PRMI reporters spoke to Cerys Keane, Organiser of the “Save nursing” campaign. 14 February 2025
When Britain’s National Health Service is facing a severe crisis, in part due to the lack of qualified staff, the decision by the management of Cardiff University to consider closing the Nurse training course, along with several other important programmes is just another example of the short-sighted, finance-driven approach of University management. To defend the Nursing programme the “Save nursing” campaign has stepped up. We ask Cerys, a PRMI supporter how this was achieved.
PRMI: Cerys, can you explain how “Save nursing” developed?
Cerys: “Save Nursing” is a group of around 300 student nurses in Wales, started at the end of 2023 by myself and a few others when I sent a survey around my class asking them questions regarding their financial hardship on the Welsh Bursary [grant] system. The results made for difficult reading. Once this was shared with my classmates there was a lot of anger, so I called a meeting for those who wanted to discuss further.
We set up as around 20 students, leafletting the Royal College of Nursing (RCN – nurses’ union) congress to campaign for better bursaries. A year later, we now have just over 300 members, and are embarking on a much larger campaign to halt the proposed closure of our nursing school in Wales’ capital.
This campaign is ongoing. It is supported by PRMI comrades, but for the most part it is functioning independently with a number of student nurses having come forward to take on more active organising roles.
PRMI: As the campaign in progressing, what lessons can already be drawn?
Cerys: The first is not to be afraid to make mistakes. Intervening can be very daunting, especially as an isolated comrade, but to not intervene ultimately leads to larger mistakes.
At the time when this campaign was set up things were relatively slow paced – we were lucky to get 20 people to a meeting, and even luckier if half of them meaningfully interacted with it. However, during this time we were able to slowly build and develop a core of 6 organisers who were committed to the campaign.
Thus, when the school closure was announced, we had structures and could immediately act to call a protest. Our membership doubled overnight, as well as the number of people coming forward wanting to take on larger roles, if we didn’t already have structures in place, this would have been impossible to coordinate.
We are now lucky enough to be in a position where it’s necessary to elect a formal leadership.
PRMI: Would the current campaign against the closure of the course been possible without this preparation?
Cerys: Another key lesson is the importance of orientation. It simply isn’t enough to be able to intervene as and when crises arise, but we have to be already building and agitating in these areas, so we are actually prepared to intervene when eruptions occur.
Healthcare is a key sector in the functioning of society, and also includes a hugely diverse, mostly female workforce. Already having an orientation towards young women, has aided us massively in this process.
PRMI: You are also known as a ROSA activists. Has this helped?
Cerys: Yes. It is far easier to intervene as ROSA in groups like this than as PRMI. The points most strongly responded to in our leaflet were those on socialist feminism, and a number of people have approached me for discussions on women’s oppression as socialist feminism, as opposed to socialism or feminism, is a relatively new and exciting idea for them.
The healthcare sector will be key in the coming period, with healthcare staff globally increasingly taking industrial action over poor conditions and pay. Nurses are at the heart of this struggle, as the largest section of the workforce.
They are a uniquely difficult group to organise, due to shift work and the extreme stress and burnout associated with the work, but also the group who tend to most readily garner public support when they do move into action.
They are also, exceptionally efficient organisers and work at the coal face of class, gender and racial oppression.
The unions have been particularly slow to act, and our campaign has already come to blows with the union bureaucracy in the process of the campaign. Witnessing student nurses’ consciousness shift in real-time has been an incredible experience, and also proof that some of the most radicalising processes, come from lived experience of both oppression and struggle.