Junior doctors move to ballot

After successful demonstrations on 17 October in London, Nottingham and Belfast against the new junior doctors’ contract, the British Medical Association (BMA) has announced that ballot papers will go out to its members in early November. 

It is a sign of a powerful demonstration and great spirit in the working class when most of the placards are homemade. This was the case on when junior doctors assembled In Waterloo Place just off the Mall for their rally and demonstration in central London. 

Most of the placards had been made by the junior doctors themselves but these were interspersed with others such “Nurses support the Junior Doctors Fight”. Others were made by medical students who clearly understood that as the seed corn of the profession, they too are under attack.

The support of nurses was a sign that other professions in the NHS fully understand that if the government manages to attack the unsocial hours payments of doctors, that this will set a precedent for the whole NHS.

Another feature of the demonstration was the great chants of “BMA… BMA”. The reason that thousands were chanting the name of their trade union was that the health secretary Jeremy Hunt had spoken on the BBC that morning and declared that the doctors were being “misled” by their union.

‘We are the BMA’

Speaker after speaker reiterated “we are the BMA”, and explained that their fury at Jeremy Hunt was four fold. Firstly because he had attacked their union, secondly because they said he had misquoted statistics from a research paper about hospital weekend mortality rates, thirdly because he had implied they did not understand their own contract, and more generally for his attack on the National Health Service. The other favoured chants of this demonstration were “NHS, NHS” interspersed with “Hunt Must Go.”

Many of those attending the demonstration carried placards listing the names of doctors who would have liked to have been there but who could not because they were working. Despite this the numbers attending were far greater than the organisers anticipated.

The combined experience of discipline in dealing with emergencies was put to the test when the whole crowd had to be coordinated on several occasions to take three steps backwards to try and accommodate more demonstrators safely. This responsibility fell to stewards as although a police traffic helicopter hovered overhead, uniformed police officers were not much in evidence at this demonstration. This meant that when the demonstration briefly became a sit down in the Mall, the only option for the few police officers was to chat with demonstrators!