Politics

[Howmanheyman 33836]

Great and poignant piece in the Guardian.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/04/coalition-attacks-nhs-return-britain-age-workhouse

 

 

A eulogy to the NHS: What happened to the world my generation built?

In 1926, Harry Leslie Smith's sister died of TB in a workhouse infirmary, too poor for proper medical care. In 1948, the creation of the NHS put a stop to all that. In an extract from his new book, Harry's Last Stand, he describes his despair at the coalition's dismantling of the welfare state

Share 51234

A midwife with a penchant for gin delivered me into the arms of my exhausted mother on a cold, blustery day in February 1923. I slept that night in my new crib, a dresser drawer beside her bed, unaware of the troubles that surrounded me. Because my dad was a coal miner, we lived rough and ready in the hardscrabble Yorkshire town of Barnsley. Money and happiness didn't come easily for the likes of us.

Harry's Last Stand: How the World My Generation Built is Falling Down, and What We Can Do to Save it

by Harry Leslie Smith

Considering the hunger, the turmoil and the squalor in Britain during the early years of the 20th century, it was miraculous that I lived to see my third birthday. That I survived colic, flu, infection, scrapes and bangs without the benefits of modern sanitation, hygiene or health care, I must give thanks to my sturdy peasant genes. As a baby, I was ignorant of the great sorrow that enveloped England and Europe like a damp, grey fog. The nation was still in mourning for her dead from the world's first Great War. It had ended only five short years before my arrival. Nearly a million British soldiers had been killed in that conflict. It had begun in farce in 1914 and ended in bloody tragedy in 1918. In four years, that war killed more than 37 million men, women and children around the world.

Even when the guns across the battlefields were made dumb by peace, the killing didn't stop. Death refused to take a holiday and a pestilence stormed across the globe. It was called the Spanish flu. The pandemic lasted until 1921 and erased 100 million people from the ledger book of the living.

Like most people in Barnsley, my family occupied a terraced house. They were built back-to-back and in a row of 10 units. There was little space, privacy or comfort for us or any of the other occupants. It was just a place to rest your head after spending 10 hours hacking coal from the side of a rock face hundreds of feet below ground. Three walls out of four were connected to another household.

The floors were made of hard slate rock and were sparsely covered with old rags that had been hand-woven into coarse mats. The interior walls were comprised of wet limestone coated in a gruel-thin whitewash that never seemed to look clean.

In summer our home was hot, in autumn damp, and in winter bitterly cold, while spring was as wet as autumn again. The house had no electricity and only the parlour and scullery possessed a gaslight fixture. After sunset, it sputtered and hissed a gloomy yellow light that illuminated our poverty. I shared a room with my older sister, Alberta. We slept together on a straw mattress that was host to many insects and reeked of time and other people's piss. Its covering was made from a rough material that was as uncomfortable to me as the occasions when my father tickled my face with his moustache. Depending on the season, I slept in my undershirt or remained fully clothed. During the cold months, Alberta and I nestled together and shared our body heat to stave off the chilling frost beating against the windowpane. Our parlour had no furniture except a stool and an upright piano that had come as part of my dad's legacy from his father. But it stood mute against the wall because the room was occupied by my infirm and dying eldest sister, Marion.

At the age of four she had contracted tuberculosis, which was a common disease among our class. Her ailment was caused because my parents were compelled to live in a disease-ridden mining slum at the end of the Great War. Eventually my parents were able to leave the slum but by then the damage had already been done to my sister's health, and the TB spread into her spine. It left her a paraplegic with a hunchback. For the last 12 months of her life, Marion was totally dependent on my mother to be fed, bathed and clothed. In those days, there was no national health service; you either had the dosh to pay for your medicine or you did without. Your only hope for some medical care was the council poorhouse that accepted indigent patients.

As a young lad, I was encouraged by my parents to spend time with my ailing sister. I think it was because they knew that she was dying and they wanted me to remember her for the rest of my life. I didn't comprehend illness or death because I was only three, so I contented myself with playing near her sick bed. On some occasions, I told her nonsense stories, but my sister couldn't respond to my kindness because the disease had destroyed her vocal cords.

Even though she was in extreme pain while the TB ate away at her spine and invaded her vital organs, she was silent. My sister always seemed to be looking past me with her large expressive eyes. Perhaps she was waiting for death, or perhaps she found the gaslight casting shadows on the opposite wall an appealing distraction from the monotony of the pain that consumed her 10-year-old body.

TB was known in the 19th century as the poet's disease, but I saw no lyricism in the way it killed Marion. As the autumn days grew shorter in 1926, so did the time my sister had to live. Her last weeks were unbearable but she still fought death. She thrashed her arms about in defiance against the coming end to her life. My parents tried to calm her by stroking her hair or singing to her, but she wasn't pacified. Instead, Marion wept silent tears and continued to struggle with so much ferocity that in the end my dad reluctantly restrained her to her bed with a rope.

My parents decided that there was nothing more that could be done for Marion in their care, so they arranged for her to be placed in our local workhouse infirmary. It was the last stop for many people who were too poor to pay for a doctor or proper hospital care. The workhouse in our community was a forbidding building that had been constructed during the age of Dickens. In the century before I was born it was used to imprison debtors, house orphans and provide primitive health care to the indigent. By the time Marion was sent there, it was no longer used as a prison. However, orphans, the sick and those with communicable diseases were still incarcerated behind its thick, towering black walls.

On one of the last days in September my mother pawned her best dress and my father's Sunday suit and hired a man with an old dray horse and cart to come to our house and collect Marion. When he arrived, my dad carried Marion outside and carefully placed her into the delivery carriage where my mother was waiting for her.

Alberta and I stood on the side of the street and waved goodbye to Marion. I asked my dad where my sister was going and he mournfully replied: "She's going to a better place than here." Afterwards, he put his arms around me and Alberta and we watched the horse-drawn carriage slowly plod down our road towards the workhouse infirmary.

That was the last time I saw my sister alive.

Marion died a month later in the arms of my mother. There was no wake, no funeral service and even much later there was no headstone erected to mark her brief passage in life. My family, like the rest of our community, was just too poor to afford the accoutrements of mourning. We relied on my dad's minuscule salary just to keep us with a roof over our heads and dry in the perpetual hard luck rain of Yorkshire. Even my dead sister's landau was quickly dispatched to the pawnbroker's shop where it was swapped for a few coins to help feed her hungry living siblings.

My sister's body was committed to a pauper's pit and interred in an unmarked grave along with a dozen other forgotten victims of penury. My parents didn't even have a picture to remember their daughter's life. To the outside world, it was as if she was never there, but for our family her life and her end profoundly affected us. My father never mentioned Marion's name again. It wasn't out of callousness or disrespect, but because her death festered in his soul like a wound that never healed. For the rest of his life my dad carried with him an unwarranted guilt that he was responsible for Marion's tuberculosis, and it cut him deep. As for my mother, she often talked about Marion. As my family stumbled from misery to calamity, through the pitch dark of the Great Depression, my mother invoked my dead sister's name as a warning that the workhouse awaited each of us, unless the world and our circumstances changed.

It would be almost 20 years before, in 1948, the NHS was formed, and for the first time in my civilian life I went to a doctor's surgery and was treated for bronchitis with antibiotics that assured me a speedy and safe recovery. The cost to me was nothing, and I was grateful because I was skint, having just started back in the civilian working world.

As I convalesced, I was gobsmacked at the great consequences of free health care and the potential it offered to improve our society. It was a transformational shift in how we as a country viewed our fellow citizens. The creation of the NHS made us understand that we were in truth our brother's keeper, and that taxation benefits everyone through maintaining not just our roads and sewers but the health of our children, workers and elderly.

To me, the introduction of free health care was the first brick laid on the road to the social welfare state. So it has always been difficult for me to listen to politicians, proud possessors of health insurance and shares in private health care companies, when they talk about how the health service that we fought so hard to build must change. The coalition government's Health and Social Care Act will create a two-tier health care system. This act will see the NHS stripped down like a derelict house is by criminals for copper wiring.

Ukip has even proposed that A&E patients should have the right to buy their way to the front of the queue, while in Merseyside a private for-profit cancer clinic has set up shop under the NHS umbrella. Where will all of this end? What will be given the greatest priority in a new health care system that sends every service, from blood work to chemotherapy, out to the lowest bid tender?

It ends where I began my life – in a Britain that believed health care depended on your social status. So if you were rich and insured you received timely medical treatment, while the rest of the country got the drippings. One-fifth of the lords who voted in the controversial act – which provides a gateway to privatise our health care system – were found to have connections to private health care companies. If that doesn't make you angry, nothing will.

Sometimes I try to think how I might explain to Marion how we built these beautiful structures in our society – which protected the poor, which kept them safe at work, healthy in their lives, supported them when they were down on their luck – only to watch them be destroyed within a few short generations. But I cannot find the words.

More from Harry Leslie Smith

The Britain of our youth was intolerant, now we find Farage intolerable

The immigration debate reminds me of Enoch Powell

This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time

 

[TobamorisRevenge 0]

Russian appeasment.....

 

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/482463/EXCLUSIVE-EU-needs-European-army-that-EXCLUDES-UK-claims-former-French-minister

 

AM not very pro america, but this is bit too radical alternative imo!

[TobamorisRevenge 0]

lol bit of Russian humour....

 

[PaddockLad 17646]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/21/immigrants-taken-to-cleaners-living-london-wage

[Ausman 0]

Well done to the ladies, hope a lot more do the same. Sadly that won't happen.

[ohhh_yeah 2991]

[Christmas Tree 4821]

Shouldn't have spent all the money then Glenda.

Should have reformed it yourself during those 13 years of power Glenda.

[Gemmill 46027]

There's a bit on BBC news today about Janice Atkinson's first day in her role as an MEP. Fucking hell what an embarrassing cunt of a woman.

[Gemmill 46027]

Quality stuff. What an appalling cunt IDS is. (And CT).

[Tooj 17]

Shouldn't have spent all the money then Glenda.

Should have reformed it yourself during those 13 years of power Glenda.

 

Yet the opposition at the time said that they would back Labour's public spending if they were to come into power...

[Christmas Tree 4821]

 

Yet the opposition at the time said that they would back Labour's public spending if they were to come into power...

 

Most oppositions have no alternative but to agree to carry forward the public spending budget (til they get to see the books) because government cant simply change overnight. However, and its a BIG HOWEVER, Labour had 13 years (when the sun was shining) to tackle all these social issues that needed revamping. Everyone Labour politician new a pension crisis was looming but chose to do jack shit.

 

Labour are always like a thick lottery winner when they get into power until the moneys "all gone".

[Tom 14013]

''Anywhere here mate?''

[ewerk 31195]

[Gemmill 46027]

CT I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but if one of your kids ends up with a long term illness or in a position where they're at the mercy of the tory version of a welfare state, I would think you'd have a very different attitude to all of this.

 

It's just a shame that it would take that for you to have any empathy for those in that position now.

[Renton 21985]

CT I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but if one of your kids ends up with a long term illness or in a position where they're at the mercy of the tory version of a welfare state, I would think you'd have a very different attitude to all of this.

 

It's just a shame that it would take that for you to have any empathy for those in that position now.

This is pretty much my take and why it's better for me to not contribute to CTs simplistic nonsense on this thread where he doesn't seem to possess an ounce of empathy or compassion. The man who claims he is in poverty yet happily discusses his latest hobbies, his holiday to Venice, or his new car. I find that hypocrisy disgusting tbh.

 

An immediate family member of mine who is simply not capable of work has been very badly affected by this government's policies and it has been very detrimental to her health. So excuse me for getting personal, because ultimately it is.

[Gemmill 46027]

My sister was ill from the age of 19, through all of her 20s and into her early 30s. I'm just thankful that this coincided with a Labour govt and that she's better now. I dread to think what it must be like to be affected either directly or through a relative by the current setup.

[NJS 4411]

Most oppositions have no alternative but to agree to carry forward the public spending budget (til they get to see the books) because government cant simply change overnight. However, and its a BIG HOWEVER, Labour had 13 years (when the sun was shining) to tackle all these social issues that needed revamping. Everyone Labour politician new a pension crisis was looming but chose to do jack shit.

 

Labour are always like a thick lottery winner when they get into power until the moneys "all gone".

Even if they'd been anything else but Tory Lite, 13 years wouldn't have been enough to undo Thatcher's reshaping of society into one where the very people who are necessary for modern capitalism to "work" are also the most despised and demonised.

[Christmas Tree 4821]

Thick responses as usual.

 

It's not about empathy it's about Labour's pious preaching when they had 13 golden years to address these issues and didn't.

 

Golden, money rolling in years at that.

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3965]

Thick responses as usual.

 

It's not about empathy it's about Labour's pious preaching when they had 13 golden years to address these issues and didn't.

 

Golden, money rolling in years at that.

No it's not. It is always about what is being done now. The tories are reducing the NHS in England and Wales due to a political agenda. So glad the NHS is a devolved matter in Scotland.

[Tooj 17]

CT I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but if one of your kids ends up with a long term illness or in a position where they're at the mercy of the tory version of a welfare state, I would think you'd have a very different attitude to all of this.

 

It's just a shame that it would take that for you to have any empathy for those in that position now.

 

Remember when I posted this?

 

 

Just found out that somebody I know is getting their DLA stopped, despite the fact they haven't been fit to work for 20 + years due to an accident they had whilst working on the shipyards and despite the fact their doctor has stated numerous times that they aren't fit for any kind of work whatsoever.

 

Honestly this government takes the fucking piss.

 

http://www.toontastic.net/board/topic/34749-politics/page-139#entry1128178

 

Have a scroll down and read some of his responses on that and the next page.

 

If something similar happened to one of his family I'd love him to turn round and say to them that they just need to get on it with whilst keeping their chin up as it's all Labour's fault.

[Gemmill 46027]

Aye he'd sooner play the party political finger pointing game than actually have any empathy for the individuals affected - leave that to the fucking idiot politicians ffs. If Labour were doing this, it would be equally appalling to me, it's not about picking your team and sticking with them.

[Happy Face 29]

Rare for me to mention personal circumstances, but CT needs shaming.

 

My mam has had a pituitary gland disorder for 30 years. On steroids that whole time but previously managed and varied with regular specialist visits that monitored her chemical levels. She's been housebound for the last 6 years. Not blessed with any referral to see a specialist from the GP in that whole time, just more and more steroids. She's lost the home she owned as the condition worsens, and she has had her disability allowance stopped. She now has to accept my charity for a place to live and from the whole family for extra money to live on month to month.

 

My brother was born with Marfan syndrome. He worked from 16 years old to 30. But his health deteriorated then. He is almost entirely deaf now, no sense of taste or smell. Losing his sight so he can barely read. He is a single parent to a 7 year old son. They live together on the small pension left by his partner and son's mother, who died shortly after he was born. In council property, he gets no further benefit assistance, because of the pension. He (and the rest of us) have had to pay for our own sign language lessons to try and communicate with him in a small way. He had a brain hemmorage 3 years ago that put him in a wheelchair. He sees a specialist once every 6 months or so. The haematologist refers him to the brain surgeon, the brain surgeon to the geneticist, the geneticist to a physio etc. None of them, actually doing any tests or providing any care/assistance.

 

My Dad has worked his entire life. An ex navy man, he's a self employed taxi driver now, he has had 2 bouts of bowel cancer, both operated on, but went back to work within days of leaving hospital each time. Worked through chemo. He had to sell his house during the second course of treatment due to lost earnings. He moved into council property but has to pay full rent. He has a tiny colon now and can't be 5 minutes from a toilet, which inhibits his ability to work late which reduces earnings on the taxis. He's not entitled to help though. He's 64 and constantly knackered running round after my mam (his ex-wife) and my brother. His worry now is he will not be able to retire, he'll have to work to the grave to have enough to live on and support his ex and his handicapped son (grandchild).

 

Touch wood, I am healthy. I've worked since graduating. My wife works. We own a home and rent 2 properties out. We've just had a son.

 

Of those 4 people, the Tories have cut the income/assistance and/or medical treatment for the 3 worst off. For me, they have increased my tax free earnings allowance (and that of my wife). They have started paying us child benefit and frozen my council tax. They've lowered the corporation tax for the company I work for, increased the amount I can put into an ISA tax free, increased my tax-free childcare support, cut the cost of a pint and will give me money to buy another house if I want. The bank of England rate remains just above zero to keep my mortgages down too.

 

They're fucking vermin endangering the wellbeing of the weakest in society for the benefit of the strongest. Anyone who thinks it's in anyway justified is a vile human themselves.

[NJS 4411]

Well worth it to stop the bloke everyone knows with the dodgy back who claims hundreds a week.

I've always been aware of Bevin's description of them as lower than vermin but only recently read about the context. It was when churchill mobilised the whole lot of them to prevent the creation of the nhs. Puts their rhetoric about it being safe in their hands in its place.

[Happy Face 29]

Never heard that quote before. Happy to be on the same page as him

[ChezGiven 0]

Rare for me to mention personal circumstances, but CT needs shaming.

 

My mam has had a pituitary gland disorder for 30 years. On steroids that whole time but previously managed and varied with regular specialist visits that monitored her chemical levels. She's been housebound for the last 6 years. Not blessed with any referral to see a specialist from the GP in that whole time, just more and more steroids. She's lost the home she owned as the condition worsens, and she has had her disability allowance stopped. She now has to accept my charity for a place to live and from the whole family for extra money to live on month to month.

 

My brother was born with Marfan syndrome. He worked from 16 years old to 30. But his health deteriorated then. He is almost entirely deaf now, no sense of taste or smell. Losing his sight so he can barely read. He is a single parent to a 7 year old son. They live together on the small pension left by his partner and son's mother, who died shortly after he was born. In council property, he gets no further benefit assistance, because of the pension. He (and the rest of us) have had to pay for our own sign language lessons to try and communicate with him in a small way. He had a brain hemmorage 3 years ago that put him in a wheelchair. He sees a specialist once every 6 months or so. The haematologist refers him to the brain surgeon, the brain surgeon to the geneticist, the geneticist to a physio etc. None of them, actually doing any tests or providing any care/assistance.

 

My Dad has worked his entire life. An ex navy man, he's a self employed taxi driver now, he has had 2 bouts of bowel cancer, both operated on, but went back to work within days of leaving hospital each time. Worked through chemo. He had to sell his house during the second course of treatment due to lost earnings. He moved into council property but has to pay full rent. He has a tiny colon now and can't be 5 minutes from a toilet, which inhibits his ability to work late which reduces earnings on the taxis. He's not entitled to help though. He's 64 and constantly knackered running round after my mam (his ex-wife) and my brother. His worry now is he will not be able to retire, he'll have to work to the grave to have enough to live on and support his ex and his handicapped son (grandchild).

 

Touch wood, I am healthy. I've worked since graduating. My wife works. We own a home and rent 2 properties out. We've just had a son.

 

Of those 4 people, the Tories have cut the income/assistance and/or medical treatment for the 3 worst off. For me, they have increased my tax free earnings allowance (and that of my wife). They have started paying us child benefit and frozen my council tax. They've lowered the corporation tax for the company I work for, increased the amount I can put into an ISA tax free, increased my tax-free childcare support, cut the cost of a pint and will give me money to buy another house if I want. The bank of England rate remains just above zero to keep my mortgages down too.

 

They're fucking vermin endangering the wellbeing of the weakest in society for the benefit of the strongest. Anyone who thinks it's in anyway justified is a vile human themselves.

 

Sorry to hear about your brother's condition, sounds like its a lot worse now. He was a bit corned beef when i met him a few years back but it must be bloody tough for him now. I know why you posted that but just wanted to take the chance to send my best to your brother, the mad funny fucker that he is.

 

Back to the point in hand though, the Tories are cunts.