The National Health Care it’s celebrating 70th birthday today. To this day the NHS remains one of the proudest achievements of the working class in Britain. It was won by struggle of masses coming together and demanding the right to free healthcare.
In July 5, 1948 National Health Service was born and hospitals across the country providing free healthcare for all – transformed the lives of billions of people overnight. For the first time, ordinary people from all background were able to access all medical, dental and nursing care.
Nye Bevan, Health Secretary under the Labour Party government declared during the opening of the Park Hospital in Manchester “The NHS will last as long as there are folk left … to fight for it”
70 years on, and the fight to keep NHS free for all continues
Tamil Solidarity members have taken part in the demo on Saturday 30th June celebrating and fighting to keep our NHS free for all. Throughout the demo we chanted loudly “Who’s NHS – Our NHS” and “Hands Off our NHS”
Since 2011, the funding for the NHS has been decreased and has led to the current crisis in the NHS. Our hospitals and medical centres are totally over-stretches unable to provide decent healthcare for the patients. The systematic underfunding of NHS has seen emergency wards and even hospitals to the breaking point – forcing closures of much needed services.
Last year British Red Cross declared that the NHS is facing humanitarian crisis after patients from A&E died on the long wait in the trollies. We are also seeing more and more patients in need of urgent care being left in trolleys including patients after surgeries.
Tamil Solidarity, joined thousands of people on Saturday to demand more funding for our NHS, to stop privatising our healthcare.
We demand a fully funded National Health Services free for all.