For most of us in the UK the NHS, founded in 1948, has been a trusted safety net throughout our lives. Danny Boyle’s portrayal of the NHS in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics underlined what a special institution we have as part of the fabric of our cultural heritage. But the public even then was suspicious that the Tory Government’s 2011 claim ‘The NHS is safe in our hands’ was just empty words. Here, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the NHS, three Sussex Bylines writers share their personal experiences of what the NHS has meant to them, and the importance of all of us fighting to keep this unique and unifying institution alive.
Still going strong at 75?
Viv Griffiths writes of her family connections to the birthplace of the NHS, and expresses concern at the Government’s betrayal of its founding principles
Born in 1948, the NHS and I are both still going strong (just), though increasingly showing our age; and in the NHS’s case, suffering from years of neglect on the part of the Conservatives. I’m proud to have been the 139,829th baby born under the NHS and to have received life-long care from dedicated GPs and other hardworking staff.
Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan, who led the campaign for a National Health Service, was my Welsh grandfather’s hero. In the mid-1950s, when staying with my grandparents in Cardiff, grandad would take me on the bus to Tredegar, where Bevan was born and worked as a miner before going into politics, and to Ebbw Vale, where my grandmother’s family was from and where Bevan was an MP. Those bus journeys formed my early Socialist education; they were an eye-opener to my eight-year-old self and I shared my grandad’s pride at the family connection with the birthplace of the NHS.
Throughout my life, I’ve been at the receiving end of brilliant care from doctors, nurses and surgeons, including cervical cancer treatment without which my daughter wouldn’t have been born, minor operations and ongoing checks for asthma and other ailments. My children have benefited from ongoing care from local GPs in Yorkshire and Sussex.
This is in stark contrast to the NHS as a whole, which has been starved of resources for years (so much for the £350m per week promise). Despite PM Rishi Sunak trumpeting his NHS workforce plans, they do nothing to address the current shortfall in staffing numbers or patient waiting times. My late grandad would have seen this crisis and creeping privatisation as a deliberate betrayal of the founding principles of the NHS. But as Nye Bevan is attributed as saying:
“The NHS will last as long as there’s folk with faith left to fight for it.”
A treasured institution
The significance of the NHS lies in it being a public good for all, without division and distinction, as Ginny Smith explains
As a contributor to a radio discussion said this week of the NHS, ‘It’s a public good – it is there for everyone, free at the point of use, and makes no distinction between individuals based on their ability to pay, age, or health record, unlike private insurance schemes. It binds us together in a way that no other institution in the country does, and for that alone it is incredibly important that it survives and flourishes in the future’.
In this fractious and divided nation, when so many other public services have been damaged beyond repair by the austerity regime imposed over thirteen years of Conservative government, the NHS provides a belief for us to cohere around, a belief in health as a fundamental human right.
My own recent contacts with the NHS have underlined what an incredible service it provides, almost entirely as a result of the care and skill of those working in the health service – and how direly in need of investment it is. I saw staff struggling to deliver care in crumbling buildings, shortages causing massive delays to important operations, outmoded and inefficient communication systems.
And yet the recent experiences that I treasure are the kindness and sensitivity shown to a child with sleep apnoea when visiting A&E in a Welsh hospital; the skill of the surgeon who operated on my torn cornea at Brighton Eye Hospital; and the time that my GP spent carefully explaining the [good] news about a chest x-ray after I visited him for a persistent cough.
We need, at this point, another Aneurin Bevan. A politician with his vision and his passion for the public good to build and safeguard an NHS for the 21st century. An NHS that we can all, staff, medics and patients, be proud of, and one that once again the country can unite around. I live in hope that ‘cometh the hour, cometh the woman or man’
The real stupidity
Finally, Ken Rayner urges us to care for the NHS in the same way it cares for us
I was one of the idiots who decided lockdown in 2020 would be an excellent time to do some DIY. I’d been “just finishing” a bikeshed for months, so picked up a saw and set to work on some shiplap timber – and my left index finger.
The NHS put its arms around me from that moment – the 111 triage nurse who skilfully assessed me without even seeing me; the A&E team that patched me up and told me it was probably best that I didn’t drive myself home; the plastics surgery team of six that devoted an hour of their day to fixing me up; the physiotherapy team that cared for me for weeks afterwards – all caring, professional, skilled – and free.
I said I was an idiot that day – but the truth is the real stupidity lies in not doing everything possible to ensure that this wonderful thing we share thrives and continues to wrap its arms around those who need its care.
