Hundreds of NHS supporters marched for several miles through Liverpool city centre this afternoon, on the opening day of the Labour party’s annual conference in the city, to save Liverpool’s much-loved Women’s Hospital – and on to the waterfront near to the conference venue, where left-wing Labour MP Margaret Greenwood spoke to the assembled marchers.
The marchers, after short speeches from current and retired hospital staff and led by a PCS union drum band, left the hospital at 12.30 and by 2pm were on their way through Liverpool’s shopping precincts, where they paused for a short speech to shoppers before heading to the waterfront:
The hospital, where many of Liverpool’s children are born and where women have a dedicated facility for their health needs with on-site parking, is threatened with closure under plans – despite anger among Scousers – to shut it and open a facility in the city centre Royal Hospital, which is in a crowded location with only expensive city parking. Women campaigners say that women were not consulted on their priorities or needs and that the local health board’s plan is using the ‘sustainability’ excuse for cuts and closures under the government’s and NHS England’s damaging ‘integrated care’ plan imported from the US – which is also backed by Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting, despite warnings from health campaigners of its disastrous consequences.
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And possibly sell the building?
My goodness! Skwawkbox told us SIX YEARS ago that the NHS CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) was intent on closing Liverpool Women’s Hospital. SW informed us that after ostensibly offering the public four options, “the CCG has gone back on its commitment and has removed all the options – except for its ‘preferred’ option of closing the hospital and moving everything to the new ‘Royal’. The public is effectively being consulted on a done deal.”
So, well-done and thank you the hundreds of patients and NHS staff that took to the streets yesterday when delegates were arriving for Sir Keir’s “Atlanicism-is-US’ roadshow passing itself off as a Labour Party Conference.
Thanks and Solidarity Margaret Greenweood MP, Mark Serwotka, the Public and Commercial Services Union, the marchers themselves and the ‘dearly departed’ who were no-where in sight as the ‘Atlasnticism-Is-Us’ roadshow set up its stall.
This year’s Labour Conference, “business representatives will make up almost a third of conference attendees. Trade union delegates, on the other hand, form just 3 percent….” (credit Coll McCail, Jacobin).