Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group joined hundreds of
campaigners from across Greater Manchester on Saturday (30 May 2015) in a call
to “Keep Our NHS Public”. At the rally held at the gates of Manchester Royal
Infirmary campaigners from groups including the People’s Assembly, ‘Save Our
NHS’ and NHS staff and patients united to show their support for the NHS.
Padlocks, covered in reasons why individuals love the NHS, were secured to the
gates of MRI to symbolise the aim of ‘Locking-out Privatisation’ from the NHS
and in celebration of everything a truly public NHS does for people on the
basis of their medical needs. It formed part of the People’s Assembly Against
Austerity’s National day of action, while Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
members promoted the message “NHS NOT Trident” on their placards and T-shirts.
Philip Gilligan on behalf of Rochdale and Littleborough
Peace Group said,
“Peace Group members and supporters are clear that there is
one cut that does need to be made. We need to cut the vast amounts of money
being spent on the Trident nuclear weapons system and to bring an end to the
madness of squandering even more money on an even more dangerous and unnecessary
nuclear weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, we are committed to the campaign
against austerity. We need to be spending more money on public services like
our NHS and adult social care, not less, and we need to protect our public
services from creeping privatisation. We
need to secure our NHS services and ensure that they are not undermined by
those who seek to make a profit from the sick. In Rochdale, we have already seen
a serious erosion of our local hospital services under successive governments.
Now, hospitals across Greater Manchester are under huge amounts of pressure.
Patients wait hours to be seen and hospital targets are not being met. Further
cuts will only increase the problems. The government needs to spend our taxes
on improving these services not on developing ever more dangerous nuclear
missiles”
