Our Principles
We are a politically left-wing group of doctors and medical students who organise together. We stand for:
Workplace organising
We believe that the strength of the BMA comes from its members, organised in their workplaces with active and accountable representatives: this is the foundation of our collective power. We campaign for resources, training, and support for workplace representatives, and we will prioritise recruitment and organising. We aim to build networks that enable members to share experiences, coordinate action, and lead industrial campaigns from the bottom up, always placing members’ voices at the centre of decision-making.
Democracy and Transparency
We want a BMA that is open, democratic, and accessible to all its members. This includes ensuring clear and transparent decision-making at every level of the union. We are committed to publishing our arguments, votes, and positions so that members can scrutinise and engage with them, and we will continue to campaign for wider reform of BMA structures to make participation easier and more meaningful. We will also ensure accountability for how members’ money and resources are used.
Fighting for Our Members and the NHS
We fight for members’ pay, conditions, and working lives, and we recognise that this cannot be separated from the fight for a well-funded, publicly run NHS. We are committed to defending and extending members’ terms and conditions in pay, hours, staffing, and training, and to resisting all forms of privatisation, outsourcing, and marketisation in both health and higher education. We will campaign for a publicly provided, properly funded, and democratically accountable NHS, and we will work with allies across the labour movement to strengthen the collective fight for healthcare and education as public goods.
Equality and Civil Rights
We believe that an injury to one is an injury to all, and that discrimination, bigotry, and oppression weaken our union and our collective struggle. We therefore commit to oppose all forms of discrimination, including racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, colourism, and others, and to actively build an inclusive, welcoming union that represents the diversity of our membership and the patients we serve. We understand equality and civil rights not as additional concerns, but as core trade union issues central to our fight for justice at work and in society.
Standards of Behaviour
We set a high standard for how we conduct ourselves, and we hold ourselves accountable to these and to each other. We work with others in good faith, even when we disagree, and we treat all colleagues with respect and dignity. We are honest in our conduct with each other and our colleagues. We believe in debating openly, robustly, and constructively, without resorting to personal attacks. When we fall short, we take responsibility for our actions, and we apologise and make amends swiftly.
In order to achieve these aims as a group we communicate prior to/during meetings to shape and make the most of the agenda, make recommendations and highlight candidates in elections that share these aims.
This is not a secret group therefore anyone that agrees to the above and wishes to join would be welcome to providing there’s no evidence they don’t support those things.