In the midst of an all-consuming global pandemic, it feels like good news is sparse or even that we shouldn’t celebrate it right now – but we have to.

Last week GMB won a battle in the Supreme Court – it turns out Uber drivers work for Uber. Who knew?  We’ve had big wins on Public Sector pensions, meaning people keep more of their hard-earned pensions in retirement; we secured a £1 billion Infection Control Fund to help care workers who need sick pay, and the union movement helped deliver furlough funds to protect jobs.

That’s not nothing. It shows our power as unions and what we can achieve.

The Conservative Party’s change of heart on Andrew Lansley’s NHS ‘reforms’ should have been a sort of personal victory for me, too.

As trade unionists and activists, we campaign, organise, march, leaflet, shout from the rooftops for the things we believe in and to stop what we’re against. You win some, you lose some. We always know we’re on the side of the angels, and we always feel it deeply.

Then come those rare moments after a loss, sometimes years later, when you win. When you hear on the radio that the minister for such-and-such has informed the House that the government should actually be doing that thing you told them to do in the first place.

It should feel like a win. Who doesn’t like to be right? Sadly, it always feels hollow because so much damage has already been done, and what’s worse, you told them so – loudly, publicly, repeatedly.

Matt Hancock’s latest restructuring of the NHS would get rid of Section 75 of the Health and Social Care Act (2012). That’s the duty on local commissioning groups to contract out secondary care to private providers. Who could have predicted that the continued fragmentation of the NHS would be a hindrance in a national pandemic?

In 2014, I marched from Jarrow to London with thousands of union members and supporters to—among other things—get rid of this clause which has undermined the stability of essential services by supplementing the income of non-essential private healthcare firms ever since its inception. Clive Efford’s Private Members Bill of the same year, filibustered in the most obnoxiously dismissive fashion by none other than the current Leader of the House, would have put this right.

They don’t learn.

The High Court has just ruled that in a substantial number of cases, the Secretary of State unlawfully failed to comply with transparency policy in contracting, meaning that taxpayers had no way of knowing where ‘vast quantities of public money’ were going. Just comparing the billions spent on a bodged Test and Trace system versus the efficiency of the vaccine rollout by the NHS, transparency is certainly in order.

So when Hancock recently told the House that his (latest) ‘reforms’ would see ministers regain control, and presumably accountability, over the NHS, please forgive my world-weary scepticism.

The ‘reforms’ create a new role of International Ambassador for the NHS, with Simon Stevens tipped for the post – the same man who has just left a job exercising a statutory duty to privatise NHS services as CEO of NHS England.

The government fundamentally does not believe in the principles of our NHS and the need for public service without a profit motive – their response is to restructure, restructure, restructure like our services are a game of Jenga.

As National Secretary for Public Services at GMB, I’ve spent my pandemic with nurses, porters, paramedics, cleaners, carers, caretakers, caterers, outsourced workers, lab technicians, school workers and so many more crucial key workers in our NHS, local government, and social care. What they need is a decent pay rise, time with their families, proper PPE and safe workplaces, and a test and trace programme that works and stops hospitals being overwhelmed.

That’s what we’re fighting for.

And as one of the Darlo Mums who took inspiration from the Jarrow Marchers and marched for our NHS, I want to invite you to join that fight.

On March 1, 2021 we come together—on the anniversary of our Tredagar March4TheNHS rally—to celebrate our frontline workers and to remind those in government that whatever their latest tricks, there will always be folk left to fight for the NHS.