The message is clear: if you’re under 16 years-old and outside after 9pm you’re a menace to society. No longer will adults’ summer evenings be disturbed by the yobs of Redruth, Cornwall, who have little better to do than hang around with their friends, lurking on street corners ready to ruin respectable citizens’ nightly strolls.

Whether the police market this as a ‘child safety initiative’ or a simple curfew, this latest measure continues an unhappy trend to criminalise young people. Rather than tackling the problems which have resulted in Britain’s children being some of the unhappiest in Europe, it simply exacerbates them.

The message from Westminster is also clear: this scheme will be coming to a town near you. Even those who should be defending our liberty such as Julia Goldsworthy, Liberal Democrat MP for Falmouth and Camborne, have seemingly called for the scheme to be extended. “This is a very interesting experiment and I will be keeping a close eye on it. It should be trialled properly with a view to rolling it out to other trouble spots in the country if it gets results,” she said.

It’s not just those who have committed a criminal offence she wants removed, as “simply hanging around on street corners can be enough of a threat.”

Police may claim that the summer curfew is voluntary but any parent who refuses to cooperate will be visited by someone from Social Services or receive a parenting order. Something is not voluntary if you face punishment for non-compliance.

The BBC news managed to find a 'stereotypical' gang of youths to interview for their coverage. All wore hoodies, all smoked and all claimed they would defy the curfew. They failed, however, to locate the children “returning from band practice” whom PC Marc Griffen said would also be stopped and searched.

“We want to put the responsibility for children back into the family home,” added Griffen. In reality the scheme removes all responsibility from parents as it tells them exactly how they have to look after their children. Stuart Waiton, the director of the campaign group Youth Generation Issues, studied a similar curfew implemented in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, in the late 1990’s. Waiton concluded that such schemes were billed as aimed at helping parents but actually helped undermine to their authority. “Parents, not the state, should decide at what time children come in,” he said. Worryingly, a Sunday Times poll claimed that most parents want to see a curfew, but instead of having the state impose one they should take responsibility themselves, allowing flexibility and removing criminalisation.

Not supporting this curfew is not the same as siding with criminals. If people are breaking any laws they should be punished. The majority of young people, however, are not criminals and should not be treated as such. The danger of this scheme is that only those children who don’t respect the police and whose parents don’t force them to comply are left outside. Relinquishing our public spaces to the anti-social is not the solution. Fear-mongering by the media has already started this. Instead we need to be encouraging people of all ages to go outside and reclaim public areas.

In last week’s New Statesman, Suzanne Moore claimed that children need a ‘New Deal’. ‘They need to be given much more space, both physically and mentally. They need to be seen as full of potential, not evil. Demonising them has proved a self-fulfilling prophecy.’ The article brings to attention many worrying facts, ones that should be the focus of local and national policy, instead of simplistic blanket curfews. In the UK only one in five children play outside each day, 3.9m live in poverty and they watch television or use a computer for an average of five hours 20 minutes everyday. According to the Children’s Society in 2006 a fifth of children had mental health problems and one in 12 was self-harming. The solution is not curfews or prison – the UK already locks up more children than any other country in western Europe.

In a report published by the Institute for Public Policy Research about youth crime, Carey Oppenheim said: “The problem with kids these days is the way adults are treating them. Britain is in danger of becoming a nation fearful of its young people: a nation of paedophobics. We need policy which reminds adults – parents and non-parents alike – that it is their responsibility to set norms of behaviour and to maintain them through positive and authoritative interaction with young people.”

The report went on to say that youth crime should be tackled through the use of sport, drama or arts based activities at which attendance is regular and consistent and a final goal is worked towards. Uniformed activities such as Scouts, Guides, Martial Arts and Cadets where skills are acquired and rewarded through badges, belts and ranks. It concluded that early or isolated use of anti-social behaviour orders, juvenile curfews and boot camps often encouraged criminal behaviour.

Not only does Britain have unhappy children, it also has children who are too fat, too lazy and many who lack basic social skills. Don’t go outside, they are being told, because you will be stabbed or attacked by a paedophile, which is only making things worse. Those who dare to risk the dangers of fresh air are now being told that society fears them, so stay inside and play on your Playstation.

Conservative MP David Davis’s recent by-election campaign Haltemprice and Howden may have been a political stunt - he resigned over the government's plans to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days - but he was right about one thing: eroding the liberty of the many is not the best way to tackle the crimes of the few. The removal from view of children will not help to solve the problems they face. While the curfew in Redruth is a trial, it is important that society develops a holistic approach to improve the lives of young people and does not think that demonising all children is the way forward. Children should be made part of the community not ostracised from it.

In 1997, Labour came to power under the promise of protecting and renewing the public services, yet throughout this period they have failed to recognise that the quality and scope of public service provision depends on the commitment and motivation of public service workers. Hence for the last 10 years, the government have forced below-inflation pay awards, effectively pay cuts, on certain sections of public service workers. This latest offer of 2.45% for the majority of the 1.5 million strong NJC workforce has triggered a vote by Unison and Unite members to strike.

Despite the popular myth that all public sector workers have done well under Labour, some have consistently fallen behind on prices and average earnings – including civil servants, prison officers and local government workers. Year on year, through below-inflation pay rises, market-based reforms and centrally driven targets, public sector workers have been demoralised, undermined and devalued. Yet last week I felt a glimmer of hope as the government released its latest report entitled "Excellence and fairness: achieving world-class public services". This paper argues strongly that:

Fostering a new professionalism in the public service workforce, which combines increased responsiveness to users, consistent quality in day-to-day practices, higher levels of autonomy from central government wherever those at the front line show the ambition and capacity to excel and greater investment in workforce skills.

Here, the government clearly recognises the important role that public services workers play in service provision. In fact in many instances they are the service: there is nothing beyond them and the provision is dependent on their skills and commitment. This was preceded by a speech by Gordon Brown on social mobility, stating "the great test of our time – to build a fairer, more prosperous and upwardly mobile Britain". Ignoring the fact that this speech pretends again that social mobility only means people going up – this report and this speech show the admirable goals that we could achieve. But when juxtaposed with the below-inflation pay offer, we see a clear disconnection between the rhetoric and reality of this government.

All that is highlighted in the speech and in the report are only really possible through fostering and developing public services, which cannot be achieved without the workforce. If you look at local government workers, it is clear that they have delivered beyond expectations – local services have been a success story – with a high proportion of councils rated excellent, good or improving by the audit commission, these have exceeded treasury targets for efficiency savings.

We need to recognise that decent increases in pay are affordable – the popular argument that pay needs to be held down to combat inflation is disputed by economists – and that it is the staff input that has improved local government performance, and service provision across the board. Public service workers don't want to have to strike, they want to carry on doing their jobs, but in an environment that recognises their contribution. It's not really much to ask, but it's clearly more than the government is willing to offer.

Most of the people who are striking over pay are in fact women and among the lowest-paid in society, and this effective pay cut will no doubt impact on Brown's flagship child poverty targets. The situation is only made worse by the government's ridiculous timidity in tackling the bonus culture in the City and excessive executive pay. The government remains, in this area, in the City's thrall; as it stay silent on these issues but is happy to hold down the pay of some of the least well-off.

We had huge hopes for Labour under Brown: it now seems they are set to collapse. Our electoral analysis highlights that the 4 million voters that left Labour in 1997 were largely public service workers. If we can, in the two short years before a general election, reinvigorate these workers we may seem them coming back, and this can start financially, through a pay award – that is at the very least not an effective pay cut – and continue through reforms that recognise their vital contribution to our public services.

This article first appeared on Compass.

Member countries of Petrocaribe, the Caribbean energy integration organization that Venezuela initiated in 2005, agreed Sunday to adjust the terms of financing for the purchase of Venezuelan oil in order to lower the impact of soaring oil prices on Caribbean countries. Also, Guatemala joined the association as its 18th member.

As long as Venezuelan oil costs $100 per barrel or more, Petrocaribe members will pay only 40% of their oil imports from Venezuela within 90 days, instead of 50%, as agreed upon previously. The remaining 60% would be paid over 25 years at a fixed interest rate of 1%, in accordance with changes ratified Sunday during the Fifth Petrocaribe Summit held in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

“This could compensate for this horrible curve in the petroleum markets,” said the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, who proposed the “urgent” changes.

If the price of Venezuelan oil surpasses $200 per barrel, which Chávez said would be a “not desired scenario,” member countries will pay 30% within 90 days, and 70% over 25 years.

So far, Petrocaribe countries have received a total of 58.9 million barrels of Venezuelan oil, approximately 56,000 barrels per day.

Chávez encouraged countries to pay part of their debt in “goods and services,” assuring that “a distinct market will be born in Petrocaribe” which creates “opportunities for integral development.”

Chávez also proposed that Petrocaribe nations create mixed enterprises with the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA to extract oil from the Orinoco Oil Belt, where Venezuela has some of the world’s largest oil reserves.

This way, each country in Petrocaribe would produce its own oil supply, strengthen its economy, and be less affected by the soaring oil prices, Chávez explained.

So far, Petrocaribe participants have constituted 8 mixed enterprises to make joint investments in oil refining and distribution in the region, according to Venezuela’s Energy and Petroleum Minister, Rafael Ramírez.

To help Caribbean countries improve domestic food production and be less affected by global food price inflation, Venezuela also offered to form bilateral agreements to build fertilizer production plants in Petrocaribe countries, starting with Nicaragua, Dominica, and Cuba, where such bilateral projects are already underway.

In addition to these long-term “structural solutions of our region,” Chávez announced that in the short term, Venezuela will supply Petrocaribe nations with 100,000 metric tons of urea, an ingredient in fertilizers, at a 40% discount from the international price. This will cover half of the region’s growing urea consumption, which Chávez estimated to be 200,000 tons per year.

“It is impossible that in a summit in today’s world the food crisis is not discussed,” Chávez declared. “We should convert Petrocaribe into a type of anti-hunger shield, a shield to protect ourselves from misery, from hunger.”

Petrocaribe nations also agreed to start a special fund in the Bank of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), to boost food production and combat food shortages. ALBA is another regional integration initiative based on cooperative, fair trade principles as an alternative to global capitalism, whose members are Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.

The Jamaican Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, offered to contribute $5 million to the ALBA Caribbean Fund, and Venezuela said it would contribute half a dollar of every barrel exported.

The vision of both the Petrocaribe and ALBA initiatives is the economic integration of Latin America and the Caribbean based on the principles of justice, solidarity, equality, cooperation, complementation, common will, and respect for the sovereignty and self-determination, with emphasis in human and social development, according to the website of Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA.

Venezuelan opposition leaders have criticized Petrocaribe and ALBA for being examples of the “diplomacy of bribery,” and accused the Chávez administration of attempting to buy support for the Venezuelan government.

Moreover, some officials from Petrocaribe nations have opposed the initiative because it favors accords among governments and de-emphasizes the private sector.

Petrocaribe is now composed of 18 Caribbean countries, including Guatemala, which joined the group Sunday. Costa Rica, which is still considering membership, sent a representative to observe the summit.

Upon ratifying his country’s membership, Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom said Petrocaribe was “founded on a new vision… the search for solutions which complement our economies, not absorb them.”

Likewise, Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage described the regional organization as “a mechanism of integration oriented toward development which takes in to account the particular circumstances of smaller economies.”

Minister Ramírez encouraged the expansion of the organization, commenting, “I am satisfied with our system, that our mechanisms of cooperation have generated such a level of trust that in each summit more countries are incorporating themselves.”

James Suggett writes for Venezuela Analysis.

In other regional integration initiatives, Venezuela is currently discussing plans to build an oil pipeline through Suriname and Guyana, and President Chávez discussed the construction of a transnational railway with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe during their meeting last Friday.

With Canada’s Birthday (July 1st), and America’s Independence Day (July 4th) having just ticked by (and ominously, partition celebrations in India and Pakistan on their way), I thought a belated birthday reference was in order. And a proper reference to a coming birthday even more needed.

July 14th is the birthday of Woody Guthrie, an individual whose actions and life does more to inspire the spirit of independence and humanity than 100 nationalist ‘Independence Days’ combined (ie: Coney Island Hotdog Eating Contests).

Born in Okemah, OK on July 14th, 1912, Guthrie has a legacy of hundreds of inspiring songs that transcend class, age, and race. He gained reknown for travelling across the USA and Canada, bringing his folk songs to audiences that included migrant workers toiling on farms for subsistence wages to political action groups looking to raise money for progressive social causes such as poverty relief and literacy programs for rural areas.

His road and train travels, particularly during the Depression, both shaped Woody and chronicled the character and spirit of people dealing with adversity.

While not linked specifically to any political organization, Guthrie did contribute a column to the Communist-linked ‘Daily Worker’ entitled “Woody Sez”, often expressing common sense advice and folksy wisdom.

His was political throughout his career. As a member of the Alamanac Singers, Guthrie campaigned for Progressive Party candidate and former Vice President Henry Agard Wallace in 1948 (an election that saw a 4 -way race with racist Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, Republican Dewey, and Democratic Harry s. Truman) . With regard to politics, Guthrie might be better understood as musician Steve Earle notes:” I don’t think of Woody Guthrie as a political writer. He was a writer who lived in very political times”. An accurate assesment by any measure, as Guthrie served with and for causes from the anti war movement, to serving in the Merchant Marine. His action was mercurial, and was appropriate for the context he found himself in.

His influence his far reaching and almost impossible to guage. His fictionalized autobiography ‘Bound For Glory’ Your browser may not support display of this image., published in 1943, could easily be seen as a template for Jack Kerouac’s literary devices in On The Road. Guthrie inspired countless musicians emerging in the late 50’s and 60’s folk revival – most notably Bob Dylan, who visted Guthrie in Brooklyn’s Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital – by which time Guthrie was hospitalized with Huntington’s Disease.

To help people across North America and Europe keep abreast of events and celebrate the life of Woody Guthrie, www.WoodyGuthrie.Org, run by the Woody Guthrie Foundation, is painstkaingly curated and updated by President Nora Guthrie and publicist Anna Canoni.

From July 9th to Aug 17th, there are a number of notable events fom museum exhibitions to The Woody Guthrie Free Folk Festival, happening the weekend closest to Guthrie’s birthday. This year it happens from July 9th to 13th.

As indicated, Guthrie wrote literally hundreds of songs, or made wonderful interpretations of works by others (such as Goebel Reeves’ Hobo’s Lullabye) , again, not to mention his work with the Almanac Singers, Pete Seeger, or Leadbelly to name but a few.

Guthrie, is, of course linked to one of his most well known songs – This Land is Your Land. Written in 1940, it was a essentially a reaction to the overplaying of ‘God Bless America’ by Kate Smith. Loosely based on a melody bythe Carter Family’s gospel track ‘Oh My Loving Brother’. An anthem itself, This Land is Your Land was finally recorded in 1944 by folk archivist Moses Asch. Frustratingly, the most poignant, and pointed portion of the song – the final verses – are often edited out:

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;

But on the other side, it didn’t say nothing!

It’s hard to find a more eloquent indictment of class inequality in modern song. Breaking that cycle is what is at the kernel of the independent spirit. Without belabouring the obvious - political parties already in the pockets of those who perpetutate such inequality, whether from India to the United Kingdom - it would be nice to remember Guthrie and have some assistance in reigniting the independent and revolutionary spirit we so sorely need.

All the lights are turning red for the British economy. Consumer confidence is at its lowest ever level. According to the Nationwide consumer confidence index, it dropped to 61 last month, down from 93 a year ago. Low consumer confidence is a response to bad economic news, but it also bodes ill for the future. If consumers expect things to get worse, they will be inclined to hang on to their money, so creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Another sign of drooping confidence is the collapse in share prices. Both London and New York have been officially declared bear markets recently. FTSE shares have been falling steadily since March and, despite rallies, for the whole year past. What does this mean? Share prices reflect expected future profitability. Profits are already tanking and have further to fall as recession returns to Britain.

There were hopes that the collapse of the pound (which makes it very expensive to live abroad or buy imported goods) would at least have the effect of making exports cheaper and giving manufacturing a boost. That hope has been dashed. The Office of National Statistics reported a 0.5% fall in industrial production between April and May. The fall is across the board and comes after years of stagnation in industrial production and a haemorrhage of manufacturing jobs.

The public sector is taking a hammering. ‘Prudent’ Gordon Brown built up massive deficits in government spending during the boom years that have now come to an end. Now he’s desperate to make cuts. Deficit in boom years is not supposed to happen. During an economic upswing the government’s tax take should be buoyant, allowing a surplus to build up. This should allow the government to go into deficit during lean years. Government spending should thus function as an ‘automatic stabiliser.’ New Labour have managed to build up a deficit of almost £50bn (a European record) so they can’t stimulate the economy as it moves into recession. In fact the recession will make the fiscal crisis worse.

Meanwhile inflation is officially at a 16 year high. Food prices, which hit the poor hardest, are going up much faster than other items. The Bank of England is committed to manipulate interest rates so as to stop inflation getting out of control. The present system is predicated on the belief that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,” as Milton Friedman said. According to this belief the Bank should concentrate on controlling inflation with interest rates and the ‘real economy’ will look after itself. It is because of the fear of inflation that interest rates are so high. The architect of this monetarist policy was Gordon Brown. In fact this crackpot system works because interest rates and the operation of the real economy are inseparably intertwined. Raising interest rates hurts borrowers and hurts industry, so output will be lower and the economy less over-heated. It is like the way medieval doctors used bleeding to subdue a fever. The fever subsides because the body is weakened, but the cause of the fever is not dealt with.

Financial distress continues to spread. Alliance and Leicester’s shares have fallen so sharply that it was easy pickings for Grupo Santander to take over. Bradford and Bingley may not be so ‘lucky’. “The buyers should be queuing up: Bradford & Bingley’s value has plunged to less than £300m, a sixth of its value at the start of the year and just a tenth of what it was worth this time two years ago...Yet last year, Bradford & Bingley made more than £350m profit before tax – more, that is, than its market value last week – and it has £40bn of mortgage loans and £20bn of savings balances. Even allowing for the Armageddon that seems to be breaking out in the housing market, that must surely be worth something?” (Heather Connon Observer 13.07.08) At present the answer seems to be ‘no’.

But what about that Armageddon? As we have been pointing out for the past year, the housing market is the node at which the financial crisis is impacting on the real economy. Everyone knows now that soaring house prices for the past five years were a classic economic bubble. It is now certain that the bubble has definitively burst. It started in the States a year ago with the sub-prime mortgage scandal that pricked the bubble. That crisis led to the ‘credit crunch’ – a paralysis of the financial system as the realisation spread that countless billions of paper assets were actually worthless and the financial colossus was built on feet of clay.

House prices are falling. Every survey shows a steeper fall than the last. Halifax suggested a 25% fall this year, but even that could prove too optimistic. So what? Weren’t house prices ridiculously high before, making it impossible for first time buyers to get a foot on the rung of the housing ladder? Unfortunately houses are going to be less affordable, not more, as the crisis bites. One reason is because the banks have had their fingers burned, they are more cautious now. 100% mortgages are a thing of the past. The mortgage providers demand cash up front – typically a 20% deposit. In London it means a homebuyer has to stump up more than £27,000 – a whole year’s wages – as the ‘Metro’ pointed out.

The housing market is in meltdown. Persimmon reports a 45% drop in sales, the lowest level for 30 years. If you want to buy a house and prices are falling, then you’re going to wait till you reckon they’ve hit rock bottom. If you’ve just bought a house and the price is plummeting, you can’t afford to move unless you’re seriously prepared to trade down. Unless you’re desperate, you’ll wait. If you bought your house a year ago its resale price is falling but you still have to pay a mortgage based on its asset-bubble price. So the volume of sales has collapsed. Axa estimates that houses are 30% overvalued and that, with the impending house price crash, 1.8m households will be unable to pay their mortgages or in negative equity - forking out for a home they can’t afford and can’t sell.

So, if they can’t sell houses, why keep building them? Housebuilding has virtually come to a halt. Estimates range from only 80,000 to 120,000 completions this year (In 2007 it was almost 175,000). For instance Persimmon plans to finish 11,000 homes - down from 16,000 in 2007. Last week alone the big building firms announced 4,000 redundancies. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The construction industry is overwhelmingly casualised. Most building workers are employed by subcontractors, not by Persimmon, Barratt, Bovis and the rest. Construction employs 2m workers and, as house building collapses, swathes of redundancies in the industry seem inevitable. And, according to Capital Economics, “the housing market correction is only in its early stages.”

Building companies are feeling the pinch. Barratt shares have gone from £12 at the peak of the boom to 67p now. As a result the crisis-hit companies have to contemplate selling their land banks. But of course they bought land in the heady days of the housing bubble. They’re not going to get the same price as they paid for it back then. Their alternative is to approach the bank manager to recapitalise their firms. But bank managers are wary of people approaching them with outstretched palms these days.

So the credit crunch hits the building firms and the crisis in the construction industry impacts back on the problems of the banks. It’s a vicious cycle. And there’s no end in sight. Commentators have begun to suggest it could drag on for years. Certainly the housing crisis could take five years or more to unravel. Unemployment has already begun to rise. Officially it is 1.65m but this is early beginnings. In June it went up by 15,000, the biggest rise for 16 years. Unemployment is described as a lagging indicator. The first reaction of bosses to bad times is not to sack skilled and experienced workers. It is to hang on in there and see how long the crisis is likely to last. But capitalism is a system based on profit, and profits are shrivelling. It is inevitable that the bosses will try to load their problems on to the backs of the working class through layoffs and cutting wages. There’s a recession on its way – no doubt about it.

For ten years Gordon Brown has been mouthing the phrase “no return to boom and bust”. Now we see it is meaningless. Darling in his Mansion House speech in June also brushed off the threat of recession, asserting that “our economy will continue to grow.” But there has been a boom and it has turned to bust. Brown and Darling are denying what is going on in the real world before their eyes. They can’t do anything about the recession since they are not prepared to act against the source of the problem, the capitalist system. More and more people will begin to see that if the only way we can control the economic system and make it work in our interests is if we own it.

This article first appeared on Socialist Appeal.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service, once described by Tony Benn as the “the most socialist and most popular” of all institutions in the UK. Supported even by a majority of Tory voters over the years, ardent supporters of privatisation such as Margaret Thatcher, was obliged to assure voters that “The NHS is safe in our hands!”

However it is far from truth to say that the NHS had a smooth birth in July 1948, or that it came about as a result of an all-party consensus, resulting from the experience of World War 2, which had exposed existing health care arrangements before 1945 for most of the population as being woefully inadequate. The reality is that the Tories, although claiming to support the principle of a comprehensive free health service, in practice voted against every reading of the NHS Bill. Labour, with a large majority in Parliament after 1945 was successful in winning 261 to 113 votes on the first reading, so it is doubtful as to whether a Tory government would have set up the NHS. Indeed there was some spectacular opposition to the idea of “state medicine”. Terms like “medical Gestapo” and “medical fuhrer” were bandied about by some of the most Conservative members of the British Medical Association and their political allies. At one point the Daily Mail was reported to have poured scorn on the plan with the headline “No future for us in Britain” and “50,000 doctors say the plan won’t work”. The implementation of an NHS of course required not only the support of Parliament and the British public but the majority of the medical profession. You can’t run a health service without doctors. Pamphlets written by some of the doctors such as, “You and the state doctor”, “Don’t be doped” illustrate the level of hostility of some of them.

The situation before 1945 was hopelessly inadequate for most people. Whilst the wealthy had access to the best doctors and hospitals for which they paid, only one third of the population had any kind of health insurance which entitled them to medical care. The Liberal Government in 1913 had introduced a health insurance act, but this was limited to those in certain occupations and earning below a £420 a year. This excluded women, the majority of whom were not in paid employment in the 1930s, and children. Those receiving poor law relief did have some free health care. Those registered under the state insurance scheme were known as “panel patients” for whom doctors received a capitation fee. Doctors, however topped up their salaries from private patients. Inevitably these received better treatment than “panel patients” as doctors needed the money. If the situation was bad for patients, it was also unsatisfactory for most doctors – Harley Street doctors working in specialist hospitals in London could make a lot of money. Many doctors however would have found themselves in areas of high unemployment, working for very little money – they often carried out home visits for no fees at all, to see a child for example. General practitioners had to buy a practice from a retiring doctor – often borrowing money to do this. If there was inequality in primary health care, the situation with hospital treatment was even worse on a national scale. There were half as many doctors per head of the population in South Wales as in London and in many parts of the country there were no hospitals to speak of.

The main professional opposition to the setting up of the National Health Service came from the British Medical Association. Why were they so much against a salaried and national health service, which would have given doctors a good salary and more security? Ostensibly, the “leaders of the BMA” claimed that “state medicine” would undermine their professional independence and the sacred ‘Hippocratic oath of care’ between the doctor and the patient, whereby the doctor’s sole judgement would be to act in the best interest of the patient. But what independence was there when many doctors were dependent on the fees of very wealthy patients? It was the money and class interests, which lay behind private medicine which motivated the scale of opposition of the BMA. One of the most outspoken opponents of the National Health Service plan was a physician to eminent patients such as the Royal Family, the leader of the Tory opposition and newspaper proprietors. As Michael Foot, biographer of the architect of the NHS Nye Bevan, wrote “fundamentally it was a class question”. Wealthy patrons, who could afford to pay, were getting treatment at the expense of the rest of the community and the argument that this funded a trickle down effect of the best medicine in the world ran fairly hollow. Those of us who have seen the Michael Moore film “Sicko” about private health care in the US, can see that private healthcare does anything but guarantee medical independence for doctors. In fact many doctors are simply finding ways to avoid life saving treatment for patients in order to save insurance companies money!

Nye Bevan, the Minister for Health in the 1945 Labour Government, was a key player in the establishment of the NHS. He was the son of a miner who had died of pneumoconiosis and had seen for himself the lack of health care for working class people. However in his home town of Tredegar, there had existed a working men’s medical aid society which gave him the inspiration for the NHS. As a local councillor he had served on the local hospitals committee which had given him an insight into the medical profession – an invaluable aid to dealing with the BMA. In 1945 health was not the priority for Labour – unlike full employment and housing. The Beveridge Report which set out a plan for a welfare state in Britain, also did not have details for a national health service. It was Bevan’s plan. Bevan had been expelled from the Labour Party in the 1930s for his left-wing views. He still faced enemies in the 1945 Labour Cabinet – right-wingers such as Ernest Bevin the Foreign Secretary and Herbert Morison, former leader of the London County Council. The LCC as a local authority had been one of the largest health authorities in the world but Bevan rejected the idea that local authorities should run the health service. All hospitals would be nationalised, under government authority and it would be funded mainly through taxation, not insurance. This was very radical but he won the backing of the Labour cabinet.

Resistance from the BMA crumbled during the course of 1948, as by July 5th – the inauguration day for the NHS – 90% of GPs had signed up to work for it. Within 2 months 93% of the population had signed up as patients. Even the Tory press was abandoning its support for the BMA’s ‘referendum’. Did they expect more concessions? Bevan claimed that he would not “negotiate with the BMA”. There were other professional organisations such as the Royal College of Physicians. However important concessions were made in the NHS plan – no doctor would be compelled to join, GPs would receive a capitation allowance per patient as well as a salary, and most critically doctors working for the NHS would be allowed to have private patients who could be treated in NHS hospitals. It was hoped that this would wither away as the NHS could be seen to provide for everyone, but the elimination of private pay beds from NHS hospitals has never been achieved including by successive Labour governments. The other weakness in the foundation of the health service was that it was a “sickness service” – there was no provision for preventative medicine. Notably public health however had long been in the public domain – as a result of which diseases such as cholera – rampant in the 19th century had long disappeared. The guarantee of a clean water supply could not be left to private capitalism!

Nevertheless the NHS remained one of the best and comprehensive healthcare systems in the world – the jewel in the crown for the 1945 Labour Government. It has also been noted that its success indicates that "socialism would work" !

This article first appeared on Socialist Appeal.