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How a handful became thousands

30 March 2010

PCS rep and secretary of the Defend the Whittington Hospital Coalition Dave Plummer outlines how their community campaign has been built.

How do you go from a couple of dozen people sat around a community centre table to 5,000 marching up north London's Holloway Road?

Petitions, meetings, support from local press and trade union branches, the internet, a substantial quantity of flyers – and, of course, a cause worth fighting for.

It all started in November 2009 when Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, broke her toe and ended up in the Whittington Hospital’s A&E department where, as well as being treated, she was leaked a letter.

Written by Rachel Tyndall, chief executive of North Central London NHS Trust, and addressed to local hospital chief executives and medical directors, the letter outlined secret proposals to get rid of the hospital’s A&E.

The Whittington’s A&E sees 80,000 patients a year, is in an easily accessible location and provides a flow of patients to the rest of the hospital’s wards. Its closure would leave north Londoners having to travel miles though congested traffic, place extra burden on the area’s already busy alternative hospitals and potentially be the first step towards the closure of the whole Whittington Hospital.

The alternatives suggested focussed on an ‘urgent care’ unit, which would be closed from 8pm to 8am, and polyclinics, which are widely believed to be steps on the road to further privatisation of public healthcare.

Keep it local, keep it public

This is far from the first time healthcare has been under threat in the area so there are several local campaigning groups already in existence, including the Camden branch of Keep our NHS Public, the Defend Haringey’s Health Services Coalition and the Save Finsbury Health Centre Campaign.

At a meeting in December 2009 it was decided to form the Defend the Whittington Hospital Coalition to bring these groups together with MPs and candidates, trade unions and local residents.

We decided fairly early on that we would need to do something pretty big to make a statement to the local NHS managers but when we chose to have a march and rally I don't think we realised just how big it would be.

A combination of things contributed to its success. Firstly, we had great support from the local press. The Ham & High and Islington Gazette newspapers were both regularly mentioning the situation at the Whittington.

But the absolute star has been the Camden New Journal which has been behind us from the beginning, with their journalist Tom Foot – son of the legendary Paul Foot and great nephew of Michael – attending most of our planning meetings and ensuring the campaign had a huge profile in the paper.

I set up a website to bring together all the information from political, press and campaigning groups, and provide regular updates. In the days leading up to the march the site was getting about 1,000 hits a day – not bad for a local campaign.

Probably the most important thing we did was to get out on the streets and spread the word. We held stalls on Saturday afternoons across Islington, distributed leaflets door to door and outside Tube stations, and collected thousands of petition signatures. Almost everyone we spoke to was shocked and appalled by the plans.

The three main local parties – Labour, Liberal Democrats and Green – were also out in force, speaking to people on the doorstep and running their own petitions. Jeremy Corbyn has continued to raise the issue in parliament.

We will not go away

On Saturday 27 February, the day of the march, we were concerned we’d only end up with a few hundred people but, as time went on, they kept on coming.

Before we knew it we’d gone from a few folk milling around to several thousand gathering, placards in hand, ready to march on the Whittington. The Camden New Journal had organised an open top bus to lead the march, with a Dixie jazz band playing on top who helped contribute to a wonderful atmosphere. Even the rain held off.

At the end of the march we held a rally outside the hospital with speakers from most of the main political parties, residents’ campaign groups, local trades councils and union reps – including PCS’s Austin Harney, who drew the parallels between the Whittington situation and the wider battles in the public sector and civil service.

It’s difficult to know how effective this has all been, but we have certainly raised the profile of the issue at the Whittington and the NHS as a whole, shown the staff at the Whittington that they have support and made it clear to the powers that be that we will not take this lying down.

Their secretive planning has been made very, very public and they are being held to account. Local NHS management have attended a couple of public meetings where, despite their attempts to paint the closure of the Whittingon’s A&E as a good thing, it has been made clear to them that this is our NHS and we will have our say.

The official public consultation will begin towards the end of the summer. We will not accept a sheet of leading questions or a ‘focus group’ of a couple of dozen people as constituting proper consultation.

We are planning further activity during the coming months and there is an open invitation for people to attend our regular planning meetings.

The fight and the campaign go on.

 

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