Restore the NHS
It is seventy-seven years since the NHS was founded. It was a gift to the generations that followed them from those who fought all-out war and defeated fascism in World War 2. It made a dramatic difference to the lives of babies and mothers.
Before the NHS, if you did not have the money, you did not get healthcare. The number of babies that died at birth was horrific. In the 1930s, more women died in childbirth than men died working in the dangerous mines.
There were multiple campaigns for a universal health system since the early 20th Century from working-class women’s groups, notably the Cooperative Women’s Guild, and from the trade unions, especially the National Union of Miners, and from socialist doctors. One of these socialist doctors, Dr Benjamin Moore was from Liverpool. He started his campaign in 1910, so thirty long years before the NHS was established. Let’s learn from history and demand a return to the original model of the NHS.
Join our campaigns so you can see better healthcare in your life time and leave such just a legacy for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We need a people powered campaign to Restore and Repair the NHS.
The NHS is badly damaged at present, and we take little comfort from the government’s liking for giving NHS money to the private providers, nor from the Ten-year Plan announced in early July 2025 https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-term-plan/
We will print a detailed review of this plan shortly.
We are especially disappointed by how little is said about the state of maternity care in this report. We and other maternity and women’s health campaigns submitted reports to this plan, but we see nothing from it except the promise of yet another report. We need action now on birth trauma, the maternity tariff, staffing levels, recruitment and retention of staff, peace and respect in the whole process of fertility, pregnancy, giving birth and postnatal care. We need action on the neglect of Gynaecology treatment and on women’s lifelong health and healthcare,
Governments since Thatcher have moved against the founding NHS model of universal health care in favour of allowing companies to use it for profit; yet the American system which they base their case on, is plain wrong, cruel, and widely hated.
Let’s ensure that people in the UK now and those yet to come have good and timely healthcare, free at the point of need, as a public service, funded by the state. It should be a national organisation available to all humans, young and old, black, white and brown, rich and poor alike. It should be designed for human good, not profit. There should be well-qualified staff with good education and training, with bursaries and good salaries. The hospitals and community health services should work together and not be in competition. The service should be reasonably close to home with good transport links. Privatisation should become a thing of the past, as it is a waste of public resources. Report after report describes the damage done by outsourcing and privatisation.
The NHS system of health care is cost efficient, and effective, far cheaper for the government than the US system despite the health insurance people pay, and gives far better outcomes, health, and life expectancy. We live longer than people in the US and in less fear of getting ill. US maternal mortality and infant mortality is far higher than that of other rich nations.
Let’s fight to restore and repair the NHS so the generations that follow us are also free from fear. Bevan’s book “In Place of Fear” wrote of the fear ordinary families had of getting ill, of their children or family members falling ill, before health care was a right, when it was a commodity they could not afford and often did without, in pain and fear. Memories of life before the NHS are fading as the generation that created the NHS has passed.
The NHS improved the health and wealth of the nation and even conservative governments had to pretend to be in favour of the NHS
The founding of the NHS was bitterly opposed by the Conservatives but welcomed by ordinary people and many GPs.
For seventy-seven years, the people of Britain have had the right to healthcare free at the point of need. If you are younger than 77 years old you need never have paid for healthcare, except through your normal contributions to the country. There are now sadly a long list of charges you might now face for dentisty, for prescriptions, for earwax removal, fertilty treatment and more but still not for hugely expensive life saving operations or chemo. Battered and damaged, the NHS is still alive and kicking, and worth us demanding its restoration and repair.
“A free health service is a triumphant example of the superiority of collective action and public initiative applied to a segment of society where commercial principles are seen at their worst.”
People in the UK can still go to the doctors or to the hospital without a credit card or health insurance. No one in the UK needs to go bankrupt from medical bills. life saving and life improving work is delivered day by day.
That’s not the way it works in the USA; the model that governments refer to when they want to make changes to the NHS.The model that has trained the advisers the government appoints and the model liked by many who have made donations to Government ministers.
For sixty of those years, the NHS was the best health service in the world. However, we have had to fight to defend it again and again. That popular defence is needed now more than ever.
Real damage has been done to the NHS since the time of Margaret Thatcher, by her and and subsequent Governments. Although Blair put money into the NHS, he also laid the groundwork for many forms of privatisation. This article gives a timeline of privatisation in our NHS.
5th July 1948, The National Health Service NHS was founded. It was designed to provide healthcare free at the point of need for everyone in Britain. It was to be a national, publicly funded, publicly delivered, comprehensive, not-for-profit health service, with fully qualified staff. This project was led by the Left-Wing Labour MP and Minister for Labour, Nye Bevan, a former miner.
The NHS Model was the most cost-effective, efficient, and equitable system, with the bulk of the money provided by the government going directly to patients, staff, and buildings. In the US system, the government pays twice as much per person as in Britain, and then patients have to pay large insurance premiums and copays.
The NHS has been badly damaged by years of privatisation and underfunding, from the early days of the NHS. On April 23rd 1951 Bevan resigned when the first charges in the NHS, for prescriptions, were introduced to pay for armaments.
It is likely that governments thought that privatising, disorganising, cutting, outsourcing understaffing and underfunding the NHS would finish it off, that it would fall apart much more than it has done. What stood in their way was the huge and relentless efforts made by the staff to keep the service going, sometimes at the cost of their own health and wealth.We thank the NHS staff .
The cost of the corporate profit model of healthcare is huge, but the damage is not just to people’s money, but also to access to healthcare and to the quality of care. The financial cost to the people of the USA of this privatised for-profit model of healthcare is estimated at $2 trillion per year. In 2023 25.3million people in the USA had no health insurance and are liable for the full cost of their treatment which can lead to bankruptcy. Sixty percent of all bankruptcy is caused by medical bills and Trumps Big Beautiful Bill which just went through the senate is likely to increase the numbers without health insurance and funding for hospitals.
Our campaign to Save Liverpool Hospital is one of many across the country, and we work together. We have won more than 81,000 signatures between our on line and on paper petitions, and gained much public support. Please join in.
Save Liverpool Women's Hospital 