CONSERVATIVE PARTY: 1945
Mr. Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors
*excerpt*
NATIONAL INSURANCE
National well-being is founded on good employment, good housing and good health. But there always remain those personal hazards of fortune, such as illness, accident or toss of a job, or industrial injury, which may leave the individual and his family unexpectedly in distress. In addition, old age, death and child-birth throw heavy burdens upon the family income.
One of our most important tasks will be to pass into law and bring into action as soon as we can a nation-wide and compulsory scheme of National Insurance based on the plan announced by the Government of all Parties in 1944.
In return for a single consolidated contribution there will be new and increased benefits, amongst which is to be an old age or retirement pension of 20/- for single people and 35/- for married couples. Family allowances are one part of the great scheme, and the arrangements made will ensure that men and women serving in the Forces and those disabled will benefit equally with other classes in the community.
The new Ministry of National Insurance has been set up to prepare, administer and control the whole of this great legislation. So massive and complex a task can only be discharged by a large and highly-trained staff, which has to be assembled and accommodated. The specialised experience of the Approved Societies will therefore be drawn upon, and their employees, especially those who have served at the front, must have due consideration.
The scheme will not justify itself to the public unless the service given to them in return for their contributions combines human understanding with efficiency. There must be no queuing up for sickness benefits by those who are entitled to them. The same standard of intimacy in personal relationships must be maintained as formerly.
HEALTH
The health services of the country will be made available to all citizens. Everyone will contribute to the cost, and no one will be denied the attention, the treatment or the appliances he requires because he cannot afford them.
We propose to create a comprehensive health service covering the whole range of medical treatment from the general practitioner to the specialist, and from the hospital to convalescence and rehabilitation; and to introduce legislation for this purpose in the new Parliament.
The success of the service will depend on the skill and initiative of doctors, dentists, nurses and other professional people, and in its designing and operation there will be full scope for all the guidance they can give. Wide play must be given to the preferences and enterprise of individuals. Nothing will be done to destroy the close personal relationship between doctor and patient, nor to restrict the patient’s free choice of doctor.
The whole service must be so designed that in each area its growth is helped and guided by the influence of a university. Through such a service the medical and allied professions will be enabled to serve the whole nation more effectively than they have yet been able to do. At the same time Medicine will be left free to develop along its own lines, and to achieve preventive as well as curative triumphs. Liberty is an essential condition of scientific progress.
The voluntary hospitals which have led the way in the development of hospital technique will remain free. They will play their part in the new service in friendly partnership with local authority hospitals.
Motherhood must be our special care. There must be a large increase of maternity beds and convalescent homes, and they must be provided in the right places. Mothers must be relieved of onerous duties which at such times so easily cause lasting injury to their health. The National Insurance Scheme will make financial provision for these needs. All proper arrangements, both voluntary and State-aided, must be made for the care of other young children in the family, in order that the energies of the male breadwinner or the kindness of neighbours and relations, which nevertheless must be the mainspring, should not be unduly burdened. Nursery schools and nurseries such as have grown up during the war should be encouraged. On the birth, the proper feeding and the healthy upbringing of a substantially increased number of children, depends the life of Britain and her enduring glory.
*excerpt*
Not disputing any of that, of course. It’s well known that Churchill’s Conservative Party accepted the Beveridge Report before even the Labour Party did.
However, NHS didn’t come into existence until after Churchill left power. Whether it would have done so had he won the election of 1945 is a topic for conjecture.
‘Churchill was the father of socialized medicine in Great Britain’
That is what you said, that is what I replied to. It is a factually incorrect statement.
I'm quoting an actually result: Churchill's loss was of landslide proportions and Attlee's party was the one which created Britain's National Health Service.
Brits had just defeated the German version of National Socialism an were hellbent on creating their own version. The depredations of war sometimes have a way of doing that to an otherwise stoic and free thinking people.
So you’re pushing some third party candidate? A sure-fire way to get Hussein re-elected. - I get you don’t have any admiration for Churchill. He was admirable in many ways, was in a different time and wrong on socialist schemes, but correct in many instances. - I’M NOT VOTING THIRD PARTY. PERIOD. Been there, done that with PEROT and got eight years of Clinton as President; and now we’re stuck with both Clintons as “elder statesmen” for the foreseeable future. Nasty outcome.