By a health campaigner

Political fights within the Socialist Health Association reflect a decades-long social and political struggle for the future of the NHS.  This unending NHS crisis is enabling a radical reactionary shift in plans for its future, and not only among the Tories. Some on Labour’s front bench are redefining the NHS as an insurance scheme which is simply free(ish) at the point of use, with health care being delivered through profit-extracting private companies. Labour leaders also suggest the principles behind a publicly provided service are ‘sentimental’ and old-fashioned.  

An election in the crisis

The Socialist Health Association has just run its election and announced its results. The outcome is an absolutely staggering victory for socialists committed to the founding principles of the NHS – a publicly provided service free at the point of use. Typically these candidates won five times as many votes as Labour First-endorsed candidates. 

The huge victory is a triumph of socialist ideas, of systematic organising and of getting out the vote. It shows that socialists can win very, very big. 

Shutting down critics

Now a new battle is developing – an attempt to smear and delegitimise the SHA.

A few days before the end of the election, when most of the voting had been done, the Labour First-endorsed delegates announced. en bloc their withdrawal from the ballot because of ‘irregularities’.

Rather than discuss the future of the NHS, they condemned

• the order of the candidates on the ballot paper,
• the failure to be on the ballot if you apply a week after the deadline when the ballot has started,
• the failure to reissue ballots – where no request to do so was made. 

Of course you could rerun the ballot as many times as you like. These massive majorities are not going to change significantly. So their plan is to demand disaffiliation of the SHA via their friends on Labour’s NEC.  Labour First, like Trump or Bolsonaro, demand victory. The simple truth is that socialists won: Wes Streeting’s supporters lost by a margin of 5 to 1. 

Full results https://www.sochealth.co.uk/2023/01/06/sha-agm-2023/