That this year is still the 100th anniversary of World War One seems to have escaped many people. 1918 was a momentous year, beginning with the onslaught of the German Spring Offensive as their armies, freed from the Russian conflict, turned to the west.
Thanks largely to a restored Haig’s strategy and British fighting ability, the offensive failed after two weeks. It was the beginning of the end for the Germans. Within 6 months the war was over. Victory had been snatched from the jaws of defeat but the cost had been enormous, totalling nearly 180,000 British casualties – in just 15 days.
This year we also celebrate the 70th anniversary of the NHS, and it is the year that we must rescue the NHS from the chaos that Jeremy Hunt has plunged it into. Even the most incompetent British general could not have succeeded in demoralising his workforce the way our politicians have. The NHS is one of the largest and most successful organisations in the world. NHS England is five times the size of the Fifth Army, which held back the German Spring Offensive, yet it is treated as a plaything, an organisational laboratory for the neoliberal aspirations of the current government.
This great company could have treated all 600,000 casualties from the Spring Offensive, German and Allied, in just one day. That is how significant it is. Yet the government treats it with contempt, permitting the Secretary of State to behave exactly as the worst general in World War One – being dismissive of the employees, balkanising the assets, engaging in dreadful planning and supply, and creating crisis after crisis which the medical staff, like the exhausted troops in World War One, have to cope with.
World War One lasted four terrible years. The Lansley Bill was passed almost exactly 6 years ago on 20 March 2012. This means that the dire mismanagement has now gone on for two years longer than the tragedy of the war. It has to stop. We need to dismiss the failed strategy and its ‘generals’.
Where to begin? First, we challenge the obsession with targets, which only the witless and the control freaks deploy. It does not improve performance, but damages patient care and promotes fear. We provide data showing its failure and the cost of that failure.
Then we demand that the NHS Reinstatement Bill is debated and passed.
At this year’s Festival of Debate there are two NHS sessions on how we do this. The first is on 25 April – Soviet Healthcare via Targets: Are Governments Bringing it into the NHS? signalling the start of our defence of the NHS – in Sheffield. Join us.
Find the Facebook event here.
Book free tickets for 2pm & 7pm on 25 April here.
Words: John Carlisle
Image 3: Courtesy of Debs Thompson
