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
