Created in 1948, the British National Health Service (NHS) was designed as a Socialist ‘cradle to the grave’ health service – free at the point of use – and paid for through collective taxation. Indeed, it was a straight copy from the ‘free’ health service created in the Soviet Union under Lenin (and Stalin) – although the British Labour Party stopped short of endorsing Marxist-Leninism – maintaining the Labour tradition of proscribing the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). The NHS was a reward for the British working-class which had fought during WWII – and had been killed, injured and maimed! The problem is that since its very inception, the idea that a Socialist entity could be allowed to exist within the dark-heart of predatory capitalism was opposed by the Parties of reaction and Conservativism – which believe that only the rich should be allowed to ‘pay’ for the best medical protection that money can purchase! They believe that as working-class people do not possess the individual wealth required to ‘pay’ for a comprehensive health-cover – nature should be allowed to take its course and working-class people should be allowed to ‘die’ when their lives are no longer ‘productive’ to the bourgeoisie that controls society.
To dissuade people accessing free health-cover – Winston Churchill introduced pointless prescription charges in the 1950s – supposedly as a contribution to the cost of the treatment when the FULL cost of the treatment had been already been covered through collective taxation. As the decades went by – various health choices were withdrawn from the NHS as acts of spite by the British right-wing establishment. This process of the retraction of medical services continued into the 1980s where Thatcher illegally changed the onus of the NHS from one of ‘care’ to one of ‘cost’. Overnight entire rafts of life-saving treatments were withdrawn from the NHS on the grounds that they ‘cost’ too much to offer free at the point of use. New Labour continued the Tory cuts into the 2000s and was planning to abolish the NHS when it lost the 2010 General Election. This did not matter as the Tories and LibDems carried-on the European Union (EU) policy of privatising ALL Socialist health services and nationalised industries!
To dissuade people accessing free health-cover – Winston Churchill introduced pointless prescription charges in the 1950s – supposedly as a contribution to the cost of the treatment when the FULL cost of the treatment had been already been covered through collective taxation. As the decades went by – various health choices were withdrawn from the NHS as acts of spite by the British right-wing establishment. This process of the retraction of medical services continued into the 1980s where Thatcher illegally changed the onus of the NHS from one of ‘care’ to one of ‘cost’. Overnight entire rafts of life-saving treatments were withdrawn from the NHS on the grounds that they ‘cost’ too much to offer free at the point of use. New Labour continued the Tory cuts into the 2000s and was planning to abolish the NHS when it lost the 2010 General Election. This did not matter as the Tories and LibDems carried-on the European Union (EU) policy of privatising ALL Socialist health services and nationalised industries!
Although Jeremy Corbyn promised to save the NHS – the middle-classes mobilised to keep a left-wing Labour Party out of government and condemned the NHS to its demise. The eventual victory of Boris Johnson has seen a major step in the shutting-down of the British NHS as the Tories have used the Covid19 pandemic to close-down ALL GP surgeries throughout the UK and reduce patient care to ‘telephone calls’. The GP Surgeries now stand ‘empty’ and await closure and selling-off as they are no longer needed. The Tories have no intention of re-introducing to the pre-Covid19 service that once existed whereby every British citizen had the right to make an appointment and see a GP free at the point of use. This closing down of GP services is leading to hundreds and thousands of people unnecessarily suffering and dying from deficient NHS care! It is doubtful that the Tories could have achieved this change within British society without the Covid19 crisis being used as a smokescreen for taking away a major plank in the medical care of the working-class! The Labour Party under Starmer is a right-wing aberration that is assisting the Tories in its destruction of working-class medical care! Under the camouflage of ‘protecting the long-term health of the nation’ – the Tories have ‘destroyed the short-term health of the nation’!
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 