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This is the first book yet written on industrial relations in the NHS and it has been completed at a time of radical and rapid change. Some of the material, particularly in the final chapter, reflects first thoughts about the impact of the new system on industrial relations. The book arose from my teaching experiences with health service practitioners from several of the NHS trade unions and professional associations. Many of these activists, as well as managers, expressed frustration that there was no single source about some of the issues which concerned them. This book is the result of their anxieties. Throughout, I have assumed that the main thrust of government policy towards the NHS, at least since the early 1980s, has been to sell off important sections of the service to the private sector. There is, I believe, strong evidence for this proposition. My argument, however, is based not only on the evidence of government's will to 'privatize', but also on the behaviour of ministers, senior civil servants and senior NHS managers which adds up to a set of policies and practices which together allow the point that government runs the NHS as if it was going to sell it.
A critical examination of the labour government and trades Union Congress in the immediate postwar period, this book argues that the Cold War was not just a traditional conflict between states but also an attempt to contain the growth of radical working-class movements at home and abroad. These radical movements, stimulated by the Second World War and its aftermath, seemed to policymakers within the Labour Party and the TUC to threaten British interests. The author contends that the Labour government never seriously considered following a socialist foreign policy, but instead sought to shape political developments throughout the world in ways most conductive to maintaining Britain's traditional economic and imperial interests. The government was able to follow established policies abroad and increasingly at home at least in part because British trade union leaders supported its attempts to prevent radicals and communists from coming to power in trade union movements inside Britain and throughout the world. In so doing, the trade union movement significantly extended its links with the state, in particular by cooperating with it in the sphere of foreign and colonial labour policy.
Aneurin - Nye - Bevan was one of the pivotal Labour figures of the post-war era. As Minister for Health in Attlee's government, his role in the foundation of the NHS, the world's largest publically-funded health service and the centre-piece of the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, changed the face of British society forever. The son of a coal miner from South Wales, Bevan was a life-long champion of social justice and the rights of working people and became one of the leading proponents of Socialist thought in Britain. He was also vehement in his dislike of the Conservative Party - going so far as to oppose the wartime coalition between Attlee and Churchill. Whilst he admired the...