The Liverpool Labour Party has called a demonstration outside Royal Liverpool Hospital, urging people to "join your Local MPs & Councillors" and "make our voices heard, in the campaign for the future of our NHS." Saving the NHS is indeed one of the most important fights in the battle against the cuts, but the Labour Party will not be the saviour of our health service.

It is thoroughly hypocritical of Labour councillors in Liverpool, whose own cuts will devestate services and have already begun to claim people's livelihoods, to claim to oppose cuts. They do not wish to mount a serious campaign against the current government's attacks, only to co-opt the anger that working class people are feeling and make political capital out of it. Should we see a Labour government replace the Con Dem one, we will not see an end to the cuts or to the privatisation, and the belief that we will is an illusion which threatens to derail the real fight against the cuts.

Don't let the party which introduced the Private Finance Initiative and the sell off of hospital services get away with their lies. If they are allowed to claim ownership of this battle, all they will do is demobilise working class anger to their own ends.

We did not get the NHS by voting Labour - we got it because the Beveridge Report reflected the very real fear of the ruling class that "if we don't give them reforms, they'll give us revolution." We will not save the NHS by voting Labour - we will save it by building a mass movement, based on direct action, that gives the government that same fear once again.

On Friday 27 January, join the demonstration. But don't demonstrate under the Labour banner to get the Tories out, demonstrate against the privatisation of the NHS - by Labour as well as by the Tories!