The National Theatre is showing Nye, a play about the founder of the NHS, seventy-five years ago. The play is being live-streamed to many cinemas. So it’s appropriate for us to republish a local leaflet written advocating a return to the system of healthcare designed by Nye Bevan.

We face a Healthcare Disaster.

Take back the NHS. Go back to Bevan.

We cannot wait as the damage in healthcare escalates still further.

Nye Bevan, in the post-war Labour Government, set up a world-beating healthcare system that served us well for decades.

It was a national service – not a business. It was publicly provided by the nationally owned service – it responded to need not profit.

It provided all the treatments when we needed them – including GPs, mental health, elder care and dentistry. No to waiting lists! No to profits for private providers. It was a Health Service open to every human in the country – no migrant charges. The Health Secretary then was legally obliged to provide health care but no longer. It was free at the point of need – no charging.

Bevan’s system had capacity; it did not run at a panic level like today.

The Bevan Model of Universal Public Health care is cheaper, more cost-effective and more equitable than the vandalised service we now have. The for-profit business model costs more and delivers less.

We need immediate action on maternity, mental health, the GP service and dentistry. Action in hospitals, sort out budgets. More beds in the NHS not fewer. Invest, do not cut.

Restore the Public Health System. Plan effectively for epidemics and natural disasters

Address Women’s Healthcare needs. When the NHS started, women’s health improved; now under the semi-private system, it is declining. Even Maternity is unsafe.

Everyone working in health should be employed by the NHS on proper terms and conditions – no outsourcing, no commissioning. Demand good pay for all NHS staff – an immediate pay rise. Respect the staff. End bullying and lying to them. Win back staff who have left in disgust. Plan the workforce training.

We do not want and cannot afford the big corporations’ involvement in our NHS. Abolish the so-called Integrated Care System where all sectors are incentivised to cut and deny care. Bring back national, publicly owned and provided, comprehensive healthcare, free at the point of need.

Beware the corporate health lobby groups in all the political parties. Human needs should dictate our level of care, not Big Business and its failed ideology. The NHS privatisers are like vandals smashing and grabbing profit, albeit hidden behind a veil of lies and public relations gobbledegook.

End all privatisations: outsourcing, commissioning, reliance on private companies’ reports, staffing agencies, population health management, the rationing and denying of services, running down services, and using charities as substitutes for real NHS capacity.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. The NHS was a great social victory won by the generation that defeated Hitler. Let us make our demands as loud and long as those of our grandparents. No one else will save the NHS. It must be a mass campaign.

If the reader wants to read more about Bevan please read, a chapter from Nye Bevan’s book.

Organise in each ICS area to challenge the cuts, challenge the syphoning-off of our healthcare finances by private companies. Mobilise the unions and the communities. Demand world-class publicly owned and provided social care. Renationalise the NHS! Lobby all MPs and Councillors

This leaflet was produced by Cheshire and Merseyside Coordinated  Healthcare Campaign, which involves local Trades Councils, Union branches, Health Campaign Groups, including Save Liverpool Women’s Hospital, Defend our NHS, Keep our NHS Public, (both Merseyside and Cheshire) and individuals. We work with many other campaigns nationally.