How should we see the NHS's history on its 75th anniversary?
On the 75th anniversary of the founding of Britain's National Health Service (NHS), Dr Andrew Seaton considers whether looking back at the institution's history can provide an understanding of where the NHS fits in our lives today…
“I think a lot of present debate about the NHS kind of moves between two poles,” says Dr Andrew Seaton. “On one side, we have a sometimes quite sickly, treacly view of the NHS, which is all rainbows and hearts and the idea of ‘Our NHS’. And on the other side, we have a deeply pessimistic view of the NHS, about the care it produces, and an idea that it's going to collapse any day even though it's lasted 75 years.
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“So I think if we can find a way of using history to move beyond those two poles of conversation, that would be great. And I think once we do, we'll actually find many, many surprising and frankly more interesting things to talk about in the history of the NHS. The fact that it wasn't universally and always celebrated at its inception, [for instance], or the fact that it was deeply implicated in processes of decolonisation and the experience of immigration in Britain. The fact that this state institution could adapt and could be reflexive to social change. The fact that not everything after the 1980s was privatised and slid into disrepair.
“And I think that, if we think about the history of the NHS in a different way – if we bring in new voices, [those of] patients, the public, different sets of experts, architects, economists, these kinds of people, as well as cultural figures, the filmmakers, the novelists and so on – I think we'll get a wider and more interesting understanding of where the NHS fits in our lives today.”
Dr Andrew Seaton was talking to Matt Elton on the HistoryExtra podcast. Read and hear more about the history of the NHS
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