1948

'Was God on our side in the War?' I asked my Dad, as he led me along the hospital corridor. Aged seven and with my eyes bandaged following surgery, my young head seemed full of big questions. So often these focused on the battles between Right and Wrong as in the story books. Deprived of these and much that I had taken for granted, I suspect I wanted reassurance that things would turn out alright and perhaps a guarantee that one day soon I would be able to find my own way to the toilet.

In fact, my guardian angels were my parents and a host of NHS staff whose care, diligence and bloody marvellousness have stayed with me. I was lucky. My Mum had campaigned for the consultant Mr Lyons to carry out my corrective or 'squint surgery', as it is often unflatteringly termed. Much later as a student, I had the opportunity to do research with adults who did not have the operation and consequently were close to losing sight in one eye. As the UK's National Health Service reaches its 75th anniversary in July 2023, I am sure millions have their own 'NHS story'.

The visit by Health Minister Aneurin Bevan on 5 July 1948, to what is now Trafford General Hospital, is recorded in a photograph where he is seen meeting the first patient to receive NHS care. Sylvia Beckingham was 13 years old and went on to become a passionate advocate of the NHS and indeed her son trained as a doctor. Sylvia's grandson also went into medicine and married another doctor, who by curious turn of fate was great-granddaughter of Prime Minister Clement Attlee - Bevan's boss in 1948!  

The Empire Windrush

The arrival of Her Majesty's Troopship Empire Windrush a fortnight before the NHS was launched was no coincidence – there were 54,000 nursing vacancies in 1948 and by 1977, 66 per cent of student nurses and midwives were recruited from the Caribbean . The vital contribution to the NHS by so many from the countries of the Commonwealth and more widely continues today, with over 200 nations represented in the NHS workforce - one quarter of NHS staff are from ethnic minority groups. Sadly, the reception awaiting colleagues from Windrush and since has caused much suffering of its own – David Olusoga's documentary on their contribution to the success of the NHS is well worth watching.

Often referred to as an envy of the world, the NHS continues to face unprecedented challenges, but its underpinning ideology is healthcare that is free at the point of delivery. The introduction of the purchaser-provider split, GP budget-holders and prescription charges have brought about what many would call an erosion of this commitment, although successive UK governments have boasted of their own efforts to maintain and support it.

Of the statues of politicians on display inside the UK Parliament, the bust of Aneurin Bevan is a testament to vision, determination and well-meaning charisma. He had been working in coal mines of South Wales as a teenager until eye disease forced him to seek a different path - he studied and entered politics as MP for Ebbw Vale in hopes of making a real difference…the kind of politician we need to hear more about.

An iconic book

While Bevan was an architect of such significant change in post-World War II UK, a writer called Eric Blair was planning his own new creation. In an essay written in 1946, he considered the importance of what is going on around us as a key motivation for writing: 'The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics, is itself a political attitude' ('Why I write', p.5).

It is almost 75 years since he produced an iconic and overtly political book that demonstrated the futility of unending war and the roles of authoritarian regimes and propaganda that perpetuate it. Poignantly, he described television screens inside people's homes which fed them politicised messages from morning till night, telling them how to interpret the world whilst spying on their conversations. 

In predicting a surveillance future, Eric Blair - writing under the pen name George Orwell - published '1984' mindful of two world wars and the horrific consequences of totalitarianism. I remember reading '1984' in 1984 – grateful to have my eyesight in good working order, although I continued to ask difficult questions.

I fear I did not fully appreciate the efforts of my parents and NHS staff in my own childhood, but as an adult I hope I realise much more the contribution of so many who take care of us. It is important to learn from the lessons of often difficult histories in order to do things differently, especially in these increasingly desperate times.  Hope is essential and it is vital we celebrate the examples our NHS and social care staff show us every day.

Ashley Weinberg is also Editor of the Political Psychology Section Bulletin.

This editorial is from the Summer 2023 issue of the Bulletin.