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Who
these days recalls Connolly’s biting comment
on those who would whoop it up for the Liberty of Ireland as they
steadfastly continued to punish its people? In a week
in which Sinn Fein leaders can dosh out the drivel
that Wolfe Tone would have approved the performance
of the Irish soccer team no mention was made of whether
Connolly would approve the manner in which the cutting
edge of British state health policy has grinded its
way into the well-being of many Irish people still
subject to the administration of British rule.
If,
as we are often told there is no alternative, then
the absence of one has curbed republicanism so severely
that whether she likes it or not Bairbre de Brun now
serves as Britain’s Health Minister in the North
of Ireland and implements the economic logic of British
capitalism against the well-being of Irish citizens.
Britain, in pursuit of laissez faire economics, and
in its majesty, permits de Brun to don the executioner’s
hood and wield the axe.
Having
been enabled by the ‘possession’ of state
power to do just that the Sinn Fein Health Minister
has set about ‘empowering’ the community
by slashing at essential facilities. The number of
hospitals with acute services are to be reduced from
15 to 9. Although in a bout of de Brunian spin the
public is being asked to believe that ‘my proposals
are not about reducing acute services’.
According
to the Irish News the decision to deny acute services
to the Omagh hospital has ‘bitterly divided the
two Sinn Fein MPs whose constituencies lie in counties
Fermanagh and Tyrone.’ But in a party not known
for the willingness of its members to speak out of
line, this ‘divide’ may alternatively and
plausibly be viewed as an attempt to be all things
to all people - a party of votes telling the voters
what they want to hear. That they need to hear the
exact opposite in Tyrone from what they are being
told in Fermanagh is easily overcome by having the
Party’s respective MPs speak from different sides
of their mouths, while overall the party leadership
will speak from both sides at once. Furthermore, would
the thought police not be at the doors of these people
if their ‘dissent’ was not approved from
above?
De
Brun gets it rough. All the seepage from Stormont,
offline media and some within Sinn Fein is that unlike
the performance of her colleague Martin McGuinness,
her own as Minister of Health suffers from dangerously
impaired efficiency. But this may result more from
the advice and services she gets rather than reflect
on her individual capabilities.
Defending
her attack on health facilities she has suggested
that fuelled by an injection of £1.2 billion
over the next ten years her approach would ‘deliver
a world-class service’. But one need only look
back to May to find out how her party colleague Robbie
MacGabhann rubbished those pursuing a form of PFI
yet who have the audacity to tell us they were offering
a world class health service. So just who does Bairbre
de Brun think she is fooling? World health service?
- Ireland, North and South, is the only part of the
European Union without a specialist air ambulance
medical service. There is nothing world class about
the British health service, not even in Britain. Sweden,
Germany and France put it to shame. Why would the
British consider allowing us in Ireland to have one?
Why would the British commit themselves to giving
us a world class health service? And if they were
to does it not impact on anyone that they must intend
sticking around for quite a bit? Why after all provide
a world health service in Fermanagh and a Third World
one in Birmingham when in 2016, if Sinn Fein are to
be believed, Fermanagh will be part of a united Ireland
and Birmingham voters may still bring down governments
who under fund public services?
The
North of Ireland does not have a decent health service
because unlike some other capitalistic economies the
particular form of British capitalism does not permit
one. And under the present application of the Private
Finance Initiative the strategic objective is very
much one of killing off social provision. The wealthiest
in British society are taking back the ground they
felt forced to cede under the welfare state. They
are not concerned with my health or yours.
Dr.
P. J. Devereaux of McMaster University in Ontario
studied, for the purpose of comparative analysis,
26,000 for-profit and non-profit hospitals in the
US, which between them treated 38 million patients
over a period of 13 years. His findings are published
in the May 28th issue of the Canadian Medical Association
Journal. He concluded that if Canada were to opt for
its own version of PFI there could be an increase
of 2,200 in the annual death rate which would be equivalent
to the number of Canadians who die from motor vehicle
accidents and colon cancer each year. Dr Devereaux,
not surprisingly, observed, ‘clearly, those are
things that no one would knowingly introduce into
society.’ In the case of the first PFI hospitals
to open in Cumberland, North Durham and Strathclyde,
these were beset by a series of disasters resulting
from cost cutting. This allows George Monbiot, who
has written extensively on privatisation, to argue
that while private managers ‘are extremely efficient
at making money, they are rather less efficient at
running public services.’
One
effect in British society which, thanks to the Good
Friday Agreement, we remain an integral part of, is
that government consultants estimate that every £200
million of public money used to finance Private Finance
Initiative will result in 1000 fewer doctors and nurses.
Yet
are we to believe that the Sinn Fein minister is doing
all of this unknowingly? A health minister who does
not know what is happening or what she is doing can
stake little claim to the position. Does she not know
that in the Republic, Sinn Fein, in its own words 'is
proposing a ten-year strategy to convert the private
health insurance system into a single tier public
system.' Is the anti-partitionist party now offering
the people of Ireland a two tier health service clearly
separated by partition?
Joe
Byrne of the SDLP has denounced de Brun as the minister
for inequality but it is more accurate to see her
as the minister implementing British fiscal policy
to our health care service - a fiscal policy that
is increasingly conservative and profit oriented.
George Monbiot claims that the present Labour Government
is implementing policies the Conservatives ‘would
scarcely have dared to suggest’.
What
is the point in being a technocrat at the disposal
of the British Government? With no room to do anything
other than implement British economic policy can people
be faulted for viewing the Stormont government as
a mere puppet administration? Why do the bidding of
the British on these matters? Why not lead a strategy
of ethical resistance to them rather than swing the
axe on their behalf?
The
eternal optimists assure us it is alright, that the
strategy is actually revolutionary, that the ingenuity
of it lies in concealing revolutionary practice beneath
tactical manoeuvrings. Furthermore, we are advised
to take succour from the supposed presence of Marxists
in the Republican Movement. Finding one is like meeting
a pregnant man. Whatever reservations we may have
about the rhetorical strategies of the Socialist Workers’
Party could we envisage any of their Marxists slashing
and chopping into our hospitals in the interests of
British capitalism?
Only
a few years ago the present British Health Minister,
Alan Milburn, stated ‘it's PFI or bust’.
Why did we roll over and accept it? PFI has busted
radical opposition. Why not admit the absolute failure
of present republican strategy predicated as it is
on the Thatcherite arrogance of ‘There Is No
Alternative,‘ and from that point on encourage
rather than suppress the search for alternatives which
are base driven rather than leadership led?
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