2012 was busy, exciting, frustrating and often difficult for the Socialist Health Association. Our decision to re-engineer our website was largely implemented during the year, but it overlapped with the immensely prolonged campaign against the Health and Social Care Bill. Our activity shifted away from the policy oriented conferences we had organised in the past towards campaigning events. There was much more activity and our profile was considerably raised. Our online activity began to move away from Facebook and on to Twitter.
More of our members noticed and cared about what we were saying and doing, and some complained loudly when they thought were doing the wrong thing. Non-members also complained. The director found himself having to defend the association’s policy on homeopathy – which we haven’t discussed since 1984. We also found ourself on the receiving end of a threatening letter from a solicitor for misusing the trade marks of the Health Lottery Limited on our website.
We have spent about two years trying to crystallise our view on markets and privatisation and we finally reached a conclusion in September. This was expanded by Tony Beddow and Jane Roberts into a more substantial document: Improving the Health of the Nation; a policy for the NHS and its partners.
We spent a lot of time and effort working with the Labour health team, and Irwin Brown contributed a position paper Repeal and Replace Health Act 2012, which was well recieved. Our relationship with the front bench has been very friendly and constructive. Though the Labour Party official policy making processes did not produce anything substantial during the course of the year we found that our thinking about policy development was welcomed. We paved the way with the shadow team for policy development meetings to begin in 2013.
The most significant part of our campaigning against the Health Bill as an organisation (though many of our members were very active locally and in the media as individuals) was probably our convening of a campaign planning group, including all the national campaigning organisations and the Labour Party. Although the various players disagree about various aspects of the Government’s proposals – particularly about the culpability of the last Labour Government – we have found it very helpful to discuss the practicalities of organising campaigns. We were encouraged by this group to develop a programme of events which we call Defending the NHS which has been well received in a wide variety of settings, as it encourages people to consider what exactly we mean by the NHS, and how ideas about it has changed over the years.
We worked closely with the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign, the first trial of the NHS failure regime.
Noemi Fabri pushed us into thinking more clearly about what our organisation was really about in our discussions about the website design – territory unfamiliar to most members of Central Council. What we decided was:
We are not a think tank. We are not a political party.
We are:
– a place to debate a socialist way forward for the NHS
– an organisation which develops policies that contribute to a socialist way forward for the NHS
– a Socialist Society
– a critical friend of the Labour Party
– a membership organisation that needs to cater for and satisfy its membership
– very small, but punch above our weight
We have a mission statement and it seems to summarise what we are about.
Performance measures
NB We decided to collect these a few years ago. We need to consider what sort of measures are now appropriate
Membership numbers broken down by membership class
|
Membership |
2009 |
2010 |
2011 |
2012 |
| Insufficient subs |
44 |
31 |
27 |
25 |
| Current |
573 |
609 |
642 |
651 |
| reminder1 |
14 |
44 |
68 |
56 |
| reminder2 |
32 |
55 |
28 |
38 |
| No address |
13 |
11 |
10 |
10 |
| LIFE |
15 |
12 |
11 |
11 |
| Unison block |
259 |
319 |
331 |
298 |
| Unite health |
54 |
47 |
49 |
62 |
| Honorary |
16 |
17 |
10 |
10 |
| GMB |
28 |
26 |
22 |
23 |
Newsletters editions published: Socialism and Health (2)
Articles / letters published: various letters and petitions in Guardian, The NHS and Labour – after the bill on Labour List, Profile of Brian Fisher – Guardian,
Talks and appearances:
Bradford Mind, Primary Care North, Tameside College, Exeter Labour Students, Camden Co-op Party, Cheshire West and Chester Labour Group, Save the NHS Leeds, Didsbury AUT study group, Reading Fabians, National Pensioners Convention, Netroots, Middlesborough Labour Group, HSJ Summit
Constituency Labour Parties: Claremont (Eccles), Richmond Park, Gillingham, Fylde, Durham City, Neath, Port Talbot, Lambeth, Suffolk, Harrow West, Islington South,Camden Co-op Party, Shipley, Bingley
Website activity
- 2012: 181,803 visits, 338,415 page views
- 2011: Total 1,407,228 hits 51.60 GB downloaded over the year
- 2010: Total 1,307,262 hits 41.74 GB downloaded over the year
- 2009: Total 889,982 hits 60.49 GB downloaded over the year
- 2008: Total 916,809 hits 30.29 GB downloaded over the year
Google page rank of 5/10 for sochealth.co.uk (5 last year)
Peak traffic is usually November
Best month Unique visitors Number of visits Pages Hits Bandwidth
- 2012 13,115 17,243
- 2011 15570 26057 50609 15967 5.94 GB
- 2010 13731 23769 47166 139286 4.59 GB
- 2009 11282 15738 30602 104852 7.28 GB
- 2008 10395 15834 30706 97034 3.95 GB
Social Media
Our Facebook page now has 1488 (1261 last year) fans
Our Twitter feed now has 1365 ( 243 last year) followers
Contacts in our database
|
contact total year |
||
|
Year |
Number |
With Email |
|
2003 |
268 |
262 |
|
2004 |
247 |
246 |
|
2005 |
432 |
426 |
|
2006 |
885 |
870 |
|
2007 |
1852 |
1809 |
|
2008 |
4666 |
4129 |
|
2009 |
5198 |
4730 |
|
2010 |
7033 |
6268 |
|
2011 |
11596 |
10675 |
|
2012 |
8711 |
8340 |
|
Total |
40888 |
37755 |
|
Last year |
38821 |
36265 |
Events
date Event Attend Income Expenditure
- 16/01/12 Steve Harrison, Manchester 11 £100.00 £49.49
- 19/01/12 West London NHS, Ealing 7 £25.00 £75.20
- 20/01/12 Milton Keynes 22 £0.00 £75.00
- 04/02/12 Internal Market, Cardiff 37 £0.00 £257.60
- 11/05/12 Alternative Health Policy 44 £513.00 £574.60
- 29/05/12 Plotting Unite Diskus 17 £0.00 £73.40
- 08/06/12 Reclaiming our NHS Durham 40 £0.00 £0.00
- 09/06/12 Inequality in Scotland 22 £376.00 £471.40
- 29/06/12 Benefits and health Wmpton 13 £150.00 £297.48
- 15/09/12 NHS in the Community Easingtn 30 £0.00 £186.65
- 30/09/12 Labour Conference 2012 50 £0.00 £1,610.90
- 12/10/12 Integration York 32 £300.00 £804.75
- 17/11/12 Defending the NHS Pimlico 26 £0.00 £0.00
- 30/11/12 NHS for beginners B’ham 15 £0.00 £117.70
Total 366 £1,464.00 £4,594.17
Martin Rathfelder
Director