On July 5th, 1948, an ever-benevolent Labour Government bestowed yet another of its infinite blessings on the working-class of this country— this time in the guise of the National Health Service.
Doubtless on that happy day many working class wives and mothers, whilst in the process of scraping together a few meagre rations to sustain their families through their day of wage-labour, thought with deep thankfulness that now they and their children, as well as their husbands, could have as many bottles of stomach mixture as they liked without having to pay for it!
Much controversy raged amongst the workers as to whether or not this new Act was a good thing, but as to how many penetrated to the root of the matter—that is a different story.
Did it really seem to you, Mrs. Wage-Slave, as you sat (if you were lucky) for approximately three hours in that most fertile of all bacteria-breeding laboratories —the doctor’s waiting-room, that the fact that now you could obtain your tins of health salts and your packets of cotton-wool without passing cash over the chemist’s counter was a blessing that would make life more full and abundant for you? Can this National Health Service supply you with the means of preventing your husband's stomach trouble—your own nervous condition and your children’s chest complaints? Is it going to give you an abundance of the right kinds of food— a home that isn’t damp—and a set of conditions that will make the weird disease that you euphemistically term “nerves,” things of the past? You know that this is not the case and no-one would pretend that it was, but of what real use is the attempted cure without the prevention?
One point that you might raise is that now the managing director of your firm is, even more than in the past, helping to pay for your own particular dope. You may also think that you are paying for his, should he care to take advantage of the fact. But he won’t, knowing that by a little extra payment far more interest will be taken in his aches and pains than in yours.
The consumption of allegedly therapeutic medicine in this country is still steadily increasing. Consider only the numbers of B.B.C. announcements relating to lost drugs, usually of the sedative type. These are an everyday occurrence now, and are treated with as much contempt as the weather forecast. The laws governing the supply of these drugs may be enforced more strictly, as indeed they have been recently, but nothing can alter the fact that increasing numbers of people are having to rely more and more on artificial aid to bring a few hours of rest and relief from the harassing life inflicted on them by the present system.
Neither has the sale of patent medicines diminished. With blind faith in advertisement the working class still buy their weekly supply of pills and liniment, and with scorn and disbelief born of superior knowledge through experience, vehemently support their own pet brand of bilgewater, even when told it is so much rubbish.
Many people might say that in faith lies the basis of healing. Possibly, but it will take more than faith to battle with the conditions that impel us to resort to these palliatives. Within the framework of our present society there can be no cure for the illness that besets us. A broken leg can be mended but the countless complaints that take what little enjoyment we might have from our lives are part and parcel of the present set-up and can only be abolished along with the entire system.
Only under Socialism can every individual achieve a healthily working mind and body. Under a system where production for profit is a thing of the past, when the innumerable good things are freely available to all, health bills and kindred reforms will be relegated to a museum of forgotten capitalist paraphernalia to be puzzled over by the generations that will be born under Socialism.
Think then upon the deeper implications of the National Health Service before you accept it as a necessary part of your lives. No reform can ever solve your problems. Do not blindly dismiss it as a good or a bad thing but none the less inevitable. Nothing is inevitable, unless you choose to make it so. Think of what life is, compared to what it could be—to what, indeed, it will be when you and millions like you have awakened to the understanding of what Socialism is and have united to work for its achievement.
D. M.
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