Don’t you love the Daily Mail? There was a headline recently about ‘Red Ed’s threat to the NHS.’ The loony left is planning to destroy a revered British institution. For centuries the NHS has been there. Revered by Alfred the Great, enshrined in Magna Carta, the NHS has guaranteed care to countless generations saved from disability, beggary and early death. Its standard was raised at Agincourt and Trafalgar. It was there to succour the needy in the Depression and the War. And now it is under threat from the crypto-communist hate-mongers who lurk in the shadows.
Or, have I got that wrong? Wasn’t it Aneurin Bevan in the late Forties who saw it through against the bitter opposition of a powerful reactionary rump led by the flabby jowls of Dr Hill of the BMA? Despite Hill and his ilk, wasn’t there a successful promise of care ‘from the cradle to the grave’? Wasn’t there something called the Welfare State? Wasn’t it the acknowledged inspiration of health and social care policies internationally, ranging from LBJ’S Great Society to Nyerere’s Arusha Declaration?
