Aslef general secretary DAVE CALFE looks at how rail workers and miners stood together against wage cuts 100 years ago – and why the legacy of collective action endures today
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‘Our NHS is being trashed’
DR BOB GILL, producer of The Great NHS Heist, speaks to Daniel Powell about the selling-off of our health service and the consequences for the Covid-19 pandemic
Dr Bob Gill, producer of the shocking new documentary The Great NHS Heist, reveals how successive governments have hollowed-out our health service and gifted it to privateers
As Africa’s progressives aim to consolidate its anti-colonial programme, VIJAY PRASHAD reports on the US getting a military foothold in Ghana
KERRY FLECK explains how the annual event unites thousands in a celebration of workers’ power, culture and collective resistance
The former Nato chief stirred up dark historical undercurrents with his call to cut welfare for military spending, says SOLOMON HUGHES
The life of a modest Norfolk organiser contrasts with the dramatic rise and disappearance of a controversial figure in US labour, says MARK SEDDON
JACK YOUD explains how Salford City Council has taken on rogue landlords and won, setting an example to the rest of the country
IF you felt aghast at the sight of politicians clapping for the NHS during the peak of the pandemic, you were not unjustified. The government has been discreetly and incrementally washing its hands of responsibility for providing public services since the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
Selling off Britain’s assets was a priority, yet of the NHS: “There’s no way that as an institution so respected and beloved by the population, they could go for a one-off privatisation as they did with other utilities,” says Dr. Bob Gill, producer of The Great NHS Heist film.
A 1977 document from the Conservative Research Group reveals a strategy of “denationalisation by stealth” which would soon come to the most sacrosanct service of all: health.
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In the second part of her critique of Wes Streeting’s TenYear Plan for Health, HELEN MERCER looks at the central planks of this privatisation blueprint
Politicians who continue to welcome contracts with US companies without considering the risks and consequences of total dependency in the years to come are undermining the raison d’etre of the NHS, argues Dr JOHN PUNTIS