The #PatientsNotPassports campaign is a fight for the very future of our NHS, and we need you with us! Join us at our next New Joiners meeting on April 18th.
On Saturday 11 March, we joined the SOS NHS national demonstration, to march to defend the NHS.
Through the #PatientsNotPassports campaign, we organised the “No Borders in the NHS” bloc, to show our support for all striking health workers, to demand that the government ends the crisis in the NHS, and that they end all hostile environment immigration controls in healthcare and beyond.
Tens of thousands of us took to the streets, marching to defend the NHS — from privatisation, underfunding, gross undervaluing of workers, and insidious and exclusionary immigration controls.
We must stand united against a Government that seeks to divide us. Whether they say migrants are to blame for our struggling public services, that nurses are asking for too much pay, or that private services are needed to save money—we know that this is based on lies.
In reality, the Government is deliberately underfunding the NHS, while telling health workers to work harder for less pay. Hostile environment immigration policies are excluding migrants from the vital services they need to live, including charging migrants up-front up to 150% of the cost for their healthcare, and turning health workers against their patients. This paves the way for NHS privatisation and for a health system that prioritises private profit over our collective well-being.
That is why we joined tens of thousands of others on the streets to defend the NHS from the forces that seek to destroy it. You can see more coverage of the demonstration here.
Aliya, from Migrants Organise, and Isis, a medical student, involved in the Patients Not Passports campaign, spoke from the platform at the demonstration, to connect our struggles for migrant justice with the fight to defend and protect the NHS. Watch their speeches here.
You can read and watch more about the demo in the in the Daily Mirror ahead of the march, on Sky news, Huffington Post, on ABC News, and in The Guardian.
The #PatientsNotPassports campaign is a fight for the very future of our NHS, and we need you to join us! If you have been inspired to get involved with Patients Not Passports, to continue the fight to defend the NHS against privatisation and against border controls in healthcare, then join us at our next New Joiners meeting on 18 April on Zoom!
