Revolutions normally, and successful revolutions usually, begin from the middle classes of a population, from the indigenous bourgeoisie. When the bourgeoisie feel under threat and feel that they are in danger of being marginalised and under attack, they mobilise with a class solidarity that the working classes can only dream about. Today we see the mobilisation of a group that typify the privilege and earning power of the modern bourgeoisie, the junior doctors. This is a group of people whose default position is to hold ordinary working people in complete contempt and to completely disown any form of working class industrial action. Strikes are for other people, they could never, up until now, envisage a situation where they would even contemplate such a common and uncouth activity. The label 'Dr' opens doors that few other people can access. It procures tables in restaurants, tickets for the theatre, negates the tiresome necessity to queue. The principal motivation for a career in medicine is the abnormal status that accompanies such a position in the labour market. Doctors enjoy a status that is normally reserved for a very few people. In addition, they enjoy both a level of salary and a guarantee of job security that is unequalled in any other group of working people. Finally, they can look forward to a pension that will secure their retirement at a level that hardly any other working person can dream about. For all of these reasons, their recourse to all out industrial action highlights a deeply serious and profound malady within British society. It is to the Tories credit and the delight of people like me, that they are so stupid, arrogant and self-obsessed, so dismissive of any opinion other than their own, that they seriously believe that they can so contemptuously dismiss the threat that this action poses to their carefully constructed national narrative. Their problem is that they are now in conflict with a group of people whose contempt for others exceeds their own.
The medical profession have now woken up to the reality that people like me have been banging on about for years now, the Tories long-term agenda for the destruction of the health service and its complimentary ancillary services that constitutes the genuine threat to the future of the NHS and therefore to the terms and conditions of the medical profession. As I repeatedly write, the free marketeers will not tolerate any form of constraint on their activities and they have now identified the doctors as just such a constraint, as a result, doctors will have to be brought to heel and humbled. A group of people who have only a passing notion as to what doctors actually do have decided that they will determine a doctor's terms and conditions of employment, even if the entire medical profession tells them that they are wrong. Why? Because these people have no interest whatever in medicine, patient care and safety, or the health and welfare of the British population, their only concern is money. This conflict is, from the government's point of view, nothing whatever to do with health, the NHS, or the welfare of the British population. It is focused on a group of people who are the next in line for the process, started by Thatcher, of waging war on what are perceived as vested interests and as a potential threat to their long-term goal of transferring as much of the nations wealth upwards as possible, and, in the case of the health services, this will be achieved by the privatisation of health care. So, just as the power of the miners, the steel workers, and the public sector employees, particularly in local government, had to be smashed and neutered, so the doctors must go the same way. It was not an accident that Jeremy Hunt described the medical profession as a trade union in the pigsty today. As a result, they will be dealt with in exactly the same manner as the Tories have always dealt with trades unions, with contempt, hatred and by bullying and threats. Doctors are justifiably in shock, they have never been treated like other people before, and, they had better brace themselves, because if they continue to resist, the government will do what they have always done with working people, they will resort to violence.
The latest weapon the Tories have applied is the same old weapon that was successfully employed against the miners etc. that is, they are trying to bring down the government. This is softening up the general public to the idea that doctors are becoming an enemy of the state who will have to be dealt with as harshly as is necessary. I await the inevitable Tory minister accusing them of terrorism. When such tactics were used against the miners, the steel workers, the firemen etc. the doctors, because they are almost exclusively Tories, nodded sagely and threw their full weight behind the Tories because in those days being a doctor was a grand thing and very lucrative and they did not want all these bolshie working class peasants upsetting the status quo. Now, when they are on the receiving end, they don't like it, but being doctors, they do not think for one minute that they have to put up with it.
Now, you will have gathered that I have very little sympathy with the medical profession, given that they are indeed a very privileged and pampered sector of society who guard their privilege quite ferociously. However, I do not blame them for that and I do have a great deal of sympathy with their case and their struggle against this most reactionary of governments. In addition, I will always defend anyone's right to withdraw their labour, because without that right you are effectively in a state of slavery. Also, I do not suspect for one minute that the doctors have any intention of bringing down a government, however, if the Tories are not careful that is what may well happen, and my last thought is, if the government are so determined that their course of action is the only one available, that there really is no alternative, then why is it not happening in Scotland and Wales? You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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