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Hundreds march over hospital cuts

Jeni Harvey
29/ 6/2006

SPECIAL REPORT

HUNDREDS marched on the streets of Manchester on Saturday to protest against the planned 800 redundancies across Pennine Acute Trust's four hospitals.

Waving placards with slogans such as 'Sack Blair, not health workers', 'Fund hospitals, not war' and simply 'Save our jobs', the protesters processed from Victoria Station through the city centre, bringing traffic and shoppers to a standstill.

Young and old, hospital staff and the general public, union members and worried patients came together in a cacophony of chanting and horn-blowing to make their views known.

Middleton activist Derek Fraser, president of Rochdale NUT division, said: "I marched with hundreds of other people to stop this government's attacks on our public services.

"The story is the same every time under this Blair government, whether it's schools, hospitals, council services, etc and that is cuts and the private sector sucking money out of our public services.

"On the march to stop 1,200 job loses in our hospitals, the same argument came up - why is there money for war but not health? Let's make sure Blair doesn't get away with destroying our NHS, schools and social services by protesting and linking our struggles together and building the alternative which people are crying out for."

This demonstration comes after Pennine Acute Trust, which runs North Manchester General Hospital, Rochdale Infirmary, The Royal Oldham Hospital and Fairfield General in Bury, announced back in May that there were plans to cut 800 jobs across the four sites.

But hospital insiders and unions fear the actual number of job losses could be anything up to 1,500 as the trust tries to claw back a £28.3m deficit resulting from a £21.3m overspend.

These changes come as the Joint Commitee of PCTs is considering axing the accident and emergency department and also maternity services at North Manchester General as part of its Healthy Futures and Making it Better programmes.