Whisper it, but the NHS was NOT universally welcomed in 1948

The National Health Service is 75-years-old next week.

The concept (providing universal healthcare free at the point of delivery) is hard to fault, but I find the nation’s almost religious devotion to this less than stellar organisation hard to stomach.

It was bad enough having it feature in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games, but having a children's choir sing 'Happy Birthday' to the NHS on Newsnight this week took the biscuit.

Have we gone mad?

I'm not going to debate the pros and cons here and now, but on its 75th birthday I thought I'd remind readers that not everyone was as keen on the birth of the NHS as we're led to believe.

Take my grandfather, for example. The details are a bit sketchy but this is what I can piece together from what my mother may have told me over the years. (Recollections may vary, to coin a phrase.)

I'm not sure the exact year he was born but my grandfather was born and brought up in Keswick in the Lake District and when he left school (at 14, I think), he got a job in a local pharmacy.

He then joined the medical corp and spent much of the First World War in Egypt, but it was only after the war that he went to Charing Cross Hospital Medical School in London where he qualified as a doctor.

Thanks to his pharmacy experience he was able to create his own medications for patients. (Can you imagine GPs being allowed to do that today?!)

After getting married, he and my grandmother (who was from Bannockburn in Scotland) moved to Wembley. I remember their house because they lived there until the mid Sixties when my grandfather retired and they moved to Colchester.

Ten years ago, following a meeting with Forest's accountants (who by coincidence are based in Wembley), I rang my mother and asked what my grandparents' old address was so I could drive past the house which I hadn’t seen for 50 years.

The address was Rosslyn Gardens, a short drive from the accountants' office which overlooked Wembley Stadium.

The reason I mention the stadium is because when it was opened in 1923 it was famously surrounded by fields and Wembley was very different to the rather ugly conurbation it is today.

That said, the tree-lined residential street was almost exactly as I remembered it, although it felt narrower.

The house looked smaller too, but that’s not surprising because I was only four or five the last time I was there so everything would have looked bigger!

When my grandparents lived in Rosslyn Gardens the surgery was on one side of the house and had its own entrance so patients didn't have to enter through the front door.

Which brings me back to the point of this post.

Many years ago I remember being told that my grandfather was not a fan of the NHS, especially the way it was introduced.

When the NHS was established in 1948 his patient list (ie the business he had worked hard to build up over 20 years) was commandeered by the state, for which he now had to work.

This isn't an argument against the NHS btw (that's a different debate), but the idea that it was universally welcomed is simply not true.

There were many doctors who were less than happy when their practices were taken over and effectively nationalised.

It's a story rarely if ever told, perhaps because it sits uncomfortably with the modern orthodoxy that the pre-NHS healthcare system in Britain was a blot on civilisation and the NHS represented a giant step forward.

That generation of doctors is dead now so everyone accepts, without quibble it seems, that the NHS saved the nation from health inequalities (which are nevertheless still with us) and avaricious private quacks.

I’m sure there were some dodgy doctors but my mother was a child in those pre-NHS days and she remembers my grandfather having a strict daily routine that rarely changed:

9.00-11.00am – Morning surgery
11.00-5.00pm – Home visits
5.00-6.00pm – Bite to eat
6.00-8.00pm – Evening surgery
8.00-late – More home visits

His surgery was open six days a week and he was available for home visits every day if required.

At that time, even taking inflation into account, most doctors earned far less than they do today when many GPs earn well in excess of £100,000 a year.

I don't begrudge them the money (they work hard to become doctors and have a job that comes with huge responsibilities) but I'm not convinced the service NHS patients receive today is an improvement on the past.

Anyway, it was interesting to see the house in Wembley. The separate entrance no longer exists and you would never guess that part of it had once been a doctor's surgery.

I'm due to visit our accountants quite soon so I might pop by again. I don't know about the NHS, but I'll happily toast the memory of my grandfather who dedicated his life to helping other people and didn’t expect to be revered or applauded (with pots and pans) for doing his job.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

The National Health Service was wonderful until it was politicised by politicians from all parties, became the NHS under Tony Blair's part privatisation, and then shaped and used by political activists pushing their own agendas.

I remember doctors when they did home visits as a matter of routine and when the National Health Service really was free and treated all without prejudice or discrimination and with compassion and acceptance despite their lifestyles.

Ambulances would pick you up from home for hospital appointments, and routine visits, and not just in emergencies, dental care, eye care and all the basic services were free too but over the decades the population has become too big, the health facilities too expensive to run, and healthcare itself has become a competitive industry dependent on profit.

Health is not a religion and the NHS is not a church and should not be treated with the same kind of reference.