Synopsis

In response to the Thatcher government's efforts to privatise a proportion of key state-controlled industries and institutions, the trade union movement stepped up its activity in the mid-1980s. Made in collaboration between Barefoot Video and the Joint Co-ordinating Committee of Health-Worker Unions in Brighton, this community video primarily captures the campaign of East Sussex NHS workers as they battle privatisation efforts and the selling of NHS property in the region.

But it also paints a broader picture of solidarity across the working-class population – miners speak up in support of the health workers and call on the public to do the same, as the issues affect everyone and cooperation is crucial. It's a "call to arms" for trade unions, the community and the general public who need to put pressure on the government in order to save "their" health service from the "private greed" of the contractors. The speakers and interviewees draw parallels between these local privatisation efforts – such as hospitals and NHS property being sold off – and what's happening in other industries and the country as a whole. They accuse the government of attacking the whole trade union movement and of "looking after their capitalist friends". The only way this battle can be won is by sticking together. Yet the outlook seems bleak; as the viewer is told, several local hospitals are either sold off already or under threat of being so in the near future.