The creeping progress of the far right has put the NHS in mortal danger

Martin Shipton

An enforced stay of several days in an NHS hospital helps concentrate the mind. It did so for me during the Covid period in 2020 and it’s doing so again now.

You’re thrust into a special community where values from a former, more enlightened time are often still alive.

There are, of course, many areas of concern about the way the NHS in Wales is run. Like a lot of other journalists, I’ve found myself writing about the seemingly insoluble problem of lengthy waiting times.

There have also been discrete scandals where failings have had devastating outcomes for those affected: unnecessary deaths caused by mismanagement during the Covid crisis; alarming revelations about the maternity unit at Singleton Hospital in Swansea; seriously bad decision-making around the creation of a new cancer treatment centre for south Wales; the inadequacy of mental health care and treatment that makes vulnerable lives even more precarious, sometimes with tragic consequences.

All of these crises, and more, provide challenges to those running the NHS and their political overseers that have often been addressed inadequately.

Altruistic values

But that’s not my focus in this article. Despite all the shortcomings I have frequently found myself writing about, the altruistic values on which our health service was built remain largely intact, three quarters of a century after Aneurin Bevan set it up.

Since early childhood I have had only two experiences as a hospital in-patient – once in 2020 for a total of 13 days and my current stay, which began on Tuesday November 19.

Maybe I’ve been fortunate to be admitted on both occasions to Llandough Hospital, near Cardiff, but I’ve been very aware of a collaborative culture that, for me, creates a sense of reassurance for those who find themselves in the unfortunate position of having to be in a place where they’d much rather not be.

It’s easy to trot out clichés about “our wonderful NHS”, and many politicians frequently do, but beyond the rhetoric there’s something very special that deserves to be extolled.

I have observed an admirable and life-enhancing team spirit encompassing all levels of staff at Llandough Hospital, regardless of their particular function. As someone who keeps unusual hours even when well – often writing and reading in the middle of the night – I’ve had the opportunity to have conversations with carers and nurses at less busy times.

Dedicated

Without exception, I have found these NHS workers to be dedicated professionals whose commitment to the public service roles they perform constantly shines through. Their friendliness is spontaneous and transparently genuine, and they seem unphased even when dealing with sometimes maddeningly difficult patients who suffer from dementia and often don’t realise they are in a hospital.

Such qualities are in sync with the founding ethos of the NHS, which removed the profit element from health care and built an institution based on entirely different principles of collaboration and social solidarity.

These values have a particular resonance in Wales, but are appreciated and supported across the rest of the UK too. While culturally Britain is heavily influenced by the United States – partially a payback for past colonialism – our attitude towards healthcare provision is radically different to that of many Americans.

Donald Trump and the right-wing ideologues behind him have succeeded in demonising what they refer to as “socialist” or “socialised” health care. Prolific social media posts promoted on Elon Musk’s X during the recent presidential election campaign encouraged divisively selfish attacks on “Obamacare”, describing it as an initiative providing health treatment to the undeserving poor, whose failure to pay for their own health insurance was seen as disadvantaging those who do.

The logical outcome of such thinking is that the poor deserve to die.

Since the election, many impoverished recipients of “Obamacare” who were persuaded to vote for Trump have discovered that they may soon find themselves deprived of the free or cheap health treatment they have got used to in recent years thanks to Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Nursing staff

Returning the focus to Llandough Hospital, it is important to point out that the majority of care and nursing staff – and a high proportion of doctors – have minority ethnicity. Many are Muslims.

My experience has convinced me that the ethnic and faith backgrounds of the workers concerned leave them indistinguishable from each other in terms of their degree of commitment to the jobs they do. It’s especially important to recognise this at a time when right wing politicians – and even some who might still seek to self-identify as being on the left – are seeking to foment racism as a way of gaining or maintaining power.

All three of the big monotheistic religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – have unappealing characteristics for those who oppose authoritarianism and value rational thinking. But to demonise all adherents of a religion on the basis of its least palatable tenets is indefensible.

Humanity and kindness are not to be found exclusively among those whose beliefs we share. Our wonderful next-door neighbours in Cardiff when our daughter was at primary school were a Libyan, Muslim family. They have become a touchstone for me, providing a positive real life contrast to the despicable and impersonal racist hate rhetoric of the criminal demagogue who insists on being known by the pseudonym Tommy Robinson.

Sadly, the man whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has associates in Wales, notably the execrable so-called Voice of Wales duo Stan Robinson and Dan Morgan, whose involvement with UKIP demonstrates how far that party has descended into the far-right gutter.

Such people, with the help of right-wing newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, have helped create an atmosphere in Britain that is hostile towards ethnic minorities, including not just recently arrived migrants, but people whose families have been settled here for generations.

Restrictions

In Llandough Hospital I have had conversations with nurses from the Philippines who have told me of restrictions placed on them and high fees they have had to pay to be able to work in the UK – a country that desperately needs their services. They contrast it with the much better treatment they received when working in Qatar, with no fees to pay and regular return flights home provided free by their employer.

This hostile environment, coupled with Brexit which has decimated the revenue our underfunded universities have received from foreign students, is damaging our economy as well as our international reputation.

An additional sad development is that some of the NHS workers I have spoken to feel completely alienated from politics – something that the far right thrives on, turning insurgency into a sense of unfocussed grievance.

We have a health service that most of us value as precious. Some would like to dismantle it and facilitate a private takeover.

The creeping progress of the far right has put it in mortal danger.