Tory pioneer of the NHS
QUESTION What alternative to Labour’s NHS pledge did the Conservatives offer in the 1945 General Election?
The Labour Party claims to have invented the free and comprehensive health service, but this is not the case.
In 1944, Conservative health Minister Sir henry Willink in the coalition government published the White Paper, A National health Service. This proposed a free, comprehensive, universal healthcare system, available to all citizens.
It stemmed from the 1942 Beveridge Report, economist Sir William Beveridge’s detailed survey of the state of welfare in Britain, which called for a healthcare safety net.
In fact, a proto-NhS called the emergency hospital Service had been put in place following the outbreak of World War II. It cared for people injured by enemy action and, for the first time, doctors and nurses were employed by the Government to treat people in municipal and charity hospitals.
On March 21, 1943, prime minister Winston Churchill had set out A Four Years’ Plan For Britain. In his speech, broadcast on the BBC, Churchill said: ‘We must establish on broad and solid foundations a national health service.
‘Our plan is a service that will provide the best medical advice and treatment for everyone, every man, woman and child in this country, whatever your income… there will be no charge for treatment.’
From the mid-19th century, healthcare had consisted of voluntary and municipal services that varied widely by region.
Voluntary hospitals, aimed at the ‘sick poor’, provided most emergency care and relied on charity. These included some of the country’s finest institutions such as Guy’s, St Thomas’, St Bartholomew’s and Christ’s hospital in London.
Physicians and surgeons donated their time and expertise while making a living from private practice. Municipal hospitals, a vestige of the workhouses, were run by local authorities. Willink’s plan differed from that brought in by Labour’s Aneurin Bevan in that he backed a mixed approach. Municipal hospitals would be taken over by 30 health boards and voluntary hospitals would be free to contract with them for services.
This would have established a system equivalent to that in Germany, with the majority of hospitals privately owned and the NHS the main purchaser.
Care would still have been free for patients. every system is imperfect, but Willink’s vision was less rigid and monolithic than what we ended up with.
He famously warned in the Commons that Bevan’s NHS ‘will destroy so much in this country that we value’.
Giles Fowler, Manchester.
QUESTION Why do Americans refer to petrol as gas?
PETROL is an abbreviation of petroleum. After oil is drilled, it is refined and separated into petrol, diesel and other products. It obviously isn’t a gas, but Americans call it so because this is an abbreviation of gasoline.
While the word petroleum can be traced back to Greek (meaning rock oil), gasoline was first mentioned in the hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle on September 12, 1863: ‘Best and cheapest burning oils for winter… Refined colza, gasolene, petrolene.’
The word gasoline can be divided into its constituent parts. By the 19th century, gas was defined as a substance in a state in which it expands freely to fill the whole of a container, having no fixed shape or volume, which can’t be liquefied by the application of pressure alone. ‘Ol’ comes from the Latin oleum, meaning oil. It is a suffix used in chemistry to form the names of hydrocarbons, such as car fuel.
‘Line’ is a suffix used for chemicals created as a result of extracting them using a process, as in the distillation of fuel.
The word gasoline never caught on in Britain, but it spread in the U.S. where more cars were produced.
By the 20th century, it was simply easier to say gas. Filling stations became known as gas stations in the 1920s.
Emilie McRae, Trowbridge, Wilts.
QUESTION ‘Collapse of stout party’ was a popular phrase in the 19th century. What does it mean?
THIS phrase is a conundrum. Popularly supposed to be derived from cartoons in the satirical magazine Punch, it has been used since the mid-20th century as a way of ending a long-winded joke.
A well-upholstered individual was often the butt of the jokes in Punch. ‘Stout’ is another term for being overweight, while ‘party’ is a satirical way to say person.
An 1854 cartoon by John Leech entitled Up To Weight has a rotund gentleman with a riding crop looking for a steed.
Stout party: ‘Ahem! I want to have a look at the hounds tomorrow. Do you think you have got anything that would carry me?’
Stable keeper: ‘Well, sir, I think I have two brown ’osses — and a omnibus, as perhaps might do it!’
The phrase ‘collapse of stout party’ did not appear until the 1950s. even in his 1975 book Collapse Of Stout Party: Victorian Wit And humour, Ronald Pearsall concedes: ‘To many people, Victorian wit and humour is summed up by Punch, when every joke is supposed to end with “Collapse of Stout Party”, though this phrase tends to be as elusive as “elementary, my dear Watson” in the Sherlock holmes sagas.’
Sir Julian Critchley used the phrase in his book Collapse Of Stout Party when detailing the catastrophic defeat of the Conservative Party in the 1997 election.
It is a mystery why the phrase became popular long after the Victorian era to which it nominally refers. Perhaps it was concocted and attributed to Punch to give a veneer of historical accuracy.
Frank Haycock, Hebden Bridge, W. Yorks.
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