Mourning for the NHS and “The Sell Off” movie.

Mourning for Our NHS

The NHS is a beacon of achievement brought in by Aneurin Bevan in 1948, and the nation is rightly proud of it. Both recent Conservative and Labour governments have been complicit with efforts to move aspects of our NHS into private hands. In 2002, Blair himself had toyed with the idea of user charges or ‘co-payments’ for public services. (1)

While it has been Labour’s greatest achievement, the introduction of Private Finance Initiatives (PFI’s) by New Labour has been Labour’s greatest betrayal. The politics of recent general elections have often have focused on the issue of ” wasteful” public expenditure , and claims of inefficiency, yet resources have been wasted on marketisation. There is now considerable evidence countering the principle of “public bad, private good” .

Jeremy Corbyn has never supported the plans to bring the private sector into the NHS.

He said at his recent rally in Nottingham,”If I said to you , do you all value the national health service, you’d say, “why is he the asking the question, it’s obvious we do!”

Of course it is. The NHS is the most civilised, greatest achievement politically ever made in this country. It was the culmination of those who fought for the right to vote, those who got the right to vote for women, those who campaigned for all the things that brought about the 1945 Labour government and it was an amazing achievement.

And it was quite moving when we had a rally in Tredegar, a week and a half ago on the very spot where Aneurin Bevan used to speak to his constituents, and in the window of Nye Bevan House, he questioned rhetorically. He said, ” Can a society that denies medical care when it is available, to those that cannot afford to pay, call itself civilised?”

Nye was right, and it’s very dangerous what’s happening to the NHS at the moment.

The internal market, the bringing of the private sector to run whole sections of it, the profit-taking out of the NHS, the continual limiting on the availability of expensive special medicines and all that, leads me to think that the Tories have got their real eye on making the NHS a privatised service of last resort, in order to promote a private medical system of first choice for those that can afford it.

And so, we have to defend that principle of an NHS free at the point of use. We have to defend that principle and also end the internal market, repeal the health and social care act, and be proud of our NHS.”