I was very pleased to be with a group of Ruskin teachers and students this morning with one of the pickets of junior doctors at the John Radcliffe hospital. The striking medics were really pleased to be joined by the highly enthusiastic Ruskin throng, not least when an apparatchik from the Trust appeared as we were taking picture and tried to inform us that our assembly was unlawful and taking pictures illegal - industrial language was used and the employer's stooge fled!
By coincidence I am today delivering a guest speaker presentation to students of Ruskin's highly successful Certificate of Higher Education in Law (http://www.ruskin.ac.uk/law) on the Trade Union Bill and the nature of trade union rights and human rights.
Apropos the BMA strike, one of the matters I will be bringing to the attention of the students is that, regardless of the Tories attempts to enshrine 'fairness' into the principles of balloting and strike action, they have been caught out (again) trying to interfere in the process of a lawful dispute in the issuing of a letter by the head of the NHS (Bruce Keogh) when writing to Mark Porter of the BMA.
As reported in last week's press, it was discovered that senior civil servants at the Department of Health (DoH) had helped draft the letter, underlining the threat to the public posed by today's strike, not least in the case of a terrorist attack.
In truth, the meddling in the affairs of a trade union is nothing when compared with the appalling act of conjuring up memories of the recent atrocity in Paris to pursue nefarious purposes. But then, these are Tories.
So, good luck to the junior doctors in the battle to protect their terms and conditions, and with this the overall standards in the NHS, and lets hope that the on-going passage of the Trade Union Bill through Parliament continues to see this retrograde baggage of class-oriented bile diminished even further.
In Solidarity
Ian
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