In the second year of the coalition, Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill, one of the biggest top down reforms of the NHS since its inception in 1948, rolled it’s way through the commons, and is most of the way through the Lords, delayed only by Lansley’s refusal to release a register of risks created by the health bill. In 2008, Cameron had said there would be an end to top down reforms of the NHS.

The bill is opposed by all the medical professionals, with the BMA recently reiterating it’s complete opposition to it. 38 Degrees’ petition stands at 495,000 signatures. “Andrew Lansley – Greedy, Andrew Lansley – Tosser” became a regular chant on demos, as MC NextGen’s Lansley rap racked up over 450,000 views on YouTube. This song remains one of the most insightful criticisms of both Lansley and the health bill.

Only private healthcare companies like the bill, but Lansley repeatedly says this is not about privatisation, then over christmas announces that the health bill will allow NHS hospitals to sell up to 49% of bedspace to private patients in order to raise revenue.

Meanwhile, Lansley is presiding over “efficiency savings” of £20bn over 5 years from the most efficient healthcare system in the world . With cuts being made, how many hospitals will be able to operate without selling more and more bedspace to private patients who are paying to be seen more quickly?

Before the election Cameron said “we’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS” and then they have done exactly the opposite. 4 out of 5 doctors say those cuts are affecting patient care.

So for accelerating the job begun by Labour when they created foundation hospitals, to seek to run down the NHS in preparation for privatisation, to eventually remove and destroy one of the greatest achievements of the UK, a universal healthcare system accessible regardless of wealth, which is ranked amongst the best in the world, and swap it for a US system which will cost us all more, for worse care, I am nominating Andrew Lansley for dick of the year.

The Health and Social Care Bill will pass into law and the process of dismantling our public health system will advance again. It would be easy at this point to retreat into despair and defeatism. To think of all the effort we have put into our campaigns over the last few weeks and months and to conclude that we tried our best but we lost. To decide to give up or move onto the next fight. We won on forests, failed on higher education and the NHS, what’s next?

It would be easy to damn the Liberal Democrats but gloat over how they will at least get kicked out in three years. But to be replaced with whom? With Labour? Who support cuts, just a little slower. Who gave us foundation hospitals, supported the internal market in the NHS (not to mention academies and fees, if we want to broaden our scope a little) and believe in the mantra of ‘choice’ and ‘modernisation’ just as much as the Tories and Lib Dems.

With the Greens? or the Socialist Party? (or whichever other far-left electoralist outfit you prefer.) Well that might be nice to imagine. And if it happened they might restore the NHS, they might bring our public services back under public ownership and under some sort of public control. But does anyone really think that’s going to happen? Two or three MPs? maybe. Throw in the LRC and we might get a dozen MPs we could consider to be socialists (if we’re lucky). That’s hardly the mass representation that could legislate to nationalise the towering heights of the economy, though. And even then, we still have to sit through three more years of Tory-Lib Dem government before we even get that far. Who knows what of our public economy will even be left at that point for our parliamentary leaders to speechify upon?

It would be easy to be despondent. But we should not be. We don’t have to wait three years to fight back, we don’t have to accept that we lost and we don’t have to delegate our struggle to someone else to take action on our behalf. But we have to learn the lessons of how we reached this point. We have to build and rebuild our community and grassroots organisation. We need action which is more than symbolic and which cannot be easily co-opted or dismissed.

People are upset, and they are angry, and they are actively looking for new ways to engage with politics to build a genuinely democratic economy, where we don’t only get to vote once every few years, and where we don’t have to pin our hopes on a room full of unelected aristocrats, bishops, business people an ex-politicians to deign to save the institutions we all want to protect.

I may have some reservations about the Occupy X actions happening across the US (and now coming here), but the fact that they are enduring, and spreading does tell us that people are willing to do something more than traditional party politics, that people are fed up of waiting for others to take action and that there is a desire to change the whole system, not just the people at the top. But as Sophie pointed out on this blog, and several people explained on libcom, it needs to go much further than occupying parks.

Mubarak didn’t lose power in Egypt because people sat around in Tahrir Square, much as that seems to have become the dominant narrative amongst some, he fell because of a sustained and coordinated campaign of direct action. Yes, of occupations and public protest, but also of thousands of workers striking and shutting down transport and production across the country.

The general assemblies in Greece prior to the vote on the last bailout package may have garnered all the media attention, but Greek workers didn’t give up once that vote passed. Two weeks ago workers occupied seven government ministries as representative of the troika (the ECB, the EC and the IMF) were due to conduct an inspection of how the austerity measures were being implemented. Today, workers occupied the finance ministry as the start of a nine day strike and “hung a banner reading ‘Occupation’ from the roof of the eight-story building and hoisted black flags around the roof”.

On the 9th of November we will see a national demonstration against fees and privatisation in higher education. On November 30th we will see the largest coordinated strike action in this country in decades. These events give us scope to build a real resistance. They will not be enough on their own, but they are a start.

We must avoid any retreat into defeatism, or a return to tactics that have failed, and instead escalate our response if we are to have any hope of protecting our public services and building the sustainable, democratic society we desire. The power to do so lies in our hands, if we can learn the lessons of today’s set back.

I’m delighted we’re meeting here in Sheffield.

Did you know that Green Councillors have held seats in this city centre ward for seven years now?

Yesterday I was given a tour of the area and visited two schemes they’re supporting to help sustainably strengthen the local economy.

Sheffield Renewables promotes the development of renewable energy and is run by and for local people.

And Regather is a co-op that gets local traders together, to exchange ideas and services and kick-start local projects.

These are exactly the kind of forward thinking local schemes that the Green Party wants to see everywhere – not just in Sheffield.

And our hard working Green Councillors are not resting with that – they are pressing the council to protect Sure Start centres, to invest more in renewable energy and bring in a city-wide “20′s plenty” speed limit.

These are practical, positive measures which don’t get political backing without Green Councillors.

It was clear from my tour yesterday that Councillors Rob Murphy and Jillian Creasy are held in high regard by local residents.

And it showed this year when the voters in this ward ignored Labour’s vocal city-wide campaign, and chose Jillian to be their Councillor again. Well done Jillian – keep up the great work!

And of course there’s another reason why it’s significant that we’re meeting in Sheffield.

This is the city where LibDem leader Nick Clegg has his Parliamentary seat.

Only 16 months ago before the General Election his popularity was at an all-time high.

Isn’t it amazing how quickly the gloss came off?

How quickly the ‘I agree with Nick’ t-shirts came off too.

As the LibDem leadership showed their true colours, and their coalition Government policies began to bite, the extent of their betrayal of voters became clear.

And while some LibDem MPs were selling their political souls, many more rank and file supporters were shocked by what LibDems actually did when given a taste of power.

In the last year we’ve seen former LibDem voters, members, activists and councillors realise that there is an alternative which won’t sell out.
There is a progressive party of principle  - we’ve seen them join the Green Party.

Nick – I think you’ll find – they now agree with us.

Public Services

Of course, it’s no surprise that voters and activists are deserting the LibDems

and that Green candidates are beating LibDems in election after election across the country.

As soon as they settled for fancy job titles and a second class referendum they turned into little more than eager juniors fetching and carrying for their boarding school seniors.

NHS

Did they really believe the Tories when they promised no major changes to the NHS?

After Andrew Lansley had been plotting upheaval for years?

Do they really think they’ve achieved much with a fresh consultation and tweaks to the plans?

Make no mistake, the Tory-LibDem proposals threaten the founding principles of our National Health Service and they do this by shifting more responsibility and delivery of healthcare out of public hands.

The Secretary of State for Health would no longer have to guarantee health services are provided across the country -
he would only have to ‘promote’ universal coverage.

But what does ‘promote’ actually mean?

A government billboard saying ”Tesco dentists, coming here soon; every filling helps”.

The Government’s plan is one where private companies provide services commissioned by GPs, paid for by taxpayers.

But the British Medical Association is clear: most GPs want to focus on treating patients not commissioning.

Most doctors aren’t interested in an internal market competing for sickness contracts, they believe in the NHS as a co-operative of caring professionals, pulling together.

This spirit was eroded by successive Tory and Labour governments as hospitals became trusts bidding against one another.

Suddenly a clever way to make a hip operation cheaper became a commercial advantage to guard, not an innovation to share.

As private businesses get involved cooperation suffers.

Fundamentally, businesses care about profit not people, about wealth and not health.

They’ll bid for the services that are easiest to run or squeeze money from – not expensive care which is hard to deliver.

What’s left of the NHS will be starved of the money private companies cream off.

Why don’t other parties ever learn that farming things out to the private sector doesn’t save money but does compromise quality?

We saw it when Labour promoted PFI for hospitals and schools, the Green Party warned that this would compromise quality.

We said it would put us in debt to private companies for decades –  and a recent report by the Treasury Select Committee agreed.

But a few MPs realising is not enough, we need them all to learn the lessons of past failures:
NHS privatisation is a bad deal for the patient and a bad deal for the taxpayer.

It does matter who delivers your care – not just what it costs.

We have a clear message for the Government:

We’re proud of the NHS.

We still believe in healthcare free at the point of delivery. We still believe in healthcare based on clinical need, not ability to pay. We haven’t stopped believing in healthcare to meet the needs of everyone, and we reject NHS privatisation.

With so many crucial public services being axed across the country, it’s hard to foresee the extent of the devastation, but it’s clear who will suffer most - the elderly, low-income families, carers, refugees, disabled people.

When David Cameron says we should ‘do more with less?’ - does he really mean we should ‘do less for those with least’?

If we don’t stand up for the vulnerable, society as a whole loses out.

Ignoring people’s problems today only stores up greater problems for tomorrow.

Closing day centres for the elderly will increase hospital admission costs; ending HIV prevention schemes will increase chronic illness care costs;
axing employment services for young people will increase benefit costs.

In every case a short term financial gain means long term human, social and economic pain.

Young People and Jobs

Young people in particular are affected by these cuts.

The Government claims that these cuts are necessary for the future of our children – the future of whose children exactly?

All but the most privileged will see their future opportunities harmed by these cuts.

According to Save the Children, 1.6 million children in the UK are living in severe poverty.

The numbers of young people going into care are increasing and child protection referrals are rising dramatically.

What is the Government doing to support the most vulnerable children and families?

They have slashed the grants to local councils that paid for vital children’s and youth services.

Across the country, counselling and support services that have helped thousands of troubled families are facing closure.

And it’s not just the most vulnerable young people who are let down by these cuts.

Scrapping the Educational Maintenance Allowance and the trebling of university tuition fees makes it harder for millions of young people to access education.

With the three old parties constantly letting them down, is it any wonder that so many young people feel down about the future?

The Government is forcing them to fend for themselves in a world with dwindling job prospects, spiralling education costs, widening gap between rich and poor, and no support for young people in crisis.

Young people see the promise of a bright future snatched away by the very generation of politicians who benefited from free university education.

They find themselves being punished for the mistakes of greedy bankers and foolish politicians. It’s shameful.

Young people would not have fared much better with Labour in power -
tuition fees were their idea and cuts were always part of their plan.

Labour had some vision for young people but long ago lost its way - a decade of power - their record of economic disarray, their political principles threadbare, their vision lost.

And that’s why we continue to win support from former Labour activists who value our strong commitment to social justice and protecting public services - people like former Labour Councillor Liz Campbell who is now our first Green Councillor in Milton Keynes.

Welcome Liz, you are among friends who share your values.

You are in a party that has a vision for a better future.

We say the future of our country depends on young people

We say the future of our economy depends on young people

We say there is an alternative. We can and must invest in young people.

So what should the Government be doing to move forward?

Greens believe that the Government should focus on building a new kind of economy with skilled, lasting jobs.

We could create a million new jobs in the UK in areas such as public transport, renewable energy, home insulation, local agriculture and local manufacturing.

With so much work to be done, it makes sense for Government to invest in the future and invest in people.

And at a local level Green Councillors are showing what can be done.

Council after council is putting in place Green Party policies to strengthen their local economy.

In Brighton, Norfolk, Reading and here in Sheffield councils are following the Kirklees example and installing solar panels on council properties.

By doing this we reduce carbon emissions, create an income stream for the council and create new skilled local jobs.

Energy

By doing this we also take action to cut our addiction to oil.

Action that needs to be happening on a national level.

So why isn’t the Government investing in these long-term solutions?

It’s because the Conservatives and LibDems are dinosaurs still fixated on fossil fuels.

They plan to go ahead with deep-sea oil drilling off the west coast of Scotland, despite the lesson of the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

So what alternatives does LibDem Energy Secretary Chris Huhne have planned?

Despite LibDem pre-election promises, Mr Huhne is pressing ahead with plans for a new generation of nuclear power stations.

This Uranium U-turn is supposedly OK because they’re now promising there will be no Government subsidies.

But what about the hundreds of millions of pounds worth of hidden Government subsidies that are a vital to the plans?

So Mr Huhne, who is picking up the £70 billion tab to decommission the existing nuclear reactors?

And what’s the bill going to be to clean up after your new ones?

Come to think of it, have you sorted out where you’re putting the waste for the next, oh, 10,000 years?

And with the world’s most advanced nuclear country, Japan, unable to guarantee the safety of its nuclear reactors, or even to clean up properly after a disaster, explain to us Mr Huhne why you’re prioritising nuclear power over safer, cheaper, cleaner, renewable solutions?

Environment

And of course the LibDems aren’t just unreliable on nuclear energy.

They’ve proven spineless on this country’s Weapons of Mass Destruction.

They’ve joined in the shameless hypocrisy of lecturing others on nuclear proliferation while the Conservatives plan to waste an estimated £100 billion of public money feeding the cold war monster of Trident.

I recently attended the launch of a new film, Countdown to Zero.

The film shows just how recently and how frighteningly close we’ve come to nuclear war.

With 9 countries holding nuclear weapons and 40 capable of building them, we urgently need international commitment to the ‘Global Zero’ programme to reduce and eliminate all nuclear weapons.

The consequences of a country or terrorist group using a nuclear weapon are too devastating to contemplate.

And the trillion dollars spent globally on nuclear weapons each decade is an obscenity when people are dying of malnutrition, disease and poverty that could be prevented with just a fraction of that money.

Our Government should follow the lead of South Africa and disarm our nuclear weapons and show by our actions that they have no place in our or any country.

But where we need moral leadership from this Government we too often see corporate interests winning out.

Take the latest damaging proposals to change the planning system, which threaten to bulldoze swathes of countryside.

Far from helping to revitalise town centres or sustain rural communities, they’re just making it easier for developers to cash in on greenfield sites.

That’s not a plan, that’s another recipe for disaster. We agree with the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the National Trust and the scores of other groups campaigning against these plans - we must protect the natural environment for generations to come.

We know that there’s strong public support for our position on defending the countryside and green belt.

In July I visited Brixworth, near Northampton, where party members are backing a residents’ campaign against a large greenfield development just outside the town.

In Hullbridge in Essex, party members strongly opposed Conservative plans to build on the green belt.

This commitment helped win our first seat on the district council in 2010 and, in June this year, Diane Hoy was elected as our second Green Councillor in a by-election.

Far from opening the gate to greenfield destruction, the Government should be taking steps to protect the natural environment and wildlife.

But the Government has a habit of disappointing us - they plan to press ahead with their badger cull despite an independent scientific review saying it will fail to control the spread of TB in cattle.

The evidence is that 80% of bovine TB is spread between cattle in over-crowded conditions.

Rather than wasting money on a cruel and ineffective cull the Government should focus on real solutions: restricting the transport of cattle and ending intensive farming of animals.

But this Government has a very weak record on protecting animals.

And now they are threatening to loosen the regulations on animal experiments in ways that would massively increase experimentation, allow experiments on great apes, and permit the infliction of severe and prolonged pain.

In a civilised society this approach cannot be right - especially when there are more reliable alternatives to animal experiments.

Gaining Support

Whether it’s on the NHS, social care, the economy, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, the environment or animal protection -
the LibDems are letting down the people who supported them.
With all the broken promises we’ve seen in recent years from Labour, the Conservatives and LibDems it’s no wonder so many people are disillusioned with politics.

But many activists from other parties have realised that there is still a party that stands by its principles and makes a difference.

Up and down the country we’re seeing examples of former activists and councillors switching their allegiance to the Green Party.

Take Alan Weeks in the New Forest – now our first Green County Councillor in Hampshire.

He joined the Green Party after the LibDems let him down on tuition fees, public services and renewable energy.

Or Councillor Howard Allen in Solihull.

He joined the Green Party because he could rely on us, not the LibDems, to campaign with him to protect green spaces and oppose a major supermarket development.

Or Alexis Rowell, who was the Sustainability Champion in Camden when he was a LibDem Councillor.

He left the LibDems following their nuclear u-turn and their poor record in government on the environment and social justice.

And in just a few days time we have an opportunity to get Alexis elected as a Green Councillor in a crucial and winnable by-election in Camden.

To Alan, Howard, Alexis and ex-LibDem members across the country we say: welcome to the Green Party.

You want to protect public services and the natural environment, you want to oppose nuclear power and restrain the power of big business,
you don’t just value your principles but value sticking with them - well, you are in the right place – and we won’t let you down.

In May’s elections we gained seats from the LibDems in Bristol, Mid-Suffolk, Hove, Norwich, Stafford, St Albans and Totnes.

But we also made gains from the Conservatives and Labour.

And we held the vast majority of seats we were defending – in many cases against strong challenges from other parties.

I’d like to congratulate everyone who was elected this year - but let me highlight just some of those advances.

We won Green seats for the first time in St Albans, Stafford, West Norfolk and Bolsover.

We gained Council group status in Bristol, Reading, Reigate, South Hams and Solihull.

The Green and Independent Group on Mid Suffolk District Council became the official opposition.

Greens have Cabinet seats on Lancaster City Council and hold the balance of power in a number of other authorities.

And we’re using these positions to good effect.

Take Bristol, where we have two councillors who hold the balance of power.

There our Green Councillors are playing a leading role in pressing for public transport improvements and have forced the LibDems to backtrack on a plan to sell off green spaces.

Look at Reading, where again, just two councillors hold the balance of power.

I visited them last month and was very impressed by the work they’ve done in just a hundred days.

They are doing everything they can to limit cuts to social services and have secured reinstatement of concessionary bus fares for people with disabilities and their carers.

Elected Greens make an impact even in small numbers.

But of course it’s better when those small groups become big groups.

And this year our bigger council groups have been battling hard to hold or grow their strength. Norwich has grown to 15 councillors,
but I have heard a rumour that one local party did even better.

Yes, Brighton made history yet again,
swelling their ranks to 23 Green councillors and becoming the first Green-run council in the country.

After just four months in power our Green administration in Brighton is having a big impact.

Greens are bringing in a Living Wage for all council workers in Brighton.

They are working with local partners to create new apprenticeship opportunities.

And they are bringing in radical plans to upgrade pedestrian and cycle routes to promote road safety, good air quality and sustainable transport.

It’s a hard time for local government but our Green Councillors across the country are making us proud.

Looking Ahead

That’s why your work is so important.

That’s why it’s crucial that we get more Greens elected in more places.

We can show there are ways to limit the damage of government cuts, ways to protect services and put in place Green policies that improve quality of life and local economies.

For those of you with local elections in 2012, I know you will already be selecting candidates and planning campaigns.

It’s crucial that you get out there into your target wards to campaign on local issues, visit residents and deliver newsletters.

We know that, with strong year-round campaigning, Greens make advances across the country, in rural and urban areas alike.

And it’s not just local council elections next year.

We have the important election for Mayor of London and the vital fight for London Assembly seats.

In the eleven years that we’ve held Assembly seats, our Assembly Members have been a strong voice for social justice and environmental protection in our capital.

They’ve secured real improvements in road safety, cycling routes and home energy schemes.

And of course, Darren Johnson and Jenny Jones were the first politicians to successfully argue for a Living Wage - a policy now spreading across the country as Green Councillors and others follow their example and help people on low incomes make ends meet.

This one example shows the national significance of the election in London in May.

In Jenny Jones we have a principled and distinctive candidate for Mayor of London - someone with a proud record of challenging the Metropolitan Police on a range of issues, from phone hacking to the unlawful killing of Ian Tomlinson.

Jenny, Darren and all our candidates in London – you have our support.

But of course they need more than just moral support.

They need practical help from members across London and beyond to secure and increase the Green Party’s influence at City Hall.

They need help delivering leaflets and campaigning across the capital from now through to May. In London you are probably already gearing up to help.

But if you are from outside London and don’t have your own local elections in May, why not spend a couple of days in the capital assisting our campaign?

Go find the London Green Party stall during conference to offer your help.

And don’t forget the Camden by-election this Thursday.

It’s a ward where we already hold one seat. Winning a second would give us a group on Camden Council and boost our London Assembly campaign.

If you can visit between now and Thursday please offer your help to Camden – and if you are there on Wednesday I’ll hopefully see you on the campaign trail.

Conclusion

Conference, as ever it’s great to catch up with members from around the country.

I’ve met plenty of new members attending their first conference - in fact, our membership has risen by over a thousand since the last conference in February.

And of course I’ve spoken to lots of familiar faces too, it’s inspiring to hear your stories,  your successes and your determination to make a difference.

We are all working hard across the country to advance the Green cause, whether it’s on by-election campaigns, community initiatives or local fights against the cuts. We know that society and the planet need us to fight for a better future.

Often these fights are tough and the odds are stacked against us but we know that, with determined skilled campaigning and by pulling together we can often win against the odds.

And it’s not easy work. So let’s thank everyone who has helped our cause over the last year – whether volunteers or staff, whether at local, regional or national level.

By working together we can continue to attract more people to our cause.

That’s something we can all do - asking our friends, our family, our colleagues, people we meet on the doorstep - to join the party, to help us grow and expand our influence.

Friends, this is not an easy time to win local campaigns or influence local councils - but it’s a time when our influence is greatly needed.

To support the vulnerable, to save the NHS, to create a fairer future, and to protect the natural environment - we need strong Green voices more than ever before in local communities and council chambers around the country.

And with your hard work, persuading more people to join us, we will build a bigger movement for change, 

And we can, and we will, make a difference.

Imagine if the same thinking informed the provision of, say education, or transport – how much closer we would be to the kind of country we would want to live in?

Faced with the current proposed upheavals to the service, the response of the Left, the general public and the healthcare professions has been near unanimously conservative – essentially we have demanded that things stay more or less as they are, and that more money should continue to be invested in the service as the population ages. Indeed the latest Scottish Green Party manifesto falls within this consensus, and whilst it says nothing that I would particularly disagree with, I wonder if we couldn’t articulate a more radical vision for how to improve the nation’s health?

The role of pharmacy strikes me as the orthodoxy in greatest need of upset. The public have a good understanding of the problems that privatised healthcare would cause, and yet the damaging effects of the privatised pharmacy are largely overlooked. The drug companies receive 20 billion pounds per year from the NHS, and behave as ethically as you would expect from any other vast corporation – which is to say they reinvest some of that money in skewing research, distorting clinical judgements and applying marketing to a process which is meant to be scientific – all to the detriment of patient care.

The visible part of this effect is drug reps, a tier of highly-paid professionals whose job it is to travel between hospitals and surgeries making the case for certain drugs. The drugs promoted will always be recent patents, and they will always be expensive. No negative findings that may have arisen from trials will be discussed, and the talk will be tailored to exploit the audience‘s ignorance; as they know fine well that junior doctors are not going to be familiar with all of the literature in a specific area, they can get away with much fuzzier science than they could with an audience of specialists. The freebies that accompany these talks have been reigned in in recent years, but the wards remain awash with branded pens and mugs, whilst in the developing world doctors are still offered formalised rewards for set numbers of prescriptions. Kickbacks, essentially. And this is only the visible part of the spectrum – far more pernicious is the way in which these companies distort research priorities and interfere with the peer review process. Because all research they fund must end in a patented pill, this means that;

* complexity is valued over simplicity (evidence suggests that vitamin D deficiency may have a role in causing various common Scottish diseases, however as Vitamin D is a generic product the research would not be profitable, and has therefore not yet been done)
* pharmaceutical solutions are promoted to the near-exclusion of other means (vast amounts of money goes into the development of psychiatric drugs, very little into research around talking therapies)
* a drug which cures is far inferior to one that merely controls symptoms and must be taken lifelong
* the affluence of a patient population is more significant than their need (male pattern baldness is a bigger research priority than malaria)

None of this should come as a surprise. No corporation is ever going to behave any better than it makes commercial sense to, which is why it is so disastrous to leave anything that really matters in their care.

So how did we get here and what do we do about it?

And once more this movement that launched only half a year ago flexed its muscle. From Plymouth to Aberdeen, people organised their own actions. More than 40 groups across the country turned out, and demanded that the government kills off the floundering Health and Social Care Bill, and focus instead on reforming the institutions who caused the crisis – the banks.

And all across the country, the public responded with support. In Oxford, where I was, customers shoppers gathered round the open windows of the closed HSBC to listen to our chants and to show their approval. When we moved on to Barclays, customers applauded. Outside Santander, passers by cheered. As tweets flooded in from across the country throughout the day, one thing was clear: huge numbers of people are on our side. Protesters from North, South, East and West found warmth and love from the people of their cities. Back in Oxford, one of the police officers told us how vital our protest was, how much he supported our cause.

And people are not just on our side in a passive ‘hurry on by’ way. They were gleeful, delighted to see that the fightback continues. I spent the morning asking people to sign a pledge to refuse to vote for any party that sells off the NHS. The response was overwhelming. People were passionate and angry, articulate about the gutting of an institution they know and love.

And this public anger was reflected in the people who joined the protest. UK Uncut has always been diverse. But this strength in breadth is growing. We were joined by disabled activists who see their services being lost. We were joined by an FE teacher who has lost his job because of cuts, and a youth worker who will soon. A network that was sparked by students and recent graduates has grown to a movement which includes all those hit by the assault on the institutions of civilisation.

And that is exciting.

The history of Britain is a history of struggle. The institutions which to us feel permenant are nothing of the sort. They had to be fought for. They had to be won. In 1910, the Tories brought down the governnment in an attempt to stop the introduction of the state pension and the first corners of the welfare state. But people fought back, and the people won. In the 1940s, the NHS was forced through the teeth of opposition. People fought. People won.

It was our great great great grandparents who formed the Chartist movement. They demonstrated and they shouted and they rioted and they went on strike. And they built a movement which eventually secured us the votes we so glibly throw away. Our grandparents built the great public services with which we grew up – the hospitals we were born in, the schools we were taught in, the council houses many of us grew up in. And there were always, always those who were willing to fight for them. And these people didn’t fight for themselves. They did it for us. They did it because they wanted to leave for their children a country that was better than the one they had inherited from their parents. They did it because they saw the pain of poverty, they saw what the Victorian free market had done to this country, to commumities, to people’s lives. And so they stood up together and they refused to sit down until our country had institutions of organised justice – healthcare for all, education for all, housing for all; laws to protect us from the powerful, a hand to catch us when we fall. They took it to be self evident that these things are the backbone of a civilisation. And they understood that civilisation is something that we must fight for, something that we must build and re-build, something that is never secure. It was Nye Bevan, the founder of the NHS, who said that it will survive “as long as there are people left with the faith to fight for it”.

And the future of Britain will depend on struggle. Because we must remember what our grandparents built, and we must remember the lesson that Nye Bevan taught. Mr Cameron may think that there are no folk left in this country with the faith to fight. But he is wrong. We are still here. We never went away. And on Saturday, we will stand up once more.

But like our grandparents, we are commited to something more. Like our grandparents, we want to leave for our children a country that is more just, happier, and more civilised than the country left for us by our parents. But I was born in 1985. 1 million of my peers are unemployed. 1 million unique, skilled, and brilliant people have started adulthood with the burden of joblessness. And so rather than building the Britain we want to leave for our children, rather than securing green jobs building a fair economy powered by a renewables revolution, my friends have been thrown onto the scrapheap. And so they too will stand up on Saturday. They too will fight for the chance to build something new. Something better. A country we can be proud of.

Anti-cuts campaign website False Economy has launched officially today with woth research revealing 50,000+ job losses in the National Health Service. The words “I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS” ring in my ears. But I thought I’d have a look at the website itself*- which is run by a bunch of online activists and the TUC.

Lisa Ansell recently had a piece here on Bright Green reminding us of the need for respect for diversity in the anti-cuts movement. In it, she reminded us:

“No-one knows just what the cumulative effect of these policies will be. And there is no single strategy for fighting them that will be effective in isolation.”

And for me, this is crucial. The Government is attempting to dismantle in just 5 years a welfare state that was built over the course of the last century. Each corner of our public services have been fought for and won over generations. From the State Pension to the NHS, from legal aid to support for disabled people, communities of interest came together, organised and demanded what they needed. People across the country stood together, and we negotiated our way – all too slowly – towards organised justice. And each of these groups will need to re-emerge in order to defend what their predessessors won. There will not be one campaign, and there will not be one leader of the fight against cuts and privitisation. There will be a complex, amorphous, potentially contradictory movement.

But since these services were secured, much has changed.

For most of us, our workplaces are no longer factores, farms and mines. Many fewer of those who make our money selling our labour identify as working class, and, for now, many fewer are members of unions. Much has been written about the role of the internet. A century ago, Lenin famously argued that every socialist group should have a newspaper. Affordable printing presses helped to transform the way that politics was organised around the world. The power to disceminate information was democratised. The use of new social media platforms as an organisational tool surely has the potential to similarly change how politics is done.

And so it is that False Economy fits in. The website will not be the front line of the anti-cuts movement. This battle will not be won or lost online. But the recognition from the TUC, the main funders, that the defence of public services will not be co-ordinated by a central committee, but will come from communities and individuals and workplaces across the country; the willingness to trust people to stand for themselves and with each other; the comfort with using new tools to help those people come together, to co-ordinate together – these things are good signs. Because while unions will be absolutely key, and while leadership will be needed, the old command and control structures are disempowering at a time when people have more capacity to self-organise than ever.

The website allows people to upload their stories, their cuts, their events, their struggles. It provides arguments, and – as we’ve seen today – the excellent Chaminda Jayanetti does serious research to back it all up. For now, it will only be a sub-set of society who use it. Only those with the inclination to take advantage of the site will find it helpful. But when we campaign against cuts, it is important for all of us to remember that this struggle is more complex than any of us can understand, that people with whom we are not used to working will be campaigning to defend the services on which they rely. And it is only by working together that we will come to a shared understanding of the world and of the causes of our plight.

So, well done to the TUC for supporting a project which hands power to grassroots groups. Let’s hope that this is just the start, because the road ahead will be long and tough.

*I should declare an interest: I’m on the False Economy steering group. I don’t get any credit for the site – Clifford Singer of The Other Taxpayers Alliance and MyDavidCameron built it and does most of the work, and Chaminda Jayanetti of 1000 cuts and The Samosa did the research for today’s announcement. The TUC and Unison get the credit for funding. But I may be a little biased.

Reviewing the Department of Health’s White Paper, on which the bill is based, last year the Conservative Bow Group said:

“A quick retrospective review of government policy since 1948 suggests there has not been a White Paper as reformist and radical as the current Government’s opening offering. For those who feared a meek and mild Government that would do nothing more than tinker and blinker with a discredited status quo, all fears have been allayed by this aspirational document.”

The Lancet in their latest editorial were even more blunt. Comapring the proposed changes to those of the fundholding experiment in the 1990s they said:

“The principle then was that GPs controlled the budgets to buy the specialist care their patients needed. Fundholding took years to implement, but evidence on short-term or long-term benefits for patients is lacking….there is sufficient  uncertainty and concern about the changes outlined in the Health and Social Care Bill to pause, to learn from the past, and to consider what the changes mean for patients’ outcomes. As it stands, the UK Government’s new Bill spells the end of the NHS.” (emphasis added)

They described the Conservatives claim to be “the Party of the NHS” as “a commitment that seems particularly hollow now.”

The BMA, whilst welcoming some of the changes such as a greater focus on public health, are also highly sceptical of many of the proposed alterations to our health service:

“Enforcing competition and adding price into the competitive mix within the NHS will always be damaging – doing so at a time of huge pressure on public finances and while staff are dealing with major structural change could be disastrous. The NHS needs to find efficiency savings of £20 billion by 2014-15. This is already resulting in cuts to services and staff, which have a direct impact on patient care.”

“The BMA is opposed to the idea that all NHS trusts should be forced to become foundation trusts by 1 April 2014, given the poor outcomes that have resulted in a small number of cases. Intensifying the pressure to achieve foundation trust status within the next three years could distort priorities and drive trusts to place the achievement of this target above all others, including safe patient care.”

The Health and Social care bill will radically alter the structure of the NHS and set us on course for a privately provided service. Management will be first to go, but the changes to Foundation Trusts and the desire to increase the number of social enterprises will mean that Hospitals and other services won’t be far behind. Check out this excellent video from Richard Blogger to see how:

What’s more, these changes will be forced through whilst overselling the need for reform at all. We’re told by the government that the biggest risk is to do nothing, that the NHS is inefficient and our health outcomes are worse than elsewhere. John Appleby, chief economist at the King’s Fund, writing in the BMJ last week, however, analysed mortality rates in the UK to discover that whilst our death rate from heart disease is indeed higher than that of France right now, on current trends we will be lower by next year. We’ll achieve that whilst spending just 8.7% of GDP on health compared with 11.2% in France. Other data paint a similar picture.

Our NHS can always be made better but it’s one of the most efficient in the world as it is, don’t let the coalition destroy it through their ideological attacks. Keep Our NHS public

There was significant opposition from the government and other parties, though to the scheme. One of the reasons was that it was universal, and not targeted at the poorest. This is a strong argument and has been used widely in the New Labour period to argue for a focus of resources, normally on the poorest 15% of the population.

I think poverty reduction is one of the two towering challenges for our society and our world. The other is preventing climate change. But I think that universal free at the point of demand solutions are almost always preferable to targeted ones.

That’s both because the deliver better outcomes and because they are more easily defended. The NHS is the best example of how a universal system can be both effective and popular. The Twitter campaign to get people to express their love of the NHS was a major story. While illness is something that attracts more compassion than other areas of public service, it is a testament to the power of universality that the NHS is the area of public expenditure politicians are most anxious about cutting.

There remains a similar feeling with education, where a universal system still has the power to determine the outcome of elections. The best example of how a move away from universal provision can make a problem more difficult to solve is in housing. Where housing was a vital issue in every election in the twentieth century until 1992, it has now largely disappeared from headline policy. This is because the Thatcherite housing sell off made social housing a targeted service for the poorest, not a universal service for all. It has resulted in serious housing shortages, house price inflation and poor standards in private housing. A poor outcome all round.

Politically, universal free at the point of demand services are much, much more easily defended from cuts. This is why removal of universal services is almost always the thin end of a wedge that ends up with privatisation.

I’ve thought this since I was involved in student politics. At that time there was a big debate about whether tuition fees should be charged to enable grants for the poorest students. This is a targeted approach. But it meant that many students from poorer backgrounds were put off by the headline fees. A universally free system would have been more effective at attracting the poorest students.

And the final outcome of the introduction of a £1000 per year fee seems like it will be the creation of a market in University fees. This process only took 13 years. The end of a universal provision can very quickly result in the end of even targeted provision. Why would a politician defend expenditure that only appeals to very small sections of the electorate? This is a question exacerbated by the propensity for the poorest to vote less than others.

So the future for public services should be a move to universal provision. It’s more effective, it’s less likely to be cut at the whim of a politician and it’s a better way to deliver a more equal society. And with free, universal, insulation, a society that deals with climate change.

This will be politically difficult. Forty years of neo-liberal ideology has sought to question the role of the state in delivering public services. But we all know that the market has proved disastrously unable to deliver either a low carbon or socially just society. We can’t go on failing to tackle these challenges because our governments, both left and right, are tied to a failed market ideology.