Junior doctors have picketed hospitals once more and protesters besieged the Department of Health at the beginning of the fourth strike this year over the new contract being imposed on trainee medics.

High-profile names including the cast of the comedy Green Wing joined doctors on picket lines at the start of the 48-hour walkout. The strike began at 8am on Wednesday with no sign of a resolution to the bitter dispute in sight and no fresh talks planned.

The strike has led to 5,165 non-urgent operations being rearranged. The DoH has described the action as “irresponsible and disproportionate”.

But a petition of more than 120,000 signatures backing the junior doctors in the dispute was delivered to the department on Wednesday. It was accompanied by a rally of junior doctors, other health professionals, members of the Fire Brigades Union, and other activists on Whitehall, and a “die-in” outside the department.

The actor Vanessa Redgrave addressed the protesters, telling them that doctors were being “treated like dirt” and that the government was mad for imposing the contract.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Vanessa Redgrave addressed a protest outside the Department for Health. Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images

There was other celebrity support for the striking doctors elsewhere, from some of the cast of the hospital comedy Green Wing, including Tamsin Greig, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Stephen Mangan.

They showed up at the picket line at Northwick Park hospital in Harrow, north-west London, where the Channel 4 series was filmed. They had photographs taken with the chair of the BMA’s junior doctors committee, Johann Malawana. He had earlier warned the government that it risked “alienating a generation of doctors”.

‘Get round the table and work this out’

Mangan said he had watched the negotiations be “completely botched” by Jeremy Hunt, and urged the health secretary to sit down and talk to junior doctors. “They’re reasonable people, as far as I can make out. They’re nothing like the characters we played in Green Wing – they seem to be quite intelligent and sensible most of the time. So get round the table and work this out. This is crazy. Nobody wants these strikes – least of all the junior doctors.”

Rhind-Tutt said he was protesting against “the devaluing of the NHS as a whole entity, really”.



The BMA said there were nearly 150 picket lines across the country.



While the length of the dispute is testing the appetite of junior doctors for industrial action, many seemed to have had their anger stoked by the publication last week of the DoH’s own analysis of the new contract, which concluded that “while there are features of the new contract that impact disproportionately on women, of which some we expect to be advantageous and others disadvantageous, we do not consider that this would amount to indirect discrimination as the impacts can be comfortably justified”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Green Wing cast, from the left, Stephen Mangan, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Pippa Haywood, Tamsin Greig and Oliver Chris join a picket line outside Northwick Hospital in Middlesex. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

In Manchester, where some doctors marched from Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI), Mary Gee, 27, who helped organise the picket line outside the hospital during the last three strikes, said: “There was a poor turnout at the last picket. I think morale was really low. The contract had just been imposed, everybody had given up. And now, particularly because of the equalities report, people have kicked back against it.”

Victoria McCormack, 38, an anaesthetic and intensive-care registrar, said outside Wythenshawe hospital: “I’ve been a junior doctor since 2003, and I’ll be becoming a consultant in the next couple of years. It’s taken me a long time because I’ve had children, so couldn’t always work full-time. That’s part of why I find the new contract massively disappointing: it’s really going to hit people in my situation.

“We’re already outnumbered in my department, it’s very male-dominated, and the new contract is really going to put smart women off. It’s terrifying, and a slap in the face for women who have worked so hard to get here.”

johannmalawana (@johannmalawana) The support from @StephenMangan and the Greenwing caste is amazing at Northwick hospital #JuniorDoctorsStrike pic.twitter.com/oBt3i5cFQa

The next planned action begins on 26 April, when, for the first time, there will be a full withdrawal of labour by junior doctors, including those working in emergency care, which is likely to test public support for the industrial action.

Jenny Higgs, 38, a junior doctor at MRI, said: “I hope something will change before then because nobody wants to go ahead with that. But I’ve just been reading the summary of the new contract and there are so many things in it that are completely appalling.”