Sick of it all! Work, Inquiry & Struggle in the NHS

The NHS is often called a ‘national treasure’, and its workers are sometimes lauded as angels and heroes. In the last two years of the Covid-19 pandemic we have more than ever seen the reality of how it works – and also sometimes how it doesn’t. How have we ended up in this situation? What are the factors that have led to healthcare being organised and run the way it is? What struggles are happening in the NHS currently, and how might we magnify their impact and win gains now? Understanding all this is fundamental to enabling us as workers and patients to fight for better work conditions and better patient care under capitalism now, while also having an eye on ultimately creating a future of vastly improved health and healthcare for all in a post-capitalist world.

Essays Include:

• Lost in service: How the NHS works for us & how we work for the NHS
• The identity crisis of hospitals: Know the past to understand the present
• A cup of tea and some militancy please?Thoughts of an NHS housekeeper
• Struggles in scrubs: A history of industrial action in the NHS
• Fuck the clapping, let’s get angry! Struggles in and beyond the white factory
• A hotbed of pestilence: Cholera, covid, and the class struggle
• Reports from the care sector Work and survival & Resistance in a crisis
• Superstition, sickness, or service? Mental healthcare under (and after) capitalism
• We only got that through struggle! Work, politics, and the future of the NHS
• You’ve made your own bed, now die in it: Towards an emancipatory medicine
• Care not capital: Improving the lives and deaths of older people
• Pandemic struggles and future healthcare in Greece: A view from below

Essays compiled by Angry Workers of the World, Anarchist Communist Group, and Health Workers United.

Angry Workers is a small political collective that has spent the last several years organising in London's industrial backyard.