COHSE David Williams With Nye Bevan

A young recently appointed COHSE officer.

David Williams, Denbigh (North Wales) Nurse and future COHSE General Secretary. 

Here (centre) with the great Nye Bevan at COHSE conference 1953 and still campaigning for the NHS in 2016

NHS Cuts 1949

The new NHS faced almost immediate series of cuts as the new Labour Government attempted to address the huge war debts Britain had incurred, as well as an economy based around war production, a huge need for housing and NHS services for a working class deprived of it. It also faced American insistence on spending even more on a military build up to fend off the so called "Soviet threat"

DW Cartoon 26 August 1949

NHS Wall Mural

Thatchers Advice To NHS Patients Circa 1988

NHS 1948 - 2012 Killed by The Coalition (LibDem Disgrace)

Liberal Democratic Ministers in the Tory led Coalition "banged the table" during Tuesdays Ministerial meeting to show approval at the passing of the NHS & Social Care Bill.

The Bill is opposed by the majority of NHS nursing & medical professionals, health unions, patients groups and the public. Despite the massive opposition to the Bill the Tories have pushed through radical reform of the NHS which will see wholesale privatisation of sections of it, all with the support of the Liberal Democrats who once championed support for the NHS.

The truth is without Liberal Democratic support this attack on the NHS would not have succeeded, it is doubtful that a Conservative majority Government could have got this Bill through but the Liberal Democrats have acted as a useful shield to the Tories privatisation anti NHS agenda. As for Shirley Williams she has shown herself willing to sell her deepest convictions to remain loyal to a failed Government and Party, every report of Shirley Williams life will refer to her total miscalculation and blinkered response to the NHS & Social Care Act, unlike her "Gang of Four" colleague Dr David Owen, who has been impeccable in his opposition to the attacks on the NHS.

As with the the Poll Tax, opposition to the NHS & Social Care Act will if anything intensify, patients every day experience will show how dogma and not ethics have driven through this Bill. We will win if we remain committed and focused in exposing the many failings of this Act.

Keep up the pressure.

We Are Many
They Are Few

UNISON - OUR NHS IS NOT FOR SALE

Estate Agents Cameron, Clegg & Lansley, held a viewing of prime residential property - St Thomas’ Hospital in London today (1 April 2011). UNISON, the UK’s largest union, organised the spoof sell off to expose the huge dangers lurking in the Tory’s Health and Social Care Bill.

The union is warning that Lansley’s vanity project poses a health risk to patients, to the NHS and to the nurses, midwives, hospital porters and medical secretaries who keep our health service running.

Paste in front of the first paragraph:

Dave Prentis, UNISON General Secretary, said:

“Selling off the NHS is no joke – but that’s exactly what’s the Health and Social Care Bill paves the way for. Even the Tories are waking up to the toxic prescription that the Health and Social Care Bill really is for our NHS.

“Handing over £80 billion to GPs is a reckless gamble. Doctors don’t want it, and it will poison the relationship between patients and their GP. Who wants to be sitting across from their doctor wondering if the treatment they are prescribed is what they need, or what the GP can afford to pay for?

“And taking the private income cap off hospitals when they are being hit with cuts is a recipe for disaster. Patients who can pay will be the top priority. NHS patients will be pushed to the back of the queue – eroding the core principles our NHS was founded on.

“It’s time to take the Health and Social Care Bill to the mortuary - where it belongs.”

The hospital sell off stunt is part of a nationwide day of action against the Health Bill, and ahead of the union’s annual health conference. Taking part in Liverpool, the health conference brings together 1200 delegates, representing UNISON’s 460,000 health workers.

UNISON’s big opposition to the titanic Health and Social Care Bill

* Big cuts in health spending. These are being taken from patient care and leading to job losses – including clinical staff – across the NHS.

* Opening up the NHS to private profit. Taxpayers’ money destined for NHS patients will be diverted into shareholder profits.

* NHS patients will be pushed to the back of the queue because the proposed Bill will take the cap off the amount hospitals can earn from private patients.

* It means competition, not co-operation. The government wants to run the NHS through competition between different health providers and market forces.

* It will create a huge postcode lottery. The care patients can expect will vary from place to place, increasing costs and health inequalities and hurting vulnerable people the most. No-one voted for this.

* The NHS is working and public satisfaction with the NHS is at an all time high. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Greedy Andrew Lansley Rap

Loughborough Rapper Fighting For NHS


A young rapper from Loughborough has put the controversial subject of NHS reforms into the lyrics of his latest video.

Sean Donnelly is a binman by day but his real passion takes over when he performs as Nxtgen. His girlfriend works as an Occupational Therapist and he was inspired to write it about Andrew Lansley MP for South Cambridgeshire and Secretary of State for Health, after she voiced concerns about the NHS’s future.

The coalition Government’s proposed reforms to the NHS could lead to a US-style system and many believe this will result in the NHS changing beyond recognition.

Sean’s continued rise in the rap world was reported on recently by the Mercury’s website and this latest production is bound to create mixed views from those on both sides of the political divide.

The young reporters of the Leicester Wave newspaper are looking to interview Sean in a forthcoming issue about his career and also the ‘Andrew Lansley Rap“.



More from Leicesters Citizen Eye...

Miliband - Now Fight To Save OUR NHS

Claire Rayners Last Words

Nurse: Claire Rayner

January 22 1931 - October 11 2010

Last Words

"Tell David Cameron
that if he screws up
my beloved NHS
I'll come back and
bloody haunt him!"

COMMON WEALTH AND THE BEVERIDGE REPORT

COMMON WEALTH AND THE BEVERIDGE REPORT

Principles of the Report-

IN deciding what attitude should be adopted towards the Beveridge Report, a sharp distinction, must be drawn between the principles on which the Report rests .and the details which it contains. The main principles of the Report are that the State should accept full responsibility for seeing that no citizen falls below a minimum standard of living; and that every citizen who cannot be found work, either for general economic reasons or because he is too old or too young or is disabled, must be provided for. Common Wealth, of course, supports those principles.

The Beveridge Report is a great step forward towards the recognition that men and women, just because they are men and women, have the right to a decent life.

Why the Report should be adopted.

Common Wealth maintains that the Report should be adopted for the following reasons:—

(a) Because it is morally right that all men and women who through no fault of their own are unable to work, or are otherwise in need, should be provided for by the rest of the community.

(b) Because national unity depends upon its acceptance: the vast majority of the nation want to see the Report carried into effect.

(c) Because the adoption of the Beveridge Plan will prove to the world at large that Britain intends to carry out the Atlantic Charter. If there is sabotage or undue delay in carrying out the guarantee of two words of the Charter—social security—men will naturally become cynical about the whole document. The adoption of the Plan will show that Britain is virile enough to take her lull share in the building of a better world.

(d) Because it will add power and speed to the war effort if the fighters are given something to fight for, and the workers something to work for. The Plan is in itself only a token of the world they want, but it will serve to show them that they are not coming back to the tragic conditions which followed the last war.

(e) Because the Plan gets rid of the profit-motive in social insurance.

(f) Because the scheme set out in the Report is a rational simplification of the complicated and wasteful machinery now in existence.

(g) Because the Report is a step towards the sort of new society that the people want.

Why the Beveridge Plan in itself is not enough.

At the same time we must never lose sight of the fact that the Beveridge Plan, even it fully carried out, is a step forward only in a limited field and that by itself it raises none of the fundamental political, social, and economic issues facing Britain and, indeed, the whole world.

We must therefore firmly resist the propaganda which suggests that the Beveridge Plan is in any way an alternative to the basic re-organisation of Britain’s social and economic life for which Common Wealth stands. The Beveridge Plan is a necessary part of vita] democracy and common ownership, although in the long run a socialist community would go considerably beyond it; but vital democracy and common ownership are together far wider and bigger issues than the Beveridge Plan.

We must, then, while fighting for the Plan, nevertheless be on our guard against the suggestion that the Plan is the last word in social reform. Beveridge himself says that he was asked only to solve the least difficult of Britain’s reconstruction problems. The Plan is a beginning, not an end: it is a basis for further democratic advance, but it is not a revolution.

This caution is necessary since it is quite possible that the present Government, or some reactionary grouping of the future, may use the Plan as a trap. They may try to represent the Beveridge Report as the last word in social reform, an anteroom to Paradise. They will explain to the worker that, if he wants the Beveridge Plan, he must be prepared to pay for it by working hard and long on low wages, by accepting all sorts of disciplines and regimentations in the interests of “maximum production” and the “export drive”. They will offer all sorts of things, provided that Big business is not forced, to surrender a single iota of its economic power; and they will then use those « reforms « as a means of black-mailing people into accepting a, Corporate State. We must all the time keep uppermost in our minds that fact that, while the Plan is good in itself and must be won for the people because of the principles it embodies, yet it may be twisted in such a way as to assist the creation of a British Fascist State.

Common Wealth therefore urges the people of Britain not to walk into the reactionary trap: to welcome the Beveridge Plan as an important .top forward in one particular field of social policy, but to see to it that Britain, instead of taking one halting step forward, shall go. on advancing with seven-league boots towards vital democracy and common ownership, to the building of a people’s world.

Would the Plan work under Capitalism?

In theory the Plan could be applied without disturbing the capitalist order; Beveridge is not convinced that common .ownership is the necessary fundamental basis for a democratic economic reconstruction. But against this there are several important facts to show that, whereas the Plan might be made to work under Capitalism by conscripting labour, it, would work much more certainly and smoothly under a, system based on the common ownership of the great resources.

I—The Plan “assumes the maintenance of employment and theprevention of mass unemployment.” It requires that unemployment shall not much exceed 1,500,000, and the abolition of “unemployment prolonged year after year for the same individual.” Obviously any such social security measure cannot be financed if too many are drawing benefits from it. Common Wealth, however, is convinced that mass unemployment cannot ‘be avoided for more than a few years after the war at most, so long as the great resources of the country remain in private hands, except by applying Fascist compulsion to the workers. Common ownership is the only final remedy ‘against mass unemployment. Once all the resources of the country appear on a single balance sheet it is obvious that the country will keep all its workers employed. The establishment of common ownership would cut out all but residual unemployment, and would thus so reduce the ‘costs of administering the Plan that it would probably be possible to’ halve the period during which the pension rates are to mature. The Government speakers in the recent debate were sceptical as to how such a plan could be financed: and rightly so. The present system provides no cure for unemployment, and the capitalists consequently foresee great difficulties in financing the scheme.

II.—Capitalism has nothing but intimidation and compulsion to use as “an effective safeguard against the abuse of unemployment benefit “ (to quote Sir John Anderson). That is why the Government is afraid to accept the Beveridge recommendations concerning unemployment and disability benefit. These, the Government maintains, “will have to be of limited duration,” presumably giving place to public assistance subject to a means test. In fact Capitalism is so morally bankrupt that it has to fall back on the fear of destitution as the spur to induce men to work.

It is true that so long as the people have no sense of owning their- country, so long as they do. not feel production to be “their show, “ some abuse of any social security scheme must be expected. This is the inevitable response of the workers to the profit-snatching of the owners. But once the country really belongs to the people, and improved production means a genem.1 rise m the standard of living for all (or the building up of facilities in which all share), dodging work becomes a social crime which the workers themselves will unanimously condemn. Piece-rates will no longer be regarded as a whip, but as a stimulus. The experience of the Soviet Union amply proves this to be the case.

III.—Maximum production after the war will give us not only the means for working the Beveridge Plan, but for all the other, measures that should accompany it. Maximum production, however, cannot be attained after the drive of war has passed-though nothing less than maximum production will suffice in post-war Britain—so long as workers and management are perpetually quarrelling over wages, rates, hours and conditions. Common ownership will get rid of this wasteful friction, since every factory .land industry will become a joint enterprise run for maximum output by fully representative Joint Production Committees.

The Trade Unions, instead of having to squander much of their energies infighting the “bosses” on .behalf of the “workers,” will be able to devote their activity towards fulfilling the national production plan, while still protecting the interests of their members. An industry harmoniously run and highly productive will more than compensate for the changes in Britain’s economic position resulting from the war.

IV.—The Government spokesmen approved of Beveridge’s suggestions for compulsory training and his demand that labour must be kept fluid after the war. These, indeed, are essential conditions for an island such as ours, where resources of men and material may often have to be switched over from one industry to another, not only to meet our own internal needs, but in response to the changing demands of foreign countries.

But will not many workers be unwilling to change their jobs, especially if this means changing their place of residence, so long as the main reason for doing so, appears to. be that of benefiting the balance-sheets of private owners? It is only when they .see that the .transfer of their service is going to benefit the whole community that they will be willing to transfer, where necessary, and that compulsion will thus become unnecessary.

V.—The Government is afraid of accepting the Beveridge pension proposals because it is aware that the average age of the nation is constantly rising, and that when the number of pensioners relative to the number of workers has passed a certain point the cost of pensions will become unmanageable.

This increase in age is due to the fall in the birth-rate, and this in turn is due to our present economic system. While Capitalism was expanding the birth-rate rose; now that Capitalism is increasingly restrictive the rate is steadily falling. Allowances for children cannot cure this. Germany has tried ‘several forms of bribery to encourage an increase of population, but without success. The plain truth is that men and women will not bring children into a society which has lost its purpose and dynamic. This fatal decline can only be removed by the introduction of a new way of living based on common ownership and vital democracy. If the supply of workers is plentiful, pensions for the old will cease to be a cause for apprehension; indeed, Common Wealth believes that more generous rates than those suggested in the Report could then be given, and that no means test would be necessary in any circumstances.

Once again, the experience of the Soviet Union points the moral. There the increase of population is about three million annually.

The Government’s attitude to the Report.

The tragedy of the Government’s attitude to the Report, as it has been so far disclosed, is that the ‘scheme, as, the Government propose to amend it, would no longer be a real social security measure—in spite of Mr. Morrison’s claim that 70 per cent. of the Report is left intact. Sir Kingsley Wood spoke of “priorities.” Priority No. 1 in the Government mind is that private ownership shall not be touched. Not only the insurance companies, but “the position of the big voluntary hospitals must be safeguarded, “ and also the “ well-being and integrity of the medical profession.” The means test is to be retained for the unemployed and the disabled, industrial disability pensions (up to a maximum of £3 plus allowance for children) are declared to be “difficult to justify.” The essential principles of. adjusting benefit to the prevailing cost of living is brushed aside as “very difficult if not impracticable.” Children’s allowances are cut down to the extent of 1/6 per head per week (even if the Government’s promise of services worth 2/6 is carried into effect). The scheme for retirement pensions is so altered as to cancel the aim of the Report, that is,- of ultimately providing a genuine maintenance rate. In spite of Mr. Morrison’s assurances, in fact, what will be left, if these amendments are adopted, is something which the Government would have had to concede had the Report never .been written. Nothing is left to inspire men’; nothing to make man’s hopes of the future rise high; nothing to make the Report what it should have been: “a landmark not only in Britain but in the world. “

Sir William himself, writing in The Observer (February 28’th, 1943) has said: “My Plan takes as its aim abolition of Want. The Government in regard to pensions wholly, and in regard to children’s .allowances and to unemployment and disability benefit to a lesser extent, abandon that aim.”

And so—What ?

The reactionaries have opposed the Report for a number of reasons. Sir Kingsley Wood (who was the champion of the insurance companies against Lloyd George when he tried to establish a State funeral grant in 1911) slammed the door on it with some jubilation, as though welcoming the opportunity of rapping the knuckles of those who are daring to expect something better than the 1939 world after the war. Those whose particular vested interests were threatened opposed it for personal reasons; those who are afraid of yielding to any popular demand, in case it starts a landslide, opposed the Report on principle. Others again, although they do not ‘actually want men to go hungry and would like to put through a real social security measure in order to strengthen the position of the ruling group, are afraid to do so because they are beginning to see that if the plan is to be worked properly it will involve doing away with our present system and substituting common ownership—for every major objection that was raised in the debate falls to pieces once we start to think in terms of common ownership of the great resources and a national plan for production democratically drawn up and fulfilled.

Then what must be our attitude?

We must oppose any watering-down of the Plan, especially as it was drawn up to supply only minimum subsistence.

We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the plea .that the Plan, even if adopted in full, is sufficient, and that Britain will then have done all that. is necessary to meet the needs of the post-war age.

We must work to bring about common ownership as the goal towards which the Report leads, and as the only order under which the proposals of the report can be put into effect smoothly, certainly, and democratically.

We must remember that the Report itself says: “Freedom from want cannot be forced on a democracy or given to a democracy. It must be won by them. Winning it needs courage and faith and a sense of national unity; courage to face facts and difficulties and overcome them; faith in our future and in the ideals of fair-play and freedom for which century after century our forefathers were prepared to die; a sense of national unity over-riding the interests of .any class or section."

We must fight for the whole Plan now as the first' step towards the sort of World the people want.

WE WON'T LET THEM SHELVE ST.

Approved by

The National Committee of Common Wealth Party,

19 June 1943;

Published By

C. W. Publishing, Ltd., 4 Gower Street, London, W.C.I; and

Printed By

J. B. Mackie & Co. Ltd., Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland