Save London hospitals demo
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Saturday 18 May
Save London Hospitals – No to privatisation
Assemble 12 noon in Jubilee Gardens, Belvedere Road , SE1 nr Waterloo Station
March to the Department of Health & ParliamentA chance to distribute the leaflets left over from the Whittington hospital demonstration in March.
You beat me to it Adam.I was, however , also going to add a suggested theme for a leaflet based on recent SOYMB.http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-demise-of-nhs.htmlRather than the standard fare of save the NHS our leaflet should use its existence as a springboard to raise the issue of free access and allocation of resources based on needs rather than the ability to pay. Just a thought.
There were two of us giving out leaflets at the start in Waterloo. To start with there were nothing but Trotskyist stalls and paper sellers, including surprisingly quite a few from "Socialist Appeal", the ex-Militant Tendency group that wanted to stay boring from within the Labour Party ("We stand for a Labour government on a socialist programme", said their leaflet echoing the 1980s). It also appears that the other ex-Militant sect, calling themselves SPEW, are trying to occupy the place previously held by the now discredited SWP. In any event, they were handing out "Stop the Cuts" placards with their name across the top and inviting people to join by texting "Join" to them (actually, the SWP never went that far).Eventually the trade union batallions arrived (Unite, GMB, Unison) and the demonstration took on a more serious character. In fact, it was more of a trade union demonstration than the Mayday event in London as there were actually 50 or so union members walking behind their union banner.Also present were Labour Party and Green Party branches and one leafletter from Left Unity and another from the National Health Action Party (whose leaflet said they will be contesting next year's Euroelections). LU will have to do better than that if they're not going to be swamped by the Trots. Sutton and Cheam Labour Party had a banner proclaiming "For Socialism". Probably something else left over from the 1980s but somebody needs to tell they that they are off-message and should change this to "For Responsible Capitalism".
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