Twelve months ago my uncle John died of pancreatic cancer. He was a fun-loving, kind man who I will always remember for his booming laugh and his beaming smile. He was a very tall man, who would always seem to be humming a tune as he entered a room and would make sure that everyone felt welcome and included.
John and I shared the same birthday and, with John and Jack being interchangeable names amongst Irish people, I always felt close to him, despite the fact we only met up a few times a year.
I always remember how he would call me on the morning of my birthday and gleefully sing “happy birthday”. After finishing, he would triumphantly exclaim “happy birthday to us!” He seemed to find it equally amusing that we shared the same birth date with every year that passed. The fact that he took time to call me on his birthday each year always touched me. It was very painful not to have that call last November.
It is a sad fact to state, but the treatment John received from our NHS was extremely poor. It is not an exaggeration to say that John may still have been with us if the treatment he had been given had been better.
It is even worse to think that John is not alone. Our NHS today is crumbling. Many people are not receiving the service they need, which is causing unnecessary pain, suffering and death.
The truth is that it does not need to be this way. The wealth exists to properly fund the NHS as well as to build good homes for everyone; to properly fund our education system; and to provide social care to anyone who may need it.
Last year the British Medical Association estimated austerity has caused an underfunding of the NHS of £425 billion since 2009. However, the UK government currently spends £100 billion per year merely servicing its debts. In other words, parasitical banks are squeezing money off the taxpayer, which could be going to the NHS.
The collective wealth of UK billionaires reached £182 billion last year. Billionaires represent 0.0007% of the population and yet, together, they have more money than the entire health budget. Ultimately, all wealth in society is produced by the working class, who have to work for a living. Billionaires can make money merely due to the fact that they have money. They do nothing for society, but squeeze money out of it.
The actual cost of funding the NHS is also pushed up by private health companies. Global Justice Now revealed that big pharmaceutical companies make enormous profits from selling drugs to the NHS. One company was making a 23,000% markup on an important cancer drug despite having contributed very little to its development. The system of private ownership means that big pharmaceutical companies are able to buy up patents for certain drugs that they have had no hand in making and then charge all of us extortionate prices to use them.
No one voted for the NHS to be in this state, but no political party is offering anything different. Labour and the Tories compete over how best to make cuts whilst Reform, occasionally pretending to be different, do nothing but attack immigrants and offer no real alternative.
The resources exist to properly fund the NHS and prevent people from going through these horrific experiences. These resources are not utilised for this purpose because this system allows a tiny minority to hoard it all.
This fact has filled me with a deep rage, but also a deep determination to change things. We deserve a society where the working class, who produce all the wealth, decide where that wealth is spent. This cannot happen in a system like ours, where you are free to say whatever you like so long as all the major decisions are made in the boardrooms of the biggest companies. Instead, we should have a democratically planned economy where money is directed towards what is needed, not just what will make the greatest profits for the billionaires.
To do this requires the nationalisation under workers’ control and management of the largest companies in the UK. We must then put out a call for workers across the world to do the same.
I will be running in the London Marathon this month and I will be doing it whilst thinking of John. Whilst training for this marathon, I have been bombarded with emails requesting I raise money for charity. The fact that people give so much money to charities, especially during these tough economic times, is proof of the generosity of working-class people.
It is sad to say, but the best that charity can do is to put a sticking plaster over a gaping wound. In any case, given the way society is run, much of this money will only be directed towards the pockets of big private medical companies. Instead, I want to live in a world where there is no need for charity. A world where everyone’s needs have been catered for already.
For that reason, I am raising money for the Revolutionary Communist Party. This is a political party like no other. It is one that is actually fighting to completely and fundamentally transform society, from top to bottom. A society where the working class is in power and all of us, rather than a handful of billionaires at the top, choose where we spend our money.
If you can donate some money to this cause, no matter how small, it would be greatly appreciated.