THE number of physical assaults on A&E staff across the NHS has doubled in five years. In England, a medical worker is attacked every hour.

That is an indictment of governments which have driven the health service into such a wretched condition.

It is a warning sign too of Britain’s wider social malaise: soaring abuse of NHS staff cannot be seen in isolation from the rise in aggression towards other workers. The RMT union points to a 47 per cent rise in violence and serious public order offences against railway workers between 2021 and 2024; retail union Usdaw that the proportion of shop workers assaulted on the job last year was twice that of 2019.

For the right, such evidence of “broken Britain” is variously ascribed to multiculturalism (a misleading association between immigration and crime is often promoted) or the lack of patriotism and community spirit among generations trained in “cultural Marxism” (a meaningless term) by leftie teaching unions. Their cure is discipline-focused, whether in education (uniform codes, exclusions, “superheads”) extracurricular (usually military) activities or harsher policing and tougher sentences.

Their warped take should not stop the left addressing a very real problem. Why are more workers being attacked while just trying to do their jobs?

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), whose survey has exposed the scale of the problem in the NHS, points to sector-specific factors.

Emergency departments are in crisis. In the same period in which assaults have doubled, the RCN found the number of people waiting over 12 hours in A&E increased twenty-fold.

One nurse told the union that “even patients you would expect to be placid are becoming irate because of just how long they have to wait.” Nothing justifies abuse, but A&E departments are by their nature stressful environments for patients and those accompanying them, as well as for staff.

Chronic understaffing in the NHS — in England alone it carries 120,000 vacancies — points to underinvestment by successive Tory governments.

But despite Labour increasing funding, hospital trusts are still cutting: a survey commissioned by NHS Providers in May found 47 per cent of hospital trusts were cutting services, while 37 per cent were cutting clinical posts and a further 40 per cent considering doing so.

Labour has not dealt with the roots of the problem: the financial pressures on trusts from private finance initiative (PFI) debt; the inflated cost of drugs imposed by the Big Pharma monopolists, which will rise further because our government has promised Donald Trump the NHS will pay more for US medicines in return for Britain being spared tariffs; the rise in hospital costs associated with general price inflation for rents or energy, which has been steep in the post-Covid period.

Unless it gets serious about investment — including through restorative pay rises for NHS staff themselves, given the horrendous pressures they are now under — Labour will not “fix” the NHS, nor reduce the abuse directed at its staff.

The same principle applies to the wider breakdown in trust and civility. People who can’t see what stake they have in a society are less likely to abide by its rules. Affordable housing, decent work and cared for, inclusive public spaces nurture cohesive communities.

Where these are lacking, it is easier for poisonous ideologies to take root. Anti-immigrant hysteria has legitimised open racism in Britain; violence against women is a recognised national emergency, driven by sexism and misogyny. Contemptuous attitudes to other people based on their sex or race will play out in interactions with those people at work.

Nobody should face violence at work: least of all those working tirelessly in difficult conditions to treat injuries and save lives.

Its prevalence indicates how deep Britain’s social crisis has become after nearly five decades of neoliberal capitalism, and how urgently we need a radically different political approach.