Annual Report 2009
Political developments
This year has been totally overshadowed by economic issues, such that health has had little political traction. The Marmot strategic review of health inequalities in England post 2010 has been an important issue for the association and we have had excellent briefings from Dr Mike Grady, one of our members who is working on it. We hope that the publication of the review will bring inequality into the political limelight for the election, coming as it does in the wake of the publication of the Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s very successful popular treatment of the evidence on inequality. The general unpopularity of bankers and financiers seems also to make issues around equality of more political interest than for many years. We intend to bring these issues together in a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Black Report in 2010.
Organisation and Development
This year has seen a more varied programme of events than previously. A very learned seminar on the European Union proposals for cross border health care was followed by a campaigning event about prescription charges. The restaurant offensive has continued in Manchester, Leeds and London and has succeeded in persuading some prominent people to give us a more candid view of the world as they see it than might have been gained in a different setting. A symposium on health care and the Somali Community attracted a large and varied audience evenly divided between community members and those who provide services for them. The Director has been in demand as a speaker at Labour Party meetings and complains that he is only invited out to such events on cold wet winter nights. We fielded two speakers for a debate about health centres in the Reform club, on opposite sides of the question. And for the first time in living memory we hosted a meeting at Labour Party Conference with the Chairman of the BMA Council, a conference to which we sent a large and successful delegation.
The director has taken advantage of the Association’s long history of work in Public and Patient Involvement to set up a series of training seminars for LINK members.
We have actively participated in Manchester University’s volunteer programme and our volunteers have engaged in a variety of tasks – scanning old material for our website, investigating the longevity of MPs and developing a survey of medical students. We are very grateful to all of them.
During the course of the year it has become clearer that the print media we have worked with for the last 80 years are unlikely to survive in their present form for much longer. We invested a good deal of time and effort in remodelling our website, developing a presence on Facebook and contributing to online debates. This approach seems to be paying off, and towards the end of the year the website began to attract paid advertising.
Branch Activity
The Scottish, West Midland, Welsh, Manchester and London branches have continued to meet more or less regularly. In both Wales and Scotland our members are both individually and collectively well connected to Labour front benchers.
We note sadly that Joy Mostyn at the age of 92, and after many years in the SHA is no longer well enough to participate in political life. She was an early activist in the Community Health Council movement and a powerful figure in the London Labour Party.
I must thank Brian Fisher and the other officers whose voluntary efforts make the Socialist Health Association the stimulating organisation it is.
Martin Rathfelder
Director