I want to pay tribute to the Branch, the Region, to Karen, but most of all to the people who have taken industrial action, because it’s not an easy thing to do, certainly for anyone, but when you’re a healthcare professional it does take a lot of soul-searching to do it. I really think they should feel proud of themselves for doing that (applause) and as far I’m concerned, if you want to see the proper values and ethics for the NHS to have, it’s people who are prepared to sacrifice themselves in support of others who are in trouble.

So a message to the Nursing Council, this is the kind of people that you want in the NHS, people who will stand up where injustice takes place. And equally, we always support our activists, because we know that people like Karen put themselves at risk, they sacrifice day in, day out, trying to do what is good for the NHS but also what’s good for our members, and their members, and of course the patients. And we recognise that they put themselves at risk all the time in doing that, and that’s why we are 100% behind this campaign.

I think the employers need to realise that we’re not going to go away. We’ve now got a date for the Appeal, and we need to put maximum effort to make sure that justice is done.

But this is the message that I want to give to the employers, and it’s really important. A trade union is like a family. And when you attack one, you attack us all. And they need to know that in this case, because they’ve attacked one of our family, we are going to kick them back, good and hard. Thank you. (applause)

photo: Richard Searle

Their message is, "keep your head down, shut up, we know better", and as long as we do actually keep our heads down, then they’ll continue to laugh at us, they’ll continue to belittle us, they’ll rip us off, and they’ll spend our taxes on things we don’t want them spent on, on global warfare projects, on weapons of mass destruction, on authoritarian ID card schemes etc. etc. So we need to really confront, as a movement, the whole PFI debacle, the whole way that our money is spent.

Unfortunately, the major parties are all in agreement on PFI, and that’s why we represent the majority, but the majority are not represented in power. So we need to basically continue to build the movement and show that those in power are not representing the interests of the broader masses of society. Thanks again for turning out, and be ready to fight when it’s your turn. (applause)

Karen: our struggle is in solidarity with other people as well, so I’ve a cheque here for £500 from the Manchester Community and Mental Health Branch of UNISON to keep you going and good luck, all the luck in your dispute too. (applause)

The market principles of the NHS in England have privatised many of the services, not only in Manchester but across the country. Karen stood up against those cuts, those job losses, the service provision that was lost for the community of Manchester. She stood up against it, spoke out against it, and today Karen has been sacked from her job as a valued nurse in the NHS. That we can’t condone, and that’s why we’re here today to show Karen that we support her struggle, we support her fight, and we will stand up against the sacking of Karen and also in support of Karen.

An attack on Karen is an attack on every one of us, as Bob says. We cannot allow this Trust, this employer, to undermine the values and the principles of UNISON, and those principles and those values are built on the lay activists who support the service provision and the people who provide those services. We must continue to speak up against the market principles of the NHS and we must send a clear message to Karen’s employer, to Manchester Health, to tell them that we will not condone their actions and we will continue to fight and speak in support of Karen. Thanks (applause)

If these cuts come in, it means that patients, from having 14 nurses, will go down to 4. Now part of being a nurse, in Mental Health, is part of receiving treatment. It’s not just about medicine, it’s very much about the relationship between the patient and a nurse. ("Connection"). A connection, yes.

Manchester Users Network support Karen wholeheartedly, and are asking this Town Hall here, how dare Mr. Cooley, Basil Cooley, turn round and say everything’s ok. It’s not ok, and how dare you say that? (applause)

photo: Mark, Oxford

photo: Tom Bimpson

I want to just say a little bit about what’s been happening during our recent strike. We have Sheila Foley, Sheila "my door is always open" Foley, swanning off on holiday to Dubai, on the first day of the strike. We couldn’t afford to go to Dubai to go through her open door. She comes back, tries to sneak in to work early in the morning, but she doesn’t realise, strikers are used to getting up early in the morning, so we gave her a warm reception back, tried to give her a one-way ticket to go back again.

We also asked her could we start the talks that we’ve been waiting for since June. Obviously, in front of the press, the media, in front of service users, Sheila pretends that she wants talks. The Trust Board pretend that they want talks. They want to resolve this dispute quickly.

But as soon as we get into talks, the first thing they say is, "we’re not prepared to discuss Karen Reissmann". Well have they forgotten, or have they not noticed, that this strike is about Karen Reissmann?

photo: Mark, Oxford

It’s about the right to speak out, it’s about the right to defend our NHS. These people are taking vast amounts of money out of a Trust that’s already burdened with debt, and they don’t want to speak about the problems that are right at the heart of the strike. And what we would say to people is, we will continue that strike.

You know, we stayed solid, we’ve got the support of colleagues who’ve come out on strike for the first 3 months, we have support from around the country. I always say that the way we look at it, there are many many more of us than there are of them, and we will win! thank you. (applause)

I also want to say, on behalf of the North-West Region, very proud to have been participating in this march, along with my colleagues the Convenor of North-West Region Diane Kelly, and the Joint Deputy Convenor Anne McCormick, and we also have with us the Chair of our Health Service Exec from the North-West Region, because what we want to do, is to ensure our continued support.

So I think it’s important that you recognise that we are doing everything we can to support Karen Reissmann and all of our members engaged in this dispute. Whilst people might be critical of our Labour Link, I can assure you we’ve done everything we possibly can and will continue to do that. We lobbied Ministers at the Labour Party Conference, we’ve lobbied the North-West Labour MP’s, and I’m very pleased to hear that Tony Lloyd who is Karen’s MP is actually speaking today (applause).

That shows you our continued committment, it also shows you what we’re prepared to do in defence of our members. And what I think is important to recognise here, is this issue is not just about Karen, it’s about defence of the health service, and what will help this dispute, everybody here who’s not engaged in it, but is supporting it, if you can write to your MP’s, write to the Trust, write to Sheila Foley, write to the Evening News, write to your local papers, and express your solidarity and support.

Because it’s an absolute injustice, it’s against the principles of natural justice, to actually in a cynical move report our members to their professional associations. So I’m glad the Trust aren’t doing that, but it’s not to say they won’t do it in the future, but it’s an absolute disgrace.

This is a legitimate dispute with support from the very bottom to the very top. You’ve heard the committment of previous UNISON speakers, so I urge you, don’t lose faith, and continue with this solidarity action, but more importantly, engage people who are not UNISON members and who are not union members but they are service users. This is a citizenship issue and we will fight for the right to defend our health service and our members who we believe are being penalised for being trade union activists. Thank you comrades. (applause)

But the way things are going, we’ll have to invite Michael Moore over to make a version of Sicko, the way this country is being betrayed. Aneurin Bevan would be turning in his grave, to see what’s happening. (applause)

Why all this talk about Mr. Blair goes out and Mr. Brown comes in, it’s the same thing continuing. When I go up Upper Brook St. and I look at the rebuilding of the MRI, I know it was £350 million. Do you know what the payback is to the American finance company? £1, 000 million. The Americans have always hated our National Health Service, and they’ve told them many many years, they’ve slowly and insidiously taken over. I was told by a colleague the other day, that NHS, if we’re not careful, will simply become a logo for a bevy of American financial companies, pharmaceutical companies, who want to destroy the first health service. (applause)

Finally can I just remind you, in the richest country on this earth, the United States of America, there are 50 million people who cannot afford health insurance. If I was an American, I wouldn’t be here today. They even blocked a bill to give children health care, Bush blocked that. What an obscenity. Thank you.

Any union that knows anything, knows that without freedom of speech and freedom to organise, you’re absolutely scuppered. And those things really really matter to us and we’ve got to defend them. So that’s all I’ll say with my CSP hat on.

On a personal note I’m sure a lot of people here used to read the journalism of Paul Foot, and he said something very important that we need to remember. The NHS is hated by the rich and the powerful, because it is functioning socialism. It doesn’t always function particularly well, but it’s been going for 60 years and it does work, and it’s the threat of a good example, that they can’t stand. (applause) So we need to maintain the threat of a good example.

And finally again on a personal note, there’s a song that I love about the Spanish Civil War, and the words are apposite. It’s, “if you tolerate this” – if we tolerate what happened to Karen, it will happen to other stewards and it will happen all across the country. “If you tolerate this, your children will be next”. Thank you. (applause)

Compere: I’d like to make a very personal thank you to the next speaker because the NUJ were kind enough to give all of us strikers a room where could all heat our backsides having stood on the picket all morning, and also get together and arrange things like this. So please put your hands together for Jenny Lennox of the NUJ.

There are a couple of other things I wanted to mention. For one, obviously the National Union of Journalists, we support them, we support trade unionists who are persecuted, and the fact is, Karen is a trade union rep who is doing her job. And whatever you think about what she said, she should not be sacked for saying it. That is a fact, and it is a no-brainer, and every trade unionist gut reaction is to say “we must support her” (applause) so I think that’s really important to remember.

photo: Tom Bimpson

The second issue I wanted to mention is actually something that’s very personal to our union, a reason why we have put out an awful lot of information about Karen’s dispute. Karen spoke to journalists, and that’s one of the issues that the Trust have with her. And the fact is that if people don’t speak to journalists, we can’t tell you what’s going on. And it’s really really important that we don’t allow Sheila Foley and others to bully the press out of covering important issues like workers disputes.

And so I really wanted to say that Karen’s done a great job, the nurses are wonderful and I want them to keep up the good work, and we will be entirely behind them. (applause)

But just to make the point that when management go for reps, they don’t go for weak reps. They don’t go for ineffective reps. They go for reps that are strong, and reps that are effective and reps that do their job. So every time that a rep is attacked, it’s an attack on their union, it’s an attack on my union, it’s an attack on the whole labour movement. And this isn’t something that as a union, and as a union we’re only too, we know only too well what happens when reps get attacked, unfortunately in our union it happens quite a lot.

But wherever that happens, as a trade union movement you don’t take a step backwards, you don’t make excuses, irrespective of the politics or what people have said in the past whether you agree with them or not. You don’t take a step backwards, you take a step forward, you say an attack on one person is an attack on me, and when that person gets attacked, whoever is attacking them, I’ll stand forward, or I’ll come forward, and we’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with those people. (applause)

So victory to Karen in her dispute, victory to UNISON in their dispute, and victory to the trade union movement against the attacks that we’re facing at the moment. (applause)

Chris Bisson: It’s fantastic to see so many people here, Karen you have my full support, and I think that the people in charge should be embarrassed at their lack of judgement, that they would lose a valued member of staff, it’s a disgrace. (cheers)

Anyway, I’m here to read a message from Paul Abbott, Paul is very passionate about this subject and you’ll find out why when I read this. So, word for word:

Dear Karen,
So sorry I can't be with you at the rally in your support, but sadly, I'm committed to appointments abroad.

I hope you already know how much admiration I have for you and your colleagues now striking in defence of your outspoken feelings about the alarming state of mental health services in Manchester, which for years we all know, were woefully under-funded in the first place - never mind the sheer madness of cutbacks.

They could wave as many spreadsheets as they want to justify the economics of this but what's betting the number-crunching won't include the damage to Britain's economy from the needless suffering of undiagnosed mental illness in our citizens, which, if treated earlier, and professionally can prevent the pointlessly heartbreaking destruction of people and their families.

Prescription chargers for anti depressants alone cost £36 million a year. Add to this the national loss of work hours, and the vast expenditure on long-term disability from welfare support and tell me there's a single atom of sense in their arithmetic to justify the economics of this. There isn't. Never could be.

At 15 I was sectioned for my own protection following a suicide attempt. Back then, I experienced the privilege of help and support from nurses among other mental health practitioners to see me patiently through that crisis. Without them, I wouldn't be alive today.

The thought of ever going back to that jet-black underworld still haunts me constantly. But if I had no choice, surely in all decency, I'd deserve more specialist nurses like Karen Reissmann to help me break my fall, not half the number doing their work on a fraction of the funding spent 30 years ago.

We pay the health trust salaries, we, the shareholders. In effect we subsidise their families. Can we get a pledge that Sheila Foley and her teams at Manchester Mental Health Trust will be held accountable for the catastrophic consequences of their negligence?

Using crass free-market economics on public funded mental health services, is honestly far more deluded than I was the day I was sectioned. If Manchester Mental Health Trust aren't up to basic adding and subtracting, it's time we had their jobs not Karen Reissmann's.

Now my brother’s in distress, he’s got cancer. He’s now in a hospital bed, in Crumpsall. I contacted Team C on Monday, to say he’s been taken in. They said to me “right, we’ll get in touch with your CPN”. I had no contact until Friday. I was paying for taxis, cost me £100, to go to Crumpsall to see him, and to buy him bananas and drinks, orange juice.

Mrs. Foley, if anything happens to my brother, I served in Northern Ireland as a soldier, I’d sooner have Karen in the trenches, than Foley. (applause)

... she comes to our house and she calls it “Monty’s cafe”. She has cake and tea, I take cake, for the monthly injection of Depixol, I take cake to the place where I go, we have a chat with the rest of the patients. They want to cut that. They want us sitting outside, jab, go. That’s all they want. It only costs about £1. 50, and I supply the cakes. Mr. Kipling makes exceedlingly good cakes!(laughter)

So when my brother, Mrs. Foley, this is for you. If anything happens to my brother, who I love dearly, there will be blood on your hands. You should hang your head in shame.

That girl is marvellous. She’s brilliant(applause) she’s a star. And just because the NHS is not Northern Rock. £25 million, £25 billion! Oh that’s Sir Brown’s wages isn’t it, £25 million. Sorry about that. Mr. Brown, ho ho, what a joke he is. Bring back Blair, no, no, no, no!(laughter)

Well that’s all I’ve got to say, I’ve got to see my brother tonight, and I hope you’ll pray for him and send him our love. I know Karen will. (applause)

And one thing is absolutely clear, and that is that Karen was completely right to speak out about the services. (applause) The journalistic cliché about Mental Health Services, they’re sometimes called the Cinderalla services. I know we’re actually in the Panto season. And of course the comparison is that they involve the employment of people who are dedicated and hardworking, but grossly underfunded.

So, what I want to say is, that Karen Reissmann is not in any way a Cinderella. Because, she just didn’t sit there passively waiting for a Fairy Godmother or a Prince Charming to bring some funding in to produce a decent service. She spoke out in the way that I think we would all want to hear. (applause)

photo: Caroline Bedale

The reward for speaking out was that she was sacked. That to me is absolutely outrageous, and as a lawyer looking at the charges that were brought against her, they appear to be something out of Alice in Wonderland, or George Orwell. She was charged with speaking to the press, which I wasn’t aware was any kind of disciplinary offence in any decent organisation. She was charged with telling people that she had been suspended. You have to pause to try and take that in. She was charged with asserting her own innocence.

When we talk in our own office, we used to discuss the changes that the Home Office were bringing in, in relation to the criminal law. We used to joke and say that eventually they’ll change the question in Court, “how do you plead? Do you plead guilty, or very guilty? ” And we thought that was a joke.

But she’s charged with asserting her innocence. I still can’t take that in. (“that’s the Inquisition”)

So the other I want to say is, the actual charges centre on her going to the press. And there are organisations, there are major commercial organisations who do include in their Disciplinary Code a requirement that you don’t talk to the press, you don’t disclose material that might be damaging to the company. You can think of Coca-Cola, Astra-Zenica, organisations which have major secrets which they have to protect.

What is the secret that this hospital Trust are trying to protect here? The secret is that they’re making cuts, they’re not actually expanding a service which desperately needs more funding. So there can be no justification for that kind of authoritarian approach, to gag somebody who is arguing an argument that we all should be involved in. And there can be no excuse, because the Trust are managing this service on our behalf. (applause) This is a public service. We need to hear this debate.

photo: Mark, Oxford

And it may not actually be socialism in action, but in my view it’s got a lot of qualities in it, the qualities of fairness and equality behind the National Health Service, which is why so many people have such a powerful attachment to it. So what I want to say is, those qualities are completely destroyed by the way that Karen has been treated in this case.

And finally, when this dispute is won, and it must be won, and it will be won, it’s a defensive dispute, it’s to defend somebody who’s being victimised for speaking out, the next stage must be that we must be listening again to what Karen was saying. That debate must then be moved on, that argument for good, decent proper funding for Mental Health services, and throughout the National Health Service, must be taken forward to the next stage. Thank you very much. (applause)

Karen is my constituent. Karen and I can probably have a good debate on what we agree on and what we don’t agree on, in politics, any day of the week. But I’m not here in actual fact in that capacity.

I’m here because there’s a basic trade union principle at stake here. That principle is the right for a trade unionist, an active trade unionist, to speak out about what’s happening in a public service, a public service that we, every one of us, owns. A public service that has to be accountable to every one of us here because it’s the service that in the end, we all depend on.

As a member of Parliament, I’ve dealt with people, some of Karen’s own patient beds, over many years, and I know how much people value the services and need the services of the Mental Health Trust, and that service isn’t a bureacratic system, that’s a service that’s delivered by people like Karen, Karen who in passing was offered a promotion at the same time she was offered disciplinary charges.

Now this is a bizarre situation, when somebody who is valued by those who use the mental health services, faces dismissal, and faces dismissal for talking about whether that service is adequate or not. Now this is an absolutely fundamental trade union principle, the right to speak out, and the right to speak out on behalf of colleagues, on behalf of those that we work with, and to speak out without fear of the sack, without fear of disciplinary action, so fundamental this is.

And I want to pay a word of congratulation to, and I think I speak for Karen on this, to UNISON. UNISON, as Karen’s trade union, has been absolutely solid from the beginning, I’ve been in contact with UNISON all the way through this, it shows what trade unionism is all about at its very best. It shows the importance and the fundamental rights of people, not only to be a member of a trade union, but to have the solidarity of that trade union around them. These are the issues that we’re talking about.

Now I know in fact that one of the issues that’s been achieved this week is that Karen’s appeal will now be brought forward and that’s due to be heard fairly soon now. What we’ve got to make sure is Karen gets through that appeal, and the importance of this is I want to see Karen, and all those of her colleagues who’ve come out on strike, doing what they do best. Not demonstrating here in the Peace Gardens, not actually out on strike, but back to work making sure that they’re looking after, fairly, the people of Manchester who need their services. Karen, let’s get you back to work. (applause)

I mean I’ll thank the people who’ve come today, Tony Lloyd my MP who’s been fantastic from the start, UNISON, my union, that’s been great, they’ve organised a solidarity day on the 5th of December, which is a month anniversary of my sacking, where we’re hoping to get activities right across the country in solidarity with what we’re doing here in Manchester.

But I also want to thank the other unions who’ve supported me, the NUJ who’ve given us offices, the CWU and the PCS, and the other people, the FBU, who’ve all sent us massive amounts of money and messages of support to keep us going. (applause)

And I also want to thank all the users of the service and all the carers of the service, who I think, Sheila Foley and our Trust, have been trying to say are not supporting what we’re doing, who have shown to Sheila, in the huge number of letters that they’ve written, in the meetings that they’ve organised, in the protests that they’ve come to, that they are as much behind me as the staff and the other people who are supporting the campaign that we’ve got. (applause)

I want to end by thanking my colleagues, the people who are out on strike, because nurses don’t go on strike easily, and my mum’s right, she was a non-strike nurse for all her nursing career, but have come to the point where you think “if you don’t stand up and be counted, what sort of health service will you have left to be able to work in?”(applause)

Because if I thought I was standing here, and been suspended and then sacked for being a bad nurse, I would be ashamed to be standing here. Sheila Foley, our Chief Executive, said she was glad she wasn’t a nurse anymore, because she was ashamed of what we were doing.

Well I think the person who should be ashamed is the person who does close a ward, an elderly ward, or who closes a Respite Centre at 4 o’clock, or who cuts Community Teams from 16 to 4, and who carries on doing those sorts of things and wants to do more of them, she is the person who should be ashamed of what they’re doing, and having problems sleeping at night(applause) not the people who are fighting for the service(applause)

I’ve been a nurse for 25 years, it’s almost just what I am, I’ve been a nurse in the same place for 25 years. I’ve worked with people like Stuart and many many others, who feel like almost part of my family of what I do. And it is heartbreaking to have that work taken off me by somebody who doesn’t care about any of those people who I work with. (applause)

Now I haven’t been sacked for any of the work that I’ve done in there, I’ve been sacked because I’m a trade unionist and a nurse who refuses to accept cuts, and refuses to keep her mouth shut. And if that’s what I’m accused of, then I plead guilty to that, and I will carry on being guilty for standing up and fighting for the services that I work in. (cheering)

And when it comes to money, and we have terrible problems in Manchester Mental Health services, it’s funny how suddenly, when they want to smash the trade union, and smash opposition to cuts, how they find endless amounts of money. They had two private consultants paid as investigators in my case, they’ve had private HR, they’ve now got a private PR firm, although I wouldn’t fancy taking on their job because I don’t see how you can positively sell what they’ve done to anybody. When we had our first set of strikes, they paid for people to go to private hospitals in Darlington. They put acutely ill patients on a bus, sent them to Darlington, with no idea when they would come back. And they were there for 17 days, 100 miles from Manchester, at up to £1000 per patient per day. They had the money for that. They now have the money, now we’re out on strike, they’ve paid for 20 private beds at Cheadle Royal, all of which are full, and they have the money for that. And they’ve said that money will continue for the duration of the strike, and will end when the strike ends.

And you think “how come they’ve got money at times of strike, but they haven’t got money the rest of the time? ” We regularly, as community workers, have people who are very acutely ill, who need to be in hospital, who sit on waiting lists for days and weeks. We have people who are sectioned, with section papers filled in by the medical staff, and those section papers expire and have to be recompleted while they’re sitting on a waiting list to be admitted to hospital on a section. This is an absolute disgrace, and I think it indicates what sort of priorities our Trust has. Money to sack people.

Our Chief Executive said she wants an end to bad news stories. Well there’s two ways of ending bad news stories. One is that you gag people, and the other is that you stop having bad things happen. We are fighting to stop those bad things happening. (applause)

photo: Tom Bimpson

And I think what’s interesting is that it’s very difficult to find anybody who supports what they’re doing. We have a Labour Government, it’s 2007, we have a Human Rights Act which says you have a freedom of expression, but the very act of telling people that I was suspended is a gross misconduct charge for which I was sacked. The very act of telling people that I was innocent of those charges, prior to my hearing, was a gross misconduct charge for which I was sacked.

And there is a madness, I mean Stuart said the other day it’s like the lunatics have taken over the asylum, there is a madness about what they are doing, and I think that’s why so many people have been here today and so many people are not prepared to put up with it. And I think, I feel very proud to be able to stand up here and to be able to get the support that I’ve got. I feel proud of the people who are supporting me, I feel very proud of all the effort that you’ve put to stand by me in a very difficult situation.

photo: Richard Searle

But I also think that we are very very determined. We are determined to stop them getting away with what they are doing. Because if they do get away with it, who will come and speak up next time they want to make cuts? And I think that’s why we have to say, to Sheila Foley, and to the Government as well, it’s a Labour Government, I work for the NHS, I don’t work for a two-bit private organisation, we want you to intervene and we want you to put a stop to this. I want to be back at work, looking after people, as do the other people that I work with. And there is an easy solution, to reinstate me, and we can get on with the proper debate on the NHS. (cheering)