“Junior” hospital doctors in England are on strike this week - from 7am on Wednesday until 7am on Saturday and again, for six days after the New Year, from 3 January to 9 January.

    NHS officials have conveniently hyped this up, by claiming that it will mean that hospitals will only be fully-functioning for 4 of the weekdays in the coming three weeks.  But of course over the Xmas/New year period the NHS always runs on a skeleton staff, even if these days, “normal staffing” on any day, amounts to a “skeleton”.

    Today the NHS is in ever-deeper trouble, due to the chronic lack of government funding and staff shortages.  There remain over 7 million people on waiting lists.  The doctors themselves make up for the deficit in staffing - and for the appointments cancelled during their strikes, by the way - by working 24/7, including weekends...

    And that is precisely the main problem, not just facing the junior doctors, who are one of the few sections of the workforce still fighting to improve wages and conditions, but facing everyone in the working class - and of course, every worker relies upon the NHS.  In other words, this fight today should not be the doctors’ fight alone, but the fight of all workers.

    The TUC has been producing a lot of hot air over the (Strikes) Minimum Service Act, but stands paralysed in the face of the law against solidarity action, which dates back to the 1980s and was reinforced under the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations Act.

    A general strike, involving all workers, could render this law useless.  That’s all it would take.  And “Secondary” action, in solidarity with the doctors would be far more effective in winning their demands, than leaving them to stand on their picket lines in the cold today and in January, while making token sympathetic noises in their support.

    In fact, what the working class really needs to sort out the bosses and their government, is its own “Strikes Maximum Support Act”!