Defend maternity services!

The Royal Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust announced on 11 August that it would be “temporarily” suspending birthing services at North Devon District Hospital. It took only five days for the suspension to take effect. There is no date for when the ward will reopen, and locals are not only fearing a lengthy wait but also that the services will not resume at all. The next nearest maternity ward is in Exeter, meaning women, whilst in labour, are expected to travel up to two hours to Exeter. Most women will have to risk the journey when labour starts, which will ultimately result in many unsafe births, some on the way to the hospital. Others will feel pressure to opt for a caesarean section, hoping Exeter hospital will be able to keep up with the demand. Either way, more dangerous conditions for women giving birth are guaranteed, as are higher infant mortality rates.

Some suggest that women should book a hotel when their due date is approaching. However, only about 4% of births occur on the due date. Not that it matters whether it is one or ten nights; the cost of a hotel is unaffordable for many women in North Devon. And frankly, why should they have to fork out for a hotel regardless?

The reason for closing the ward was no hoax; staffing levels were dangerously low, putting mothers and babies at risk. But forcing North Devon’s women to go to Exeter is no better. Clearly, there needs to be another way forward. A community campaign has been formed to fight against this and their demands are as follows:

• Reopen our maternity unit
• Invest in staff
• Recruit and retain
• Keep births local
• Listen to residents
• Give us a plan to reopen
• No permanent closure by stealth

We unconditionally support these demands. The question is, how do we achieve them?

The consciousness of North Devon’s working and lower middle classes reflects the very real isolation that they suffer. As in many deindustrialised towns, people feel that no one cares about “little old us” and that they’re in it alone. We must fight against this. North Devon isn’t alone: from the Royal Free Hospital in London to Liverpool Women's Hospital, maternity wards throughout the country are under threat of closure. The country as a whole is on course to cut health services in order to boost defence spending. We must link the struggle for North Devon’s hospital services to those of the rest of the country. Every section of the working class has an interest in fighting back against NHS cuts, and we are stronger when fighting together.

The Trust has already begun moving staff from North Devon’s maternity ward to Exeter’s. These staff are in a vulnerable position, like everyone else in North Devon, scared of losing local maternity services and, therefore, their jobs. Healthcare unions must be at the forefront of the struggle to defend maternity services. It is not in the interests of hospital workers to travel to Exeter, adding at least two hours to their already gruelling day, not to mention the difficulty of travelling during unsocial hours when public transport between Barnstaple and Exeter is almost non-existent. Of course, this also eats into their limited free time. As for the Trust, they will continue with business as usual unless they are challenged by the unions.

For decades, the NHS has been run down, underfunded and incrementally privatised. The recent review into maternity and neonatal care at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust found deep-rooted, systemic failings that caused the avoidable death or harm of over 500 mothers and babies spanning more than a decade. Across the NHS, nurses are terrified to speak out against the danger this poses to patient safety because it means going up against the notoriously hierarchical and misogynistic NHS management. The unions must take up the fight for better conditions and staffing levels, which is key to improving patient safety. But this requires a leadership prepared to wage a struggle against NHS management, rather than the current union leaders, who have sat on their hands for decades whilst the NHS crumbles.

One way to bring more nurses and midwives into the NHS, in North Devon and beyond, is to extend the apprenticeship scheme and pay them decent wages. That would also help bring younger people, who generally have very poor job prospects, into the workforce. But the question of staffing is also inseparable from immigration. The NHS has always relied on a low-paid, female and immigrant workforce. Here it is clear why the defence of immigrants must be linked with the fight to save the NHS.

With the chronic rundown of services and the lack of decent jobs, many workers are turning to Reform UK. But Reform has no solution, instead scapegoating immigrants for the country’s problems rather than dealing with the root cause of deindustrialisation and economic ruin—the City of London and their masters in Wall Street. The Labour government—under Burnham as under Starmer—is committed to slashing social services and increasing defence spending at the command of the US Empire.

However, we cannot rely on the Lib Dems. By all means, keep inviting Ian Roome MP to the demos, but the Lib Dems are part of the problem. They served in coalition with the Tories and are just as committed to increased defence spending as Labour is. It’s easy to make promises when they are in opposition, as they did when they promised to abolish tuition fees in 2010. But they betrayed it once they joined the government. Today they are happy to promise increased NHS spending, but would be ready to betray once again.

A sad truth is that North Devon is not particularly important to the British economy as a whole, and this is one source of the felt isolation. However, that does not mean it has no economic weight. For example, around 9% of all NHS medicines are manufactured and/or distributed from Accord UK’s plant in Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple. SEA (Systems Engineering & Assessment) employs some 230 workers in Pottington, Barnstaple. The company holds multi-million-pound contracts with the British Ministry of Defence, the New Zealand navy and the Philippine navy, to name a few. Aero Stanrew in Roundswell, Barnstaple, produces electronic components that companies such as Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems rely on. Whilst many of these workers look to Reform, they are among the few in North Devon with real social power. Although the attack on maternity services has particular implications for women, it also has an impact on men. All workers have a direct interest in defending North Devon Hospital. They must be reached out to and won over to the campaign.

Obviously, soon-to-be mothers in North Devon are the primary victims of this attack on maternity services. Throughout the NHS, women are indispensable to keeping the service running, especially in this era of severe underfunding. As always, the government takes advantage of the fact that women are conditioned to see caregiving as part of their role in society. On the one hand, they are oppressed as women; on the other, they have real social power as part of a massive, overwhelmingly female workforce. To bring that power to bear, we need leadership that is committed to fighting for decent working conditions for health workers, defending patient safety and linking this to the struggle against the oppression of women in society.