Workers' Weekly Internet Edition Year 2026 Volume 56 Number 10 Volume 56 Number 10, April 4, 2026 ARCHIVE JBCENTRE Resident doctors announce six days of strike action in England The Voice and Stand of Resident Doctors Is for the Interests of All Health Workers and NHS Patients Workers' Weekly Internet Edition Article Index : Resident doctors announce six days of strike action in England: The Voice and Stand of Resident Doctors Is for the Interests of All Health Workers and NHS Patients From the annals of the working class movement: Centenary of the 1926 General Strike Centenary of the 1926 General Strike: Putting the Question of Political Power On the Agenda Africa progressive movements continue to rally in solidarity with Cuba: Solidarity with the Heroic People of Cuba Resident doctors announce six days of strike action in England The Voice and Stand of Resident Doctors Is for the Interests of All Health Workers and NHS Patients BMA Picket Sheffield Hospital, November 2025 - Photo: Whats App The BMA's Resident Doctors Committee (RDC) announced in a press release on March 25, that following weeks of talks with Government, they had determined that the Health Secretary's final offer was insufficient and called further strike action in England [1]. The action will run from 7am on April 7 to 6.59am on April 13. It should be remembered that the present government opposed the previous government of Sunak for not negotiating with the doctors and promised to the electorate before coming to power that they would achieve a "negotiated settlement" with the doctors. Yet once again, government has refused to negotiate a solution to the concerns of the doctors who are fighting against the unsafe shortage of resident doctors, their training in our hospitals and their collapsing pay level. This is why the doctors continue to say to the government that Enough Is Enough! Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of RDC, said: "We have been negotiating in good faith for weeks to try and end the simultaneous pay and jobs crises for resident doctors. Frustratingly we had been making good progress right up until the point, in the last two weeks, when the Government began to shift the goalposts." He remarked that with the government "as talks progressed it became clear that the money proposed for pay increases was now going to be spread over three years", that "combined with today's pay review body (DDRB) recommendation of a 3.5% uplift pointing to yet more years in which our pay, at best, barely treads water" and that the RDC is "simply not going to put an offer to doctors that risks locking in further erosion of pay at a time when doctors continue to leave the UK for other countries." He concluded that the RDC "remain willing to negotiate and are eager to get a deal done if we can simply recapture the early positive spirit of negotiations. No strikes need to happen, but Government will need to act fast to prevent them." The government responded to the announcement of the RDC strike action the next day with Health Secretary Wes Streeting presenting to Parliament a justification for not meeting the doctors demands [2]. He claimed that the RDC rejected an "historic deal". Yet he then admitted to Parliament that "we were optimistic that it would be received positively, albeit I was aware of the officers' preference that this should be a deal over two years rather than three years, and that they had expected the independent DDRB recommendation to come out slightly higher than it did". In other words, the offer was considerably worse than the terms that had been negotiated with the RDC previously. The government's arrogant response soon degenerated from Wes Streeting's plea that Parliament "urge the committee to reconsider" and "call off their strike" to the usual government propaganda and threats against the doctors to accept their "historic deal". Just a week later, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer writing in the Times labelled the BMA's rejection of the deal "reckless" and said that it "benefits no one" and, metaphorically petulantly stamping his foot, he gave resident doctors 48 hours to call off their strike or lose the training offer [3]. Now Wes Streeting was no longer "urging" but he and Starmer have vindictively told the BMA, at the same time punishing NHS staff and patients, that those "1,000 extra slots in specialist training will be scrapped unless it accepts the deal". This referred to the paltry government offer of a pledge to increase the number of places available in specialist medical training by up to 4,500 over the next three years to help more early-career doctors start training in their chosen speciality. About 1,000 doctors were due to step into those roles from this August. Yet the scale of the problem as outlined by the BMA last year in negotiations was that there were now 30,000 doctors applying for 10,000 training posts with even many of those existing training posts going to overseas applicants only. This was forcing resident doctors to apply abroad and leave the country when they were needed for our NHS. According to a BBC report on Thursday, the government, whilst refusing to open meaningful negotiations, has indeed vindictively withdrawn even this paltry offer of creating 1,000 more doctor training posts in England "after the British Medical Association (BMA) refused to call off a six-day strike next week". The BMA and its RDC has rejected these government threats. Dr Jack Fletcher, the chair of the RDC, wrote in a letter to the health secretary on Wednesday as reported in The Guardian : "The political rhetoric - threatening to remove training places - coupled with the way the government has communicated the offer, has needlessly and avoidably inflamed the dispute, ultimately pushing the chance of a deal further away. A final offer followed by threats that parts of the offer may be withdrawn is not the way to end this dispute." [4] In other words, the government's claim that it is negotiating is once again exposed as completely false alongside the previous governments before it. There is no acknowledgment of, or alarm at the context, that why is it in the modern age doctors are forced to go on strike to defend their jobs and their pay when the NHS needs them more and more? There is no acknowledgment of the deep crisis that the government and previous governments have created in the NHS. There is no acknowledgment that it is the government and the cartel party system in power that is responsible. It is the government and not the doctors that have underfunded the health care system by "reckless" measures that "benefits no one". It is successive governments who have refused to invest in the NHS as a vital public health care system. They are responsible for diverting the existing already reduced funds to privatise profitable services and Private Finance Initiatives and at huge costs to patient care. In refusing to negotiate, Starmer adopts a similar criminal reckless, arbitrary and irrational posture to Donald Trump, in diverting the whole economy away from public services to war preparations and funding the priorities of the big corporations. It is these interests that they directly serve. It is this and not the doctors that has left so many patients to face death and harm waiting for timely treatment in a compromised healthcare system which the NHS has further become. It has also been revealed this week that the government's cynical agenda may be to try and justify even further massive cuts on the NHS and further destroy medical services when NHS England chief executive Sir Jim Mackey told the Health Service Journal on Thursday that "the NHS will accelerate work to design clinical models less reliant on resident doctors in response to continuing strike action by medics". Yet Starmer is diverting funds left, right and centre to militarise the economy and place it on a war footing, Workers' Weekly , writing in support of the doctors' strike last December, pointed out: "As the doctors take their action, they are supported with more and more people who see the frustration of the doctors and their new resolve that Enough Is Enough! They are strongly pointing out that more than a decade of real-terms pay erosion for doctors, worsening conditions and increasing shortage of doctors in our hospitals is applicable, not only to doctors, but to nurses and the whole health team, and that it is unacceptable in a modern society. "The fight against the running down of the work force in our NHS, their jobs, pay and conditions must get the full support of the working class and people. The NHS human-centred workforce is a workforce which is vital to treat the most immediate and urgent needs, as well as dealing with all of the complex human health needs. In a modern society, health care is a right for all with access for patients to the right care and at the right time." [5] The voice and stand of resident doctors must be heeded as it represents the interests of all health workers and NHS patients. Notes 1. Resident doctors announce six days of strike action in England after Government offer rejected by BMA media team, March 25th 2. Oral statement to Parliament - Proposed industrial action by resident doctors, March 26 3. Keir Starmer gives resident doctors 48 hours to call off strike or lose training offer, The Guardian , March 31 4. Resident doctors accuse Keir Starmer of sabotaging talks to end pay and jobs dispute, The Guardian , April 1 5. Resident Doctors Reject the Government's Denial of Proper Job Restoration, their Insults and Rushed Half-Measures, Workers' Weekly , December 20 2025 Article Index From the annals of the working class movement Centenary of the 1926 General Strike Photo: www.tuc.org.uk This year marks the centenary of the 1926 General Strike. It was not merely a defensive action against wage cuts and longer hours. It was also a moment when the working class demonstrated, despite its defeat, that they had the potential to take up the solutions to the crisis of society, opening up the path to progress and a new society constituted by themselves, the working class. In those nine days, workers put centre stage the necessity to capture political power and take up the orientation of creating a new society. In the General Strike, the working class demonstrated again its place at the centre of the forward march of society, as in the struggles led by the Chartists in the first half of the 19th century, or on Clydeside during the First World War. The General Strike clearly put the immediate need for a new system on the agenda, and opened up in particular the question of political power. Erupting at a time when revolution was very much in flow, the government treated the strike as a challenge to its authority, mobilising emergency powers and framing the conflict as a defence of the status quo. But the strike showed that the working class itself holds the answers. Looked at from the standpoint of the present, the task that opened up in 1926 was the completion of the democratic revolution. The English Civil War established certain political forms, but the ruling elites have long since abandoned any coherence in the political theory they established out of that conflict. The liberal democratic institutions to which capitalist development gave rise lie in tatters. The completion of the democratic revolution means vesting sovereignty not in representatives of the person of state, but in the people themselves. The task of the working class is to constitute itself the nation and vest sovereignty in the people, to create a new society. The strike demonstrated that the working class must take control of what belongs to it, placing the resources of society in its own hands and creating a new society that guarantees the rights of all. The spirit of that time has its direct continuation in the present, even though the conditions now are very different. The subsidised mineowner Today we face increasingly open rule by police powers. This is a period of transition, marked by the destruction of old forms, the restructuring of the state, and the strengthening of police powers, and in which the fight of the people for the alternative has become imperative. Desperation to prevent this alternative from taking root has created political chaos, and the answer is being sought in police powers as the state is rearranged around their wielding. Against this critical state of affairs, the will to be of the modern democratic personality demands the alternative. A change in the direction of society and the economy is urgently needed, requiring the democratic renewal of political processes and institutions, and the mobilisation of the working class and people to take up this task. The need is for an anti-war government, as the manifestation of the modern democratic personality that will do away with rule mediated by so-called representatives, who are in fact representatives of the person of state. This is a profound conception encompassing a government which is also pro-social and pro-worker. Alongside this, there is a need for a change in the direction of the economy; an independent programme to stop paying the rich and increase investments in social programmes. This programme embodies the political unity of the working class and people, in which the individual interest is harmonised with the collective, and the collective interests with the general interests of society. A modern state must be brought into being which enshrines the rights of all by virtue of being human and their concrete reality. Thus the significance of the General Strike lies not only in what it achieved or failed to achieve at the time, but in what it revealed: the working class as a transformative force, capable of leading society forward. The miners' slogan, "Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day", expressed a refusal to accept further deterioration. But beyond that refusal was an affirmation. That affirmation, born in the struggles of the 1920s, remains the task of the working class today. Our spirit as we mark the centenary of the General Strike is that we passionately declare: the economy belongs to us, the working class, the producers, the most revolutionary class by virtue of their concrete condition in society and the relations within it! With the working class constituting itself the nation, guided and inspired by its Marxist-Leninist Party, its general staff, a society fit for human beings will be created and strengthened. The time is now for the working class to take up this task! Article Index Centenary of the 1926 General Strike Putting the Question of Political Power On the Agenda Photo: www.tuc.org.uk The 1926 General Strike stands as one of the most significant episodes in the history of the British working class movement. Lasting nine days in May 1926, it involved around 1.5-2 million workers and was called by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in support of coal miners resisting wage cuts and longer working hours. The immediate origins of the strike lay in the crisis of the British coal industry after the First World War. During the war, coal mines had been placed under state control, but in 1921 they were returned to private ownership. In the following years, the industry faced falling prices, shrinking export markets and increased international competition. Mine owners attempted to restore their private claims through reducing wages and extending the working day. Miners, whose wages had already declined sharply since the end of the war, resisted these measures. Their union adopted the slogan "Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day," reflecting widespread opposition to further deterioration in living conditions. With coal central to the British economy, supplying energy for transport, industry and domestic use, a conflict in the coalfields had the potential to spread across the wider economy. By the 1920s Britain had a large and organised workers' movement. Between 1910 and 1914, a period often described as the "Great Unrest", major strikes took place across mining, transport, and manufacturing sectors. Trade unions had gained millions of members, and this period of struggle had demonstrated workers' capacity for coordinated action. In 1925, faced with renewed conflict in the coal industry, the government intervened to prevent an immediate general strike. It introduced subsidies to maintain miners' wages and established a commission to investigate the industry. This temporary retreat, known as "Red Friday", was widely seen as a victory for the workers. However, the delay also allowed the government to prepare for a future confrontation. Emergency plans were developed, supplies were stockpiled, and arrangements were made to maintain essential services in the event of a strike. When the commission later recommended wage reductions, negotiations broke down. Mine owners moved to impose new terms, and when miners refused, they were locked out in May 1926. The TUC responded by calling a general strike, which began on May 3. Workers in key sectors such as transport, railways, printing, and heavy industry joined. The strike disrupted the functioning of the economy and brought large parts of industry to a halt. The government declared a state of emergency under the Emergency Powers Act 1920, instituting open rule by police powers. Volunteers were recruited to operate transport and maintain supply networks, while police and troops were deployed to protect infrastructure. The government also issued its own propaganda newspaper, The British Gazette . It had already pre-emptively arrested leading members of the recently-formed Communist Party in October 1925. Tyldesley miners outside the Miners Hall during the 1926 strike After nine days, on May 12, 1926, the TUC called off the strike without securing guarantees for the miners. The miners continued their struggle alone for several months but were eventually forced back to work under worse conditions. The General Strike ended without achieving its immediate aims. The miners' defeat and subsequent legislation restricting trade union activity was, in itself, a setback for the working class movement. The General Strike broke out in a period when revolution was very much in flow, in the aftermath of the First World War when the shockwaves of the Socialist Revolution in Russia were still being felt. Although capitalism had matured into its monopoly, imperialist stage - a consequence of which had been the War itself - this was still a recent development. Following the Russian Revolution, the period from 1917 to the early 1920s had seen a wave of uprisings in Germany, Hungary and Italy. Britain itself experienced significant working class unrest during this period, with major strikes and political agitation. The Communist Party of Great Britain had been formed in August 1920, though its influence was still limited. At that time, any large-scale industrial conflict had to be viewed as part of this broader struggle between labour and capital. The significance of the General Strike at that time was that it put the question of political power on the agenda for the working class for the first time in Britain. The government treated the strike as a challenge to its authority, mobilising emergency powers and framing the conflict as a defence of constitutional order. At the same time, the strike demonstrated the capacity of organised labour to disrupt economic life on a national scale. In this sense, the strike opened up the question of who ultimately controls the organisation of society, a question that remains unresolved to this day. The nine days of action gave workers a direct experience of their collective power. The conditions of the present day are very different from those of the General Strike a century ago. Imperialism has long-since overripened and now, in the age of oligarchy, is in all-sided perpetual crisis and decay. The ruling elites no longer follow with any coherence the political theory they established out of, for example, the English Civil War. The big political parties have degenerated into factions of a cartel system that bars people from power. The liberal democratic institutions to which capitalist development gave rise, of civil and political society, lie in tatters, as the state is reorganised directly around the most powerful, yet narrow, private interests. Nowadays, rule is increasingly openly of police powers as a matter of course. Unions in particular face a serious struggle to remain effective as self-defence organisations of the class at a time when civil society lies in ruins. There is a complete absence of a social contract between workers and employers, exemplified by imposition by employers as the modus operandi. Resistance to "fire and rehire", for example, has exposed the imbalance in employer-worker relations, with employers imposing decisions without consultation. The historical alliance between unions, business and the state is a long-distant memory, leading to a unilateral imposition of power by those in control. A new consciousness is emerging among working people, emphasising the need for a society that recognises and affirms human rights. The workers' movement is gaining momentum, as they declare "Enough is Enough!" and advocate for control over their lives and rights. Increasing resistance from workers reveals in practice that they can provide solutions aligned with the general interests of society. Workers need a decisive role in decision-making processes affecting society and the economy, emphasising that true political opposition emerges from the working class when organised in and of itself, with its own independent programme. Engaging in the battle of democracy, the working class and people seek to establish new forms in which the working people themselves constitute the authority and decide matters directly. In this sense, the core issue raised by the General Strike remains, and is in fact sharper than ever before: the issue of political power. Article Index Africa progressive movements continue to rally in solidarity with Cuba Solidarity with the Heroic People of Cuba Pan Africanism Today Solidarity Letter We are reproducing this solidarity letter from the Secretariat of Pan Africanism Today. Popular movements, trade unions, youth organisations, and political parties from across the African continent have continued to mobilise in solidarity with Cuba in the face of escalating economic pressure and sanctions. Following the release of the solidarity letter co-ordinated by Pan Africanism Today and endorsed by over 35 political parties and popular movements, organisations across Africa have stepped up actions in support of Cuba. These efforts have included delivering letters to Cuban embassies across the continent reaffirming long-standing ties rooted in anti-imperialist struggle and internationalism, while also raising awareness about Cuba's current plight under intensifying economic pressure. Dear Comrades, Delegation at Cuban Embassy Benin - Photo: Pan Africanism Today The Pan Africanism Today Secretariat, together with all progressive people's movements and organisations across Africa, declare our unwavering solidarity with the heroic people of Cuba. We write to you at this crucial moment in history, characterised by the increasing barbarism of United States imperialism and the equally growing anti-imperialist resistance of the peoples of the world. We write not only to offer words of comfort, but to reaffirm active solidarity and internationalism forged through decades of shared struggle against a common enemy. The world is witnessing, in stark and undeniable terms, the true character of the United States ruling class. From the genocide of the Palestinian people - carried out with weapons, financing, and unconditional political cover provided by Washington - to the unprovoked military aggression against the people of Iran. We are simultaneously witnessing the relentless tightening of the brutal blockade against Cuba. Ultimately, we are confronted by a system that has abandoned all pretence of legality, morality, and human decency. You, the Cuban people, have understood this long before the rest of the world was compelled to recognise it. For nearly 70 years, you have demonstrated, through daily revolutionary praxis, that a world founded on sovereignty, dignity, and the genuine prosperity of the many is not a utopian dream but an achievable reality. You have not lectured us; you have shown us. And you have paid for that demonstration with sacrifices that challenge the imagination. The blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba is more than just an economic strangulation - it is a persistent act of war against an entire people, across generations, and it stands as one of the gravest ongoing crimes against humanity in the modern era. Most recently, on 29 January 2026, the Trump administration signed Executive Order 14380, declaring a national emergency concerning Cuba and imposing an oil blockade that has deprived your people of fuel, threatening the collapse of hospitals, food supplies, and water systems. This is the most severe escalation of the blockade in decades. The near-universal votes of the United Nations General Assembly condemning it year after year affirm what the peoples of the world already understand: Cuba's right to self-determination is non-negotiable. In response, you, our Cuban comrades, continue to demonstrate a true revolutionary spirit - through your resilience, ingenuity and the highest form of generosity and socialist internationalism. Where the United States deploys soldiers and imposes sanctions, you have sent doctors and teachers. When Cubans stood alongside the people of Southern Africa in the fight against colonialism and the racist apartheid regimes, the world witnessed what true solidarity looks like. On the African continent, we have not forgotten, and we will not forget. We will not accept that the cost of the right to self-determination is a prolonged, inhumane siege. We refuse to accept that the sacrifices you have made are the price of choosing one's own future. We reaffirm our commitment - not only to support the Cuban people, lifelong comrades of Africa, but also to change the international conditions that allow such sieges. We unequivocally declare the following: * We condemn the criminal blockade of Cuba with contempt and pledge to intensify every effort to end it - politically, diplomatically, and in the court of international public opinion. * We commit to strengthening our solidarity with the Cuban people and to ensuring that the truth about Cuba's revolutionary achievements, and the crimes against it, reaches the widest possible audiences across our continent and the world. * We salute the leadership of the Cuban Revolution for its steadfastness in the face of an ongoing US-led imperialist siege. * We honour the memory of the revolution's giants - such as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Haydee Santamaria and others - by dedicating ourselves to upholding their example in our own struggles. * We stand with the Cuban people as you withstand the latest tightening of the imperialist stranglehold. You do not face this alone. An injury to Cuba is an injury to all of us. Comrades, we conclude with a conviction rooted in the revolutionary praxis you have bequeathed to the world. To paraphrase Comandante Che Guevara: the world needs two, three, many Cubas. We have listened when Fidel taught us the importance of active struggle - that the duty of every revolutionary is to make revolution. In our respective sites of struggle across Africa, we commit ourselves to doing precisely that: building the organised power of workers, peasants, women, and youth; deepening the anti-imperialist consciousness of our peoples; and forging the continental and international unity in action. This can break the chains of capitalism and imperialism - our ability to work together and construct the socialist world that the people of Cuba have dared to demonstrate is necessary. A world for the many, built by the many! Long live the Cuban Revolution! Long live International Solidarity! ¡Patria o Muerte, Venceremos! In revolutionary solidarity, Pan Africanism Today (PAT) Secretariat Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Articulation of the International Peoples Assembly Also endorsed by over 35 political parties and popular movements across Africa. Article Index Receive Workers' Weekly E-mail Edition: It is free to subscribe to the e-mail edition We encourage all those who support the work of RCPB(ML) to also support it financially: Donate to RCPB(ML) WW Internet RSS Feed Workers' Weekly is the weekly on line newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) Website: E-mail: office@rcpbml.org.uk 170, Wandsworth Road, London, SW8 2LA. RCPB(ML) Home Page Workers' Weekly Online Archive