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I am starting to believe that there is a link between this Government’s decline of the NHS and its fanatic, draconian anti-immigration measures. Bear with me.
Note these two remarkable facts: Founded in 1948, the NHS turns 75 on 5 July this year. The Empire Windrush docked in Tilbury, Essex, on 22 June, a fortnight earlier. On board were men and women who went to work in the embryonic health service. They served the nation, had to disregard humiliation and racial insults.
Laudably, and even though it continues to be hard, many of their descendants are among today’s nurses, doctors, and auxiliaries. Anniversary preparations are underway. Windrush stamps have just been issued. The Royal Mint is issuing commemorative coins featuring words such as “dedication” and “dignity”.
Hiding their hurt
“Nurse A” looked after me following surgery. Her gran, who came over from Jamaica in 1950, trained as a nurse and joined a London hospital, and there she stayed until she retired. Her two daughters and now A all followed in her footsteps.
The first night after the operation was incredibly hard – the pain, at times, unbearable. “Nurse A” came to check often, spoke gently, reassured me through the hours. I heard a male patient, in an adjoining room shouting racial abuse at “Nurse A” and a Nigerian nurse. They carried on being professional and hiding their hurt.
When I said I’d heard the insults, “Nurse A” replied: “He doesn’t matter. The work we do does matter to millions of people in the country. How proud that makes me feel. I flick off these rude words like flies on fruit.” Pride in herself, her work and the NHS helps her stay strong and committed. That would be true of the hundreds of thousands of “outsiders” who are employed in this public sector.
The gains of immigration
The National Health Service would fall apart without migrants. According to the think-tank, The King’s Fund, “The NHS is… the paradigm example for the public of the gains of immigration for British society, and the best exemplar of an institution that shows the diversity of modern Britain working together for the common good.”
NHS workers led the global battle against the pandemic. The British public was deeply appreciative. Their claps were heartfelt, unlike the performative, insincere claps by Boris Johnson and many of his ministers. Among the nurses and doctors who caught Covid and died, a disproportionate number were from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups.
I’ve been treated in five major London NHS hospitals for various conditions, some serious. My mother, Jena, got the best care when she was dying, so did my mother-in-law, Vera who had her prejudices, but trusted and liked her Malaysian senior nurse.
Labour’s post war Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, created Britain’s most loved national institution. Caribbeans were invited over to fill essential jobs. Other colonial subjects followed. The historical and ongoing link between immigration and the NHS is rarely acknowledged by our politicians, for fear of offending populists and nationalists.
Worse still, Theresa May, Priti Patel and now Suella Braverman have persecuted migrants and asylum seekers to further their careers. More than 50 per cent of Britons would like to see an increase in the numbers of overseas doctors and nurses. Many left after Brexit and the ugly rhetoric on immigration has put off skilled medical staff from the east and south. Ravi, a junior doctor from India, tells me he’s off to Canada, “where they treat us as friends not foes of the nation”.
Another cunning Tory plan
I think the other cunning Tory plan is to deplete the service until the frustrated public turns against Bevan’s original model. That precious concept of universal care based on clinical need, not an individual’s ability to pay, still survives. Just.
Tory health secretaries speak with forked tongues and malign intent. Privatisation – the prayer of right wingers – is sweeping in. A healthcare firm controlled by Tory grandee, Lord Ashcroft got handed NHS contracts worth up to £53m. In the stark words of neurosurgeon Harry Marsh: “The private health industry in the UK is flourishing because the NHS is withering. In 2022 private hospitals in the UK treated 820,000 patients – a new record.” I’ve used the private option for physio, cervical screening and deep muscle injections because access to those services is severely restricted.
MP’s declared financial interests from 2019 shows a number of Tory MPs are working within or have links to private healthcare organisations and that Labour MPs have accepted donations from such firms. How many current cabinet members choose posh, paid for healthcare? Why do the Royals, custodians of GB always go private? Because they disdain the NHS.
Staff are leaving, vacancies of more than 110,000 in England are left unfilled. Morale is plunging. Junior doctors – many of them of minority backgrounds – are starting another round of strikes and are again being blamed for failing patients. Stand with them. They are foot soldiers in this unequal war between the precious NHS and ideologically driven political leaders. Stand with migrants too. If you don’t, the ailing service will die and scavenging profiteers will get fat eating its body.
Moving forward
I went to a talk by Shashi Tharoor, an Indian politician, author, public intellectual and previously Under-Secretary-General at the UN. It was on how hard it is to get world leaders to honour one of its central credos – the responsibility to protect civilian populations.
Three of the invitees requested a selfie with me. That done, one demanded to know why I had it in for Boris Johnson. I asked him what it would take for him to see through the ex-PM. My words were left unheard or unanswered. He pushed on: Boris is a true leader, he has guts, he’s a man of the people, on and on.
Countless people believe the same guff and puff. My husband has a credible explanation – his devotees want what BJ has, ruthlessness, roguishness, contempt for laws and rules, sex appeal and populist daring. The report on “Partygate” will only reinforce their senseless loyalty. So don’t assume he can never come back. He can, and will, because millions still believe he’s their saviour.
A conversation I had this week
On Channel 5’s Storm Huntley show we discussed the case of the mother who used abortion pills late into her pregnancy and had a stillbirth. She was tried, convicted and sent to prison. I think what’s happened is iniquitous. She is suffering severe trauma and can’t be with her kids even though she is no danger to society. We went on to discuss her serious transgression and needs. In Zoomed someone called Bushra Shaikh, apparently a “TV personality”.
“No mercy”, she shrilled, the mum “murdered the baby”, and deserved all she got. What self-righteousness and moral humbug. A caller then added even more vituperation by decrying the mum and describing the abortion as an “execution”. By this time, I felt loathing rising like nausea and found myself throwing it at both of them. It got a bit unruly and messy. Who said women were the delicate sex?
Yasmin’s pick
I’m in love with Molly, the unlikely heroine of The Maid, a whodunnit bestseller by the Canadian writer Nita Prose. Molly may have ADHD, is autistic or not. She thinks differently from other people, is smart, painfully honest and kind. She loves being a cleaner in a posh hotel but feels lost after her gran dies. A murder changes everything, most of all Molly. I’m really missing her.
This is In Conversation with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a subscriber-only newsletter from i. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.
