Get off your Knees and Fight!
Any old British leftie worth his salt knows about the Father of the NHS, Aneurin Bevan. Unlike today’s ‘Lite/Fat Free’ Diet Coke politicians, he was a man who wanted to change the world. Entering Parliament today you don’t need to want to change anything for the better except your income, circle of well-heeled contacts and your range of part-time directorship opportunities. That’s why the neglected infrastructure of the 1945 Labour Landslide has been allowed to rust and decay until most of its major pillars have crumbled beneath the weight of Capital’s incessant propaganda machine. 'New' Labour Lite under their opportunist war-mongering, would-be millionaire leader and later 'Peace Envoy'(!!) found a good wheeze to make lots of dosh for their circle of well-heeled friends. The deal was 'How about you build us hospitals for any inflated price you like, make immense profits, you'll own the sites, and the dingbat patients can pay for it all over the next century?' It's called PFI, a.k.a. Profit from Illness.
'Nye' Bevan gave a speech at the Bellvue Hotel on 3 July 1948, two days before the National Health Service came into being at Park Hospital in Manchester. In those days politicians spoke their true minds: he knew what Conservatism stood for and told it like it was - and sadly still is:
"That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were.”plus ça change....
Even then, poor old Nye had to throw a bone to the dogs of private health, but first he had to deal with the great British ‘Free Press’:
The Daily Sketch (February, 1948)
'The State medical service is part of the Socialist plot to convert Great Britain into a National Socialist economy. The doctors' stand is the first effective revolt of the professional classes against Socialist tyranny. There is nothing that Bevan or any other Socialist can do about it in the shape of Hitlerian coercion.'
And Rupert Murdoch was still a glimmer in a Wallaby's eye.... Here you see the same deliberate corporate disingenuous twisting of political terms used so crudely and widely today by the right wing nut-jobs of the Grand Old Party in the USA - anything left of Heinrich Himmler President Obama attempts to establish is pounced upon as a combination of 'socialist/communist/fascist/nazi', regardless of the true meanings of the terms. Yet truth is not a currency recognised by Conservatives, as messrs. Blair, Aitken and Archer have proved.
Aneurin Bevan, speech in the House of Commons (9th February, 1948)
Michael Foot, the editor of Tribune, was one of those who criticised Aneurin Bevan for his decision to allow specialists to have paid beds in National Health Service hospitals.
The idea that specialists should have pay-beds was a concession. It was a direct departure from principle introduced only for the purpose of encouraging specialists to come into the Service and preventing them from setting up their private nursing homes.
So the great day came - 5th July 1948. On the day itself three-quarters of the population had signed up with doctors under the scheme. Two months later, 39,500,000 people, or 93 per cent were enrolled in it. More than 20,000 general practitioners, about 90 per cent, participated from the scheme's inception.
In her book My Life With Nye, Jennie Lee describes how one woman responded to the introduction of the National Health Service.
"There was a strict rule in Nye's Ministry that any unsolicited gifts sent to him should be promptly returned. On one occasion, and only one, an exception was made. Nye brought home a letter containing a white silk handkerchief with crochet round the edge. The hanky was for me. The letter was from an elderly Lancashire lady, unmarried, who had worked in the cotton mills from the age of twelve. She was overwhelmed with gratitude for the dentures and reading glasses she had received free of charge. The last sentence in her letter read, "Dear God, reform thy world beginning with me," but the words that hurt most were, "Now I can go into any company." The life-long struggle against poverty which these words revealed is what made all the striving worthwhile."
THE NHS IS STILL THE BIGGEST THORN IN THE SIDE OF UK CAPITAL, BUT IT DOESN'T DIG DEEP ENOUGH INTO THE RANCID FLESH OF TORYISM. WE HAVE TO KEEP PRESSING ON IT UNTIL IT PUNCTURES THEIR LIVER AND SPLEEN ... THEN THEY'LL HAVE TO CALL AN AMBULANCE...
(sources courtesy of John Simkin at www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk )