Not too keen on on politicians round here, very sceptical of most of them, but every so often I am reminded of one or two that sound a bit like human beings.
Nye Bevan was one of the most important ministers of the post-war Labour Government and the chief architect of the NHS. He was born on 15 November 1897 in Tredegar in Wales. His father was a miner from a poor working class family in which Bevan gained first hand experiences of the problems of poverty and disease. He was a rebel with many causes but is remembered mostly as the architect of the National Health Service which he bought to Parliament while he was Minister for Health in 1948.
He remembered how I he had witnessed families with dreaded sickness who could not afford to pay doctors bills. In his home town of Tredegar there existed a working mens medical aid society which was to serve him inspiration. He envigaged an NHS with comprehensive provision was on patient need, not wealth. Never one to back off from a fight , he bullied and cajoled , reasoned and argued until Health care free at the point of delivery was to become a right instead of a luxury. The NHS would come to be regarded as one of the best and comprehensive healthcare systems in the world, a jewel in the Crown for the Post Second World War Labour Government.
And despite some faults Nye Bevan hated the bloody Tories with a passion, and helped make the biggest improvements to the quality of life for the average British person on living memory, so I respect him for this.
We should continue to defend the NHS with all our might, keep resisting the Tories agenda pushing some of us into semi starvation , both physically and socially as they keep punishing the most vulnerable and hardest hit revealing themselves to be the bullies that they are.
I am reminded that my quality of life owes more to a deadman than a whole Tory Government ever could. So thank you Nye Bevan/
Respect to the junior doctors angry with the government for trying to fuck them over as the Tory's try to sell of the NHS piece by piece into eventual total ownership.
NHS - Nye Bevan speaks about the National Health Service
from Peoples History Museum , Manchester
Oh dear! Aneurin Bevan was not the architect of the NHS. The Beveridge Report, published December 1942, called for 'Comprehensive Health And Rehabilitation Services'. In his 'From the Cradle to the Grave' broadcast of 21 March 1943, Winston Churchill stated "We must establish on broad and solid foundations a national health service.". The Government set to work and on 26 March 1944, Minister of Health, Conservative Henry Willink published his white paper 'A National Health Service', which contains the things the public value re the NHS. Both Beveridge and Willink are available,in full, on the Socialist Health Association website.
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for the above information, much appreciated.it is true, the Beveridge Report of 1943 set the seeds and blueprints for the creation of the NHS and the creation of the Welfare State. Churchill's own attitude was one of ambivalence and when two years after the Beveridge report and it had become Labour Party policy he became markedly more hostile. It is widely acknowledged though that it was Aneurin Bevan who wholeheartedly embraced it and made sure it was implemented.So Beveridge correctly was the planner, but Bevan was the deliverer. Hopefully as Nye said " it will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it." Some of the arguments of the founding principles of the NHS have ever been decisively settled, but it stands today having survived largely unscathed over the past 60 years or so, for that I am grateful, and long hope this will be the case in many more years to come. Regards.
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