Beginnings - Versailles Treaty/NHS
Piers Brendon "The Dark Valley - A Panorama of the 1930s"
Pimlico 2000
"So the Big Three adjourned to meet at Wilson's house in the Place des Etats-Unis or in Lloyd George's nearby flat or in Clemenceau's room at the Ministry of War. There they abandoned Wilson's principle of open covenants openly arrived at, consulting others only when they needed expert advice. Engaged in their immense haggle, they were occasionally to be seen crawling around their maps on the hearth rug. Sometimes they agreed and, according to Balfour, "were so pleased with themselves for doing so that they quite forgot to tell anyone what the agreement was." Sometimes they almost came to blows. Andre Tardieu observed their different styles of argument. "Sitting bolt upright in his chair", Wilson debated like a college professor. Lloyd George "argued like a sharp-shooter, with sudden bursts of cordial approval and equally frequent gusts of anger, with a wealth of brilliant imagination and copious historical reminiscences". Clemenceau "proceeded by assertions, weighty, rough-hewn and insistent". Against such granite obstinacy the darting manoeuvres of the British Prime Minister made only limited headway, as Clemenceau's dismissive comment suggests: attending an opera he murmured, "Figaro here..., Figaro there...he's a kind of Lloyd George". Even the Puritan tenacity of the American President was gradually eroded, a process which incensed his fellow negotiators. Finding the ubiquitous Colonel Edward M House, Wilson's familiar, easier to deal with, Clemenceau was delighted when the American President fell ill. He suggested that Lloyd George should bribe Wilson's doctor to make the malady last.
Still, despite anguished last-minute protests from Lloyd George himself, they finally arrived at an agreement, though the effort to represent it as the outcome of his principles strained even Wilson's powers of sophistry. Germany's colonies were to be confiscated, Britain and France getting the lion's share, Japan receiving some Pacific leftovers. Annexation was disguised by making the colonies "mandated territories"; in theory they were to be held in trust, a shadow of Wilson's hope that their control would be vested in the League of Nations. Germany was forced to admit war guilt, symbolised by the black crosses (for shame) which had to be erected over German war graves, as opposed to the white crosses (for purity) in French cemeteries. Heavy reparations were imposed, despite Wilson's earlier determination to eschew punitive damages. Germany was also to be surrounded by small states fashioned from the ruins of the Habsburg and Romanov empires, despite Lloyd George's warning that he could not "conceive any greater cause of future war". On paper, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were unified self-determining nations, but their frontiers had been the subject of much controversy and all contained ethnic minorities, including Germans. Poland was to be given access to the sea via a contentious corridor which divided East from West Prussia and contained the newly created "free city" of Danzig. Another violation of the principles of democracy and nationality was the ban on Germany's uniting with Austria unless permitted to do so by the League of Nations, from which she was excluded. Finally, Germany was to be almost totally disarmed. It was stripped not only of its fleet but of its merchant marine. The Rhineland was to be neutralised and occupied for 15 years. The Saar coal-mining region also temporarily went to France, while Alsace and Lorraine were restored for good. When Clemenceau was asked whether the victorious Allies had forgotten anything, he replied: "Yes! We have forgotten something very important. We have forgotten to ask for the Kaiser's breeches."
Many Frenchmen might have taken that remark seriously, including Foch, who insisted that such mild provisions made war inevitable within a generation. Others reached the same conclusion for the opposite reason - that the terms were wickedly vindictive. William C Bullitt, for example, resigned from the American delegation in disgust, telling Wilson that he had delivered "the suffering people of the world to new oppressions, subjections and dismemberments - a new century of war". The eminent French diplomat Paul Cambon agreed: "Versailles had laid the foundations for "a just and durable war". Herbert Hoover was so agitated by terms that "contained the seeds of another war" that he went for an early morning walk in the deserted streets of Paris, where he encountered General Smuts and Maynard Keynes, each man instantly divining that the others were moved to be out at that hour by similar anxieties. Lloyd George himself believed that Versailles was more of a "hell-peace" than a "heaven-peace" and forecast that "we shall have to do the whole thing over again in twenty-five years at three times the cost".
THIS IS ME -
so one observes that it was not only the Germans who bitterly resented Versailles, and not just a sprinkling of other Europeans who thought the terms a bit harsh - it was the men themselves involved in constructing the Treaty, and forcing Germany to sign who knew how deeply flawed it was, and who despite their genuine and entirely justified misgivings, nonetheless allowed it to pass into law - is this not what might be called a "death wish" or a deeply ingrained tendency to self-destruction? And not, I think, because they could not see, but because they were apparently powerless to act otherwise. Doesn't this suggest someone or something pulling their strings? Something or someone determined that WWI would not on any account be the "war to end all wars"...principalities and powers, perhaps?
NHS - from Austerity Britain 1945-51 by David Kynaston, Bloomsbury 2007
"It had been a far from smooth ride....with Aneurin Bevan engaged for two years in a fierce war with the BMA. "The Act is part of the nationalisation programme which is being steadily pursued by the Government", that body's chairman, Dr Guy Dain declared in November 1946, the day after the National Health Service Bill received the Royal Assent. "What the Minister appears to have done is to have taken the Bill which we had partly fashioned and to have inserted into it the Socialist principles of State ownership of hospitals, direction of doctors, basic salary for doctors, and abolition of buying and selling of practices".
Feelings undoubtedly ran high - "We have not fought and won a war against dictatorship only to submit to it disguised as democracy of the Soviet pattern," protested J. S. Laurie, a GP in Fitzwilliam, Yorkshire.
At a BMA representative meeting barely a week before the NHS came into effect, a Scottish doctor argued that it might be necessary to form a trade union to protect the interests of doctors, given that "clearly, we must protect ourselves against the forces of tyranny so latent in a state service."
[THIS IS ME -
Before many months had passed, there was already a growing shortfall in NHS funding from taxation, owing largely to the grossly underestimated take-up of services by the general public. The drug bill was already (in the late 40s/early 50s spiralling ever upwards, and the numbers who had secured dental and optical treatments were hugely higher than had been anticipated]
"Justifiably proud of his creation of the NHS, and still Minister of Health, he [Bevan] had been engaged since the previous autumn in a determined guerilla campaign to keep the service free. Prescription charges had been theoretically introduced after devaluation, but he had managed to stop them coming into operation. Now, in the spring of 1950 [this was just after the general election, when Labour was returned with a much reduced and now quite small majority], and in the uncomfortable position of being the principal scapegoat for Labour's electoral near-disaster, he prepared for a more protracted scrap as the issue returned to the fore.
"The essence of the case...was simple: the NHS was continuing dramatically to overshoot its spending estimates and could not be afforded unless charges were introduced - charges which Gaitskell believed to be right in principle as well as financially necessary. Bevan was adamant that the level of NHS spending would soon start to stabilise of its own accord, a view that most historians have endorsed.
{ME AGAIN -
Bevan and Gaitskell fell out over NHS prescription charges, and charges for teeth and spectacles, and after that the entire matter became a cause of contention between two politicians jockeying for position - not a matter of the practicalities and necessities of financing the service - that's how I read it. As a result, nobody has EVER really tackled the root problem, which is, and was even before the NHS was expected to provide such "services" as sex-change operations and breast enhancements, that the funding from taxation of the service has NEVER been a practical possibility - it was always going to cost vastly more than taxation could supply, and as we now see, when prescription charges have been levied for years and always increasing in cost, they will never come close to closing the gap between outgoings and taxation income, which gap has been increasing steadily and at ever increasing pace since its inception.}
One (STILL ME)
other matter of interest along similar lines - the Barnett formula which laid down the cost to the British (mainly English) taxpayers of keeping Scotland in the Union was a formula for buying the Scots compliance, since it provided far more generous government financial support for every man, woman and child in Scotland than was available for those in England and Wales who were expected to pay for it. Barnett knew when he formulated the agreement that it was necessary to retain Scotland as part of the Union agreement, and since this is what he was expected to do, he duly did it. But he also knew at the time that it would HAVE to be adjusted in the course of time, and he has recently said publicly that it SHOULD have been revised downwards many years ago...needless to say, nobody's going to tackle that, particularly at a time when Scotland is growing more and more restive about ties with England. It still provides a reason for Scotland to refrain from breaking the Union, but it also gives particularly the English taxpayers very good reason to nurture a growing resentment of and hostility to Scotland. This is entirely the fault of the treacherous jellyfish who masquerade as politicians in the Westminster Parliament.
Posts
