Support for NHS protest at Tory conference, 29 September 2013
Defend the Whittington Hospital Coalition activists were among 50,000 protesters who demonstrated in Manchester on Sunday 29 September as Conservative party delegates gathered in the city for the start of their annual conference.
The Save Our NHS protest was backed by health service unions whose members work at the Whittington.
The march was organised by the TUC, whose general secretary Frances O’Grady told a rally in the centre of Manchester that the NHS was facing the gravest crisis in its history.
“After promising there would be no top-down re-organisation, the government is wasting billions implementing reforms nobody wants and nobody voted for,” she said.
“The Prime Minister said NHS spending would be protected, but we’re seeing increased rationing of treatments, rising waiting lists, a growing number of closures and accident and emergency wards in disarray.
“In the last three months alone 21,000 NHS employees have lost their jobs, and those nurses, doctors and other health professionals that remain feel that no-one is listening to them and that they are being asked to achieve more with less.”
