Editorial.
Thousands of nurses and other health service workers joined last week's day of action, making it the biggest demonstration yet in the six-week pay campaign. The day was a huge success in media terms. Regardless of political persuasion, most national and regional newspapers carried photographs and stories about nurses who had given up their lunchtime to protest at this year's pay award. And while the media and public were given a flavour of nurses' strength of feeling, politicians - many of whom have received RCN pay campaign postcards - packed the House of Commons to hear opposition leader Tony Blair question the Prime Minister about the unfairness of local pay. Blair pressed home the point that regional disparity would result in one nurse being paid less than a colleague in a neighbouring hospital doing the same job. Radio and television bulletins carried news from local protests around the country and even the BBC's Question Time kicked off with a question from a nurse about local pay. Thursday March 30 certainly belonged to the nursing organisations, and if ministers thought that pay would be buried by now, it certainly proved that it hasn't.