes, but also because of the way it is seriously distorting the development of our cities.

Second (and multiple) home ownership is also an increasing problem, particularly in the more desirable rural areas of the country and we need to find ways to reduce the impact of this, perhaps through taxation to provide a fund to build social housing in these areas.

But the basic solution to the country’s housing problems is simple. Build more social housing. Any government which comes in without this as the main thurst of their housing policy will fail to improve the housing crisis.

As I wrote ten years ago “We need a government – national and local – determined to act for the benefit of ordinary people, making a real attempt to build much more social housing, removing the huge subsidies currently given to private landlords through housing benefit, legislating to provide fair contracts for private tenants and give them decent security – and criminalising unfair evictions.” We haven’t got one.

You can read more about the march in East Ham organised by Focus E15 Mums to demand secure housing, free from the threats of eviction, soaring private rents, rogue landlords, letting agents illegally discriminating, insecure tenancies and unfair bedroom tax and benefit cap on My London Diary.

The march was supported by housing protest groups from Hackney, Brent and from South London and organisations including BARAC and TUSC. I was surprised to see the popular support it received on the streets with even some motorists stopping their cars to put money in the collection buckets.

More at Focus E15 March for Decent Housing.

Save our Surgeries on NHS 66th Birthday – Whitechapel

The National Health Service began on 5th July 1948 and on its 66th anniversary the Save our Surgeries campaign against health cuts in Tower Hamlets marched to Hackney in a show of opposition to health cuts, surgery closures and NHS privatisation.

The setting up of the NHS was opposed by the Conservatives and they and the doctors and dentists associations forced many compromises which led to it being a less than comprehensive health service, though still a great national achievement and one which for we are justly proud of.

Many doctors made – and some still make – large incomes from private practice and fought to keep these rather than back a universal system wholeheartedly. But in more recent years a huge private medical system has grown up alongside the NHS and more and more people are covered through work schemes providing private medical cover.

This private system has grown parasitically on the state medical system and all governments over the past thirty or more years have found ways to syphon off money to it, by allowing it to tender for various more straightforward aspects of NHS services.

Successive governments have also created huge administrative burdens on the NHS, setting up new levels of administrators which oversee and to some extent override clinical decisions. But financially the most disastrous impact on the NHS comes from the various PFI agreements, largely made under New Labour, which enabled the building of new hospitals without the costs appearing in the government’s debts, but tied the trusts running the hospitals into huge debt repayments and the kind of service contracts that make replacing a light bulb cost £1200.

General practice was set up in 1948 under doctor-owned surgeries but increasingly these are now owned by healthcare companies after New Labour in 2007 allowed larger companies to buy them up. Operose Health, part of US healthcare giant Centene Corporation in 2022 was running 70 practices and a BBC Panorama report showed they were only employing half as many doctors as average practices, while employing six times as many physician associates (who have only 2 years of medical training rather than the 10 for GPs) who were being inadequately supervised.

Unfortunately Labour policy appears to be to increase the reliance – and transfer of funds to the private sector rather than reduce it. You can read more about their position in the 2023 Tribune article Labour’s Love Affair with Private Healthcare by Tom Blackburn, which aslo sets out clearly the financial links of Wes Streeting to private healthcare. And of course he is not the only Labour MP with a financial interest. Labour might sort out a few of the problems but the creeping privatisation seems sure to accelerate.

The protest in East London was over changes in the funding of NHS surgeries which have failed to take into account the extra needs of deprived innner-city areas and were expected to lead the closure of some surgeries as well as other NHS cuts, particularly those happening because of the huge PFI debt from the new Royal London Hospital.

There was a brief rally in Altab Ali Park before the march with speeches by local politicians and health campaigners before the crowd of several hundreds set off down the Whitechapel Road on its way to London Fields in Hackney where it was to meet up with other protesters for a larger rally. But I left the march at Whitechapel Station.

More at

NHS and Housing Marches in East London, 2014

Save our Surgeries on NHS 66th Birthday – Whitechapel

The National Health Service came into operation in the UK on 5th July 1948, established by a Labour government despite considerable opposition from the Conservative Party and some doctors’ organisations. In most recent years there have been protests marking the anniversary against the increasing privatisation of the system, large parts of which have now moved away from being provided by the NHS itself to being provided by private companies, motivated by profits rather than public service.

The opposition to Aneurin Bevan’s plans in the 1940s led to a number of compromises, but the NHS was launched with three basic principles – to meet the needs of everyone, to be free at the point of delivery, and to be based on clinical need rather than the ability to pay. Although those principles remain, there are some respects in which they are not entirely met.

Prescription charges – currently £9.35 per item – were introduced in England in 1952, removed from 1965-8 but then re-introduced, remaining free for under-16s and over 60s, with some other exceptions. And we pay too for NHS dentistry, and many people find it impossible to get dental treatment under the NHS as no practice in their area will take them on.

Access to GPs and other services at surgeries around the country is also much more difficult for many, and it can be difficult or impossible to get an appointment in a timely fashion. Many services dealing with relatively minor medical issues are no longer available, and people have either to pay for them or continue to suffer. Some of these problems have been exacerbated by the take-over of many surgeries by healthcare companies as a part of the creeping privatisation of the NHS.

Twenty years ago, when I had a hospital stay of several weeks, hospitals have been forced to put some essential services – such as cleaning – out to tender, resulting in two of the three hospitals I was in being in filthy conditions.

In 2014, cuts in funding were threatening the closure of surgeries in Tower Hamlets as they failed to pay for the extra needs faced in inner-city areas. Local hospitals were also threatened, particularly because of the huge debts from PFI contracts for the building an management of new hospitals. The deals with the private sector made under New Labour have left the NHS with impossible levels of debt – and the companies involved with high profits, continuing in some cases for another 20 or 30 years.

After a short rally with speakers including the local mayor and MP as well as health campaigners including local GPs, there was a march by several hundreds to a larger rally in Hackney. But I left the marchers shortly after it passed Whitechapel Station.

Save our Surgeries on NHS 66th Birthday

Focus E15 March for Decent Housing – East Ham

Earlier I had been to photograph a march through East Ham and Upton Park in a protest over the terrible state of housing in England, and in London in particular. The event had been organised by Focus E15 Mums with the support of Fight Racism Fight Imperialism, but included many other protest groups from Hackney, from Brent and from South London on the march as well as groups including BARAC, TUSC and others.

They included a number of groups who had stood up and fought for their own housing against councils lacking in principles and compassion who had suggested they might move to privately rented accommodation in Birmingham, Hastings, Wales or further afield, but who had stood their ground and made some progress like the Focus E15 Mothers.

Many London councils are still involved with developers in demolishing social housing and replacing it with houses and flats mainly for high market rents or sale, with some “affordable” properties at rates few can afford, and with much lower numbers than before at social rents. Many former residents are forced to move to outer areas of London in what campaigners call ‘social cleansing’.

Families that councils are under a statutory duty to find homes for are often housed in single rooms or flats, sometimes infected by insects or with terrible damp, often far from their jobs or schools. Councils are under huge pressure and funding cuts sometimes make it impossible for them to find suitable properties, though often there are empty properties which could be used, particularly on estates such as the Caarpenters Estate in Stratford which Newham had been emptying since around 2004 in the hope of redeveloping.

Government policies and subsidies for housing have largely been a way of subsiding private landlords, and we need national and local governments – as I worte ” determined to act for the benefit of ordinary people, making a real attempt to build much more social housing, removing the huge subsidies currently given to private landlords through housing benefit, legislating to provide fair contracts for private tenants and give them decent security – and criminalising unfair evictions.” Housing really is a national emergency and needs emergency measaures.

Much of what is currently being built in London is sold to overseas buyers as investments and often left empty as its owners profit from the rapid rises in property values in London. We need to make this either illegal or to impose heavy duties on overseas owners including increased council taxes on empty properties.

The march attracted considerable attention on the streets of East London, and as I note several motorists stopped to put money in the collection buckets – something I’ve never seen happen before. I left the march as it reached East Ham Station to go to the NHS event.

Focus E15 March for Decent Housing