When did the NHS begin?

About the lecture

In this module, we think about where the National Health Service came from, focusing in particular on: (i) the foundation of the NHS on 5th July 1948; (ii) Labour’s unexpected victory in the 1945 General Election, and the appointment of Aneurin Bevan as Health Minister; (iii) the extent to which a national health service had been debated prior to 1945, including the establishment of the Emergency Medical Service in 1939, the publication of the Beveridge Report in 1942, and the white paper of Henry Willink, Health Minister 1943-54; (iv) the debate over who would run a national health service, and the extent to which Bevan envisioned a larger role for central government that had been proposed by either the Conservatives or (in the past) by Labour; and (v) Bevan’s role in persuading some of the more intransigent elements within the healthcare ecosystem to sign up to his vision.

About the lecturer

Dr George Gosling is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Wolverhampton. He specialises in modern British history, focusing in particular on the themes of medicine, charity and welfare to explore wider questions of gender, citizenship and consumerism. His most recent book, Payment and Philanthropy in British Healthcare, 1918-48 (2017), explored the complex meanings of payment in the pre-NHS hospital. It argues that, when patient payments became commonplace after the First World War, they neither empowered consumers as hoped nor crowded out the sick poor as feared, instead they found a surprisingly traditional accommodation with the long-established class-bound principles of philanthropy.