Millions of people around the country mobilised en masse in from their homes in a moving tribute to the NHS and brave healthcare workers

The entire country came out of the doors and windows and on the balconies of their homes on Thursday evening to show their support for the NHS and the brave healthcare workers on the frontline of battling the coronavirus outbreak. Huge rounds of applause, whistles, pots and pans, chanting and even saxophones could be heard. It was an incredible national display of mass solidarity with the NHS.

Boris Johnson had the audacity to step out of Number 10 and join the clap. It was part of the attempt to co-opt what was actually a grassroots, people-driven initiative in support of the public health service that the Tories have spent ten years underfunding and privatising, and whose workers they have repeatedly attacked.

We cannot let them sanitise this mobilisation and pretend we’re all in this together. The fact that by Friday morning, Boris Johnson had been tested for coronavirus, while NHS workers are still not being tested and are still having to treat patients without the proper protective equipment, shows quite starkly that we aren’t in this together.

Our collective support for the NHS has to be channelled into applying mass pressure onto the government to provide NHS staff with the equipment they need, to requisition private healthcare facilities that should be available to us all and which can alleviate some of the difficulties NHS staff are facing, that NHS staff are tested regularly – and so are the rest of us, because it’s the only way we can begin to properly map the outbreak, limit the transmission and ensure people who need help are getting it.

Sign this petition by NHS doctors and nurses, and let’s be prepared to do more than clap to defend our NHS.

Videos

East London

Hackney

Clapton Square Hackney joining in the nationwide applause for our NHS staff and care workers pic.twitter.com/nnuGeV5Yhc

— Kieron Jecchinis (@HRHSpankyman) March 26, 2020

Finsbury Park

Ladbroke Grove

South Bank

Harrow

Lots of banners and placards were stuck onto windows and balconies 

Jeremy Corbyn came out to clap for the NHS

And so did the posties all over the country:

In Warrington

In Tyneside