CONTEMPORARY HISTORY IN aCTION 1979 AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF THE NHS Dr Jennifer Crane and Professor Mathew Thomson

Undergraduate Research Scholarship Scheme (deadline: 20th November)

History Department Student Fellowship Programme: Research Assistants (second years and finalists)

What did 1979 do to the NHS?

Crisis and critique

‘The longest suicide note in history’ Defending NHS against Conservative plans for privatisation Attack on inequalities of health More attention to women’s health The state to assume a role in control of pharmaceutical industry Further challenge to consensus?

Report considered at Cabinet Meeting 9 September 1982 (CAB 129/215/6)

1982 Conservative Party Conference ‘The NHS is safe in our hands’ (Margaret Thatcher)

‘The NHS is the closest thing the English people have to a religion.’

‘Kinnock Scorns Thatcher for Litany of Figures’ (Guardian, 1987)

‘Reform’ and the move to managers, markets, and consumers 1983 Griffiths Report: introduction of modern management processes 1990 National Health Service and Community Care Act: introduction of internal market 1991 Patient’s Charter

Was there an end of consensus over the need for a National Health Service in 1979? Or did a persistence of faith prevent the Thatcher governments from ‘rolling back’ this part of the NHS? Did the ‘reforms’ that followed lead to an erosion of the NHS or a rescue? Did the challenge to the NHS of the 1980s help to create a ‘national religion’? To what extent does that religion depend on particular generations and their experiences?

Social Surveys: A Method to Trace Contemporary History in Action?

Try the survey! Either in paper form – being passed around – or you can answer the same survey online, at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/Y72WJ7F

Questions posed by longer version social survey, for self-identified ‘NHS campaigners’ Please answer as many or as few questions as you wish from the following: a. What is your gender? b. What is your age? c. What is your ethnicity? d. What is or was your primary occupation? e. What is your area of residence? When did you first become involved in NHS campaigning? Why did you first become involved in NHS campaigning? What activities have you been involved with, i.e. meetings, rallies, leafleting? How many such activities have you attended? Can you tell us more about these? How effective do you think NHS campaigning is? What else would you like to see happening? Has NHS campaigning changed over time, and if so how? Have you ever been involved with any other, non-NHS related, campaign groups? How does NHS campaigning compare to these? What do you think that your fellow NHS campaigners have in common? How do you think that the NHS has changed over time? What do you think are the key turning points in NHS history? What does the NHS mean to you?  

Demographic breakdown 175 responses Age: average 62, range 21–94 Gender: 100 female, 67 male Careers: overwhelmingly public sector: 66 in medicine (biggest group nurses: 19), 40 in education (lecturers, teachers), remainder voluntary sector, local / national government, trade union officials. Ethnicity: 149 people responded, majority self-defined by writing ‘white British’ (71) or ‘white’ (31).

Baby boomers and the post-war moment One respondent hoped that the NHS would continue to ‘care for future generations as it has cared for mine since the year I was born – 1948’ ‘I was born in it, and hope my grand- children can be too’ ‘I was born in 1948 like the NHS’. The NHS ‘feels like a birthright.’ An early painting of Nye Bevan, the Minister of Health who introduced the NHS. Produced in 1945 by artist Marcus Stone.

The insignificance of 1979? ‘There have been 6 major reorganisations of the NHS since the 1960s. Up until Thatcher it was sacrosanct. Labour reinforced the idea of an internal market and the purchaser / provider split. PFI destroyed hospital budgets and GPs are supposed to do more and more work while only getting 9% of the overall NHS budget.‘ ‘It has moved towards privatisation and marketisation. This has been a long term aim of neo-liberal ideologues eg proposals for personal vouchers were being made by the Institute of Economic Affairs in the 1960s. The Thatcher government, for all its privatisation rhetoric was very wary about going for the NHS, but Major and especially Blair started to put in place reforms which aimed to encourage hospitals and GP practices to think more like competitive businesses.’

How do I become involved in the research? Email: m.thomson@warwick.ac.uk Sign up as a member via People’s History of the NHS website: http://peopleshistorynhs.org/ We will use the data collected today to contribute to a report on generation and campaigning on the NHS. We’ll contact you about the full results once they are available.