Celebrating 60 years of the National Health Service

Birth of the National Health Service

I can’t think why I’ve only just realized that I was born before the National Health Service came into being. Now, that may not strike non-UK readers as important, but those of us who’ve lived with and been treated by the NHS most or all of our lives are very happy that this extraordinary social institution is still with us after 60 years.

I was born in December 1947. My parents would have had to pay the hospital where I was born for its services. Now our medical treatment is free at the point of use.

The NHS was conceived in the middle of the Second World War, when Britain was almost on its economic knees. Before this visionary new service was born - on 5 July 1948, at a time of extraordinary privation for the British people - people who could afford it (including my parents) paid for medical treatment, and those who couldn’t afford it went without.

Women queuing for food in the severe winter of 1947

Despite all the NHS’s faults and weaknesses, I am grateful for the vision of William Beveridge and the determination Aneurin Bevan, health minister in the 1945 Labour government to ensure that…

…everybody, irrespective of means, age, sex or occupation shall have equal opportunity to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available.

Of course, the NHS has never fully lived up to this promise, but as a retired GP who qualified as a doctor on the day the NHS began has commented:

Nobody realised how much unknown sickness there was until the NHS began. So many people just could not afford to go to the doctor. The new service uncovered a huge cavern of unmet need. There was an unprecedented rush to the GPs with problems people had been putting off for years. Before the NHS, healthcare in this country was a disaster, particularly if you were poor.

If you want to read the history of this great social invention, you can download Sixty Years of the National Health Service from the Department of Health website.

Celebration in Westminster Abbey

So around 2,000 of us - doctors, nurses, chaplains, patients, administrators, and many more - came to Westminster Abbey yesterday afternoon - to celebrate the NHS’s 60th birthday.

Prince Charles was there. The Prime Minister was there. And I was there, oh yes, I was there representing the UK Bahá’í community (I am one of two Bahá’í members of the Multi Faith Group for Healthcare Chaplaincy), and sitting next to Sikh, Muslim and Jewish friends.

Westminster Abbey has a grand way with these ceremonial occasions - processions, robes, choir, music, solemn language - and yesterday’s service was no exception.

(I was part of the small “other faiths” procession. It’s an awe-inspiring experience to follow a verger at the stately processional pace favoured by the Church of England through the Nave and into the Quire of this place where God has been worshipped by Christians for over a thousand years - although this particular building was begun in 1245 - watched by the congregation, who surely must have wondered at this motley group of besuited and unrobed men, one in a turban and one with a Jewish kippah.)

Reasons to be thankful

In his address the Rt Revd Michael Perham, Bishop of Gloucester and Chairman of the Hospital Chaplaincies Council, highlighted four reasons to be thankful on this occasion:

The first is that the National Health Service happened at all. It was a brave and visionary social revolution emerging, surprisingly, out of a world of post-war austerity. It was opposed by most of the professionals who would have to work within it. Its background was economic hardship and entrenched opposition. Yet it came into being, promoted by courageous politicians, and it was not very long before it was the pride and joy of the nation and the envy of the world. Give thanks!

The second is that it has continued to evolve, responding to radical change - not so much radical change imposed by politicians and administrators (though, of course, there has been that), but radical change brought about by medical advance and by new insights within the medical profession…

The third reason to rejoice is the huge satisfaction and pride that the people of this country still have in the Health Service. Politicians, challenging one another, rightly always want to get it better. Newspapers sometimes run horror stories of things that go wrong. Some people have a raw deal. This week’s BBC poll on the NHS found that 82% of people were still proud of the NHS and half of those still saw it as the envy of the world. I’d give a lot for a vote of confidence like that. Give thanks!

The fourth reason to celebrate? Simply this - and it’s hugely important. The Health Service work-force deserves honour and praise. Health care “professional” - I use the word in its widest meaning, doctors of many kinds, nurses of many kinds, administrators of many kinds, support workers of many kinds, chaplains of many faiths - continue to be people of dedication, continue to exercise care and compassion towards their patients. “Honour physicians for their services . . the skill of physicians makes them distinguished,” says the writer of Ecclesiasticus, and we need to widen that honouring of those who care for the sick and work for health to include the entire profession. For the people of the NHS, give thanks!

However,

That profound sense of thankfulness needs to be set against the inevitable difficulties that have been encountered as the NHS has tried to respond to change over the years. Nor will the difficulties vanish away, however much we try to anticipate change.

What of the future?

Bishop Michael’s conclusion contains wise words:

There is much that a future NHS will need that is beyond the knowledge of a bishop! There is probably much that is beyond the imagination of most of us. Our forebears in 1948, for all their vision, cannot have pictured the advances and the changes that we have seen. But I think I do know that, if the National Health Service is to continue to serve, it will need to hold on to two timeless truths.

• The human person is a wonderful combination of the physical, the mental, the social and the spiritual, a divine design beyond compare.

• To heal the sick and to make people healthy is a vocation, a collaboration with the God from whom all health and wholeness comes.

Reception

So, the service finished and we all ceremoniously recessed to the Great West Door. Outside in the Sanctuary, the Abbey bells rang through the light, persistent, rain. The congregation hoisted their umbrellas and trooped across the road into the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre for sandwiches, scones, tea, a speech by Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Health.

And for a song by soprano Lesley Garrett, who is married to a GP.

When he launched the NHS, Nye Bevan said:

We shall never have all we need. Expectations will always exceed capacity… The NHS must always be changing, growing and improving. It must always appear inadequate.

No wonder Lesley Garrett sang “To Dream the Impossible Dream”!

Technorati Tags: NHS, National Health Service, Westminster Abbey, 60th anniversary, Christian, Baha’i, Sikh, Muslim, chaplaincy

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