NHS Lanyards. Photo: Flickr / Pete NHS Lanyards. Photo: Flickr / Pete

The NHS is in a crisis the Tories created

It was Margaret thatcher, that great enemy of the working class and all that it has ever gained, who uttered the immortal words “The National Health Service is safe in our hands.”

Thirty years later David Cameron, without the slightest hint of irony, uttered an almost identical set of words. Of course, it wasn’ t true then and it isn’t true now. 

She in fact, as was revealed by secret government papers released last year, was plotting changes which would “mean the end of The National Health Service”. They were thrown out in “the nearest thing to a cabinet riot in the history of the Thatcher administration” in the words of Nigel Lawson.

They had no love for the NHS. In fact, the Tories have long hated the NHS, the greatest symbol of the welfare state created in the wake of the second world war. The greatest gain made by this country’ s working class. 

The NHS is the most comprehensive, and one of the most efficient health services in the world, and so is living proof that there are better ways to get things done than ‘the market’. 

No, Thatcher’ s minister just thought it was electoral suicide to mess with the NHS because of the great love that people have for it.  A love that they have tried to consistently undermine each time they were in power by running the service down through cuts. 

But Cameron’ s plan was the same as Thatcher’s: to break up and privatise the NHS. We see that plan coming to effect. The present chaos is a product of legislation passed under the last government, with the help of the Lib Dems we must remember. The NHS is now in grave danger. The movements must unite to save it from the Tories, in whose hands it will never be safe

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