02-06-2025
The militant ‘crabs' threatening to bring the NHS to a standstill
A militant group of doctors who use social media to recruit is driving forward strike action by resident doctors.
The current co-chairs of the British Medical Association's (BMA) resident doctors' committee are members of DoctorsVote, which professes to be 'a grassroots organisation committed to advocating for the full pay restoration of UK doctors'.
The group is prolific on social media, where disgruntled medics unite, often behind pseudonyms, seeking to forge ahead with more strikes designed to further boost their salaries.
In spring, junior doctors – now referred to formally as resident doctors – were offered the biggest pay rise in the public sector in a bid to end years-long disruption to the NHS.
The average full-time salary for a resident doctor will now be more than £54,000, the Department of Health and Social Care said – but the BMA wants another set of strikes to force another 30 per cent pay hike.
The slogan: 'Be a crab, not a scab' is used to enforce picket lines, and now crustaceans can be seen on the social media accounts of advocates. The humble crab is now shorthand for strike approval.
Reddit, TikTok, Instagram and X are awash with the group, which makes use of Gen Z memes and trends to promote its message. This, in tandem with a traditional TV and PR campaign, creates a potent propaganda machine.
In recent years, the group has come to dominate the BMA. The co-chairs of the BMA resident doctors' committee in 2022-2024 both had roots in DoctorsVote.
Their successors, Dr Melissa Ryan, a 45-year-old paediatrician from Nottingham, and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt, a 29-year-old surgical trainee from Merseyside, were also elected under the same banner.
DoctorsVote won 70 out of 75 seats on regional junior doctor committees across England in 2023.
The fresh 30 per cent demand comes on the back of a 22 per cent pay rise that Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, and Sir Keir Starmer prioritised after Labour's landslide election win last year.
Now, the Government appears to be paying the price for it negotiation tactics.
As one Tory MP told The Telegraph: 'If you roll over so easily then, why would they stop now?'
Or, as one anonymous doctor online put it: 'We have them by the balls. Let's squeeze.'
Dr Nieuwoudt confessed earlier this week that Mr Streeting's latest offer was 'generous' – but, he said, not generous enough.
The BMA sent out a leaflet to the 50,000 members who will vote on whether they are prepared to take strike action and to further the pay dispute. Half need to reply for it to progress.
In the leaflet, a section of frequently asked questions includes one in which junior doctors raise concerns that they are now perceived as greedy by their registrars and consultants.
They are now cognisant of the reality that they profited the most in recent years compared to other public sector professions, and are worried about how fresh action would look.
And, it seems, the public shares their stance and has a diminishing perception of the strike advocates.
Gone is the majority support for them to be paid more, replaced by a sense of fatigue that strikes and withdrawal of care are being used to wring out more money from the taxpayer.
More people now oppose strikes than support them, a YouGov poll has found – a profound shift from last year, when more than half of people said they supported the strikes.
Now, the resident doctors of DoctorsVote want to strike again. Coordination of industrial action with more senior doctors and specialists could hobble the NHS at skeleton staffing akin to Christmas Day levels.
The cost to the NHS of 44 days of strike action last year was around £3 billion, according to the NHS Confederation, and this enormous cost is now also being weaponised by the movement.
Dr Ryan told The Sunday Times: 'We know how much the strikes last time were disruptive to patient care and the waiting list, but we also know exactly how much they cost the government, and it was more than what it would cost to get to full pay restoration.
'Last time we ended up coordinating some action and it was immensely disruptive for patient care, and we can see that on the horizon for this Government too.'
