Why I took part in the NHS New Deal day of action
Ian’s NHS New Deal stall in Cheltenham
By Ian Morgan, Cheltenham
Three generations of my family have worked for our NHS - we’ve seen with our own eyes the results of overwork, understaffing and underfunding. The current pressures are unsustainable, and that’s why I wanted to get involved in the NHS New Deal Day of action last Saturday.
Across the country last weekend, many of us got out on the streets to tell people about the dangers facing our NHS and to ask them to sign up in support of the NHS New Deal. It was a warm, sunny Saturday morning on Cheltenham High Street. We set up our stall and collected 75 signatures - that’s one every two and a half minutes over the three hours!
Helpers at the stall stayed for an hour each and buoyed each other up to get an overwhelmingly positive response. One member of the public signed early on and then stayed for nearly three hours distributing our leaflets - a real star.
NHS New Deal stalls took place across the UK on Saturday 17th July!
We were really pleased we exceeded our target of 50 signatures. We even met a doctor and some nurses from our local hospital, who signed up to the campaign. Others had family or friends working in the health and care sectors so did not need persuading to support the campaign.
"Support our NHS" and "Save our NHS" were our catch phrases when approaching people, and many showed interest. The whole day restored my faith in our ability to create change, and the need to keep holding our politicians to account instead of being fobbed off with party spin and platitudes.
The founding principles of a universal, comprehensive, publicly funded and provided NHS are being seriously undermined by creeping private provision which will mean less money spent on front line services. We need a well funded and staffed NHS - which is what the New Deal is about. After Saturday's success, I know we will prevail as long as we keep campaigning.