DrFollowing this post the Daily Mirror published this rather good article:  Apart from making the mistake that NFR is in anyway allied to the Tories (that is offensive!), it helps to get some important history out in the public domain. Intellectually, the NHS and the welfare-warfare state does have some unsavory roots that no one should deny.

Indeed, there have been two recent comments posted on this blog that are so good I have decided to reproduce them here. Here is number one;

“The history behind the NHS and the eugenics movement does have common elements, to pretend otherwise is to live in a fantasy world.

Specifically, it was the beginning of national health statistics in the late 19th century that led to the moral panic of “degeneracy”,which came from the combination of Darwinian ideas applied to social sciences, and the emergence of medical data about the health of working class people.

One part of this panic was to promote the idea of deliberately removing “undesirables”, a process begun in the USA in the early part of the 20th century, but applied most horrifically in Nazi occupied countries from 1933 onwards.

But the other, whilst less violent, had the same objective: the national improvement of collective healthcare. The Fabians originally believed that the “feeble minded” should be institutionalized (given electro-shock therapy), homosexuality was considered “a mental illness” and state control of hospitals became an ideological programme.

This is why Nazi Germany was the first European country to adopt major campaigns against smoking, and why the various prohibitionist movements were strong in late 19th-early 20th century USA and UK.

What part of the NHS’ rationing of healthcare to deny treatment for old people, or smokers, or the obese, do the commentators above think Hitler would object to? I can think of none. As for the smoking ban in pubs: no fascist dictator would have dared introduced such a thing, but Hitler, would certainly approve.

As for A Davidson, I would merely point out, that it seems wise to ask if the reasons for Hitler’s support for socialized healthcare (which you admit) are bad, shouldn’t we consider them? If Hitler was right to think that socilized medicine would advance racialist policies, are we wrong to make sure this does not happen?

One last thought. Harold Shipman. Clearly, this was an extreme individual, but his attitude towards patients was entirely logical, once one accepted the notion that it is not the patient to control healthcare provision or objectives.”

Now, for those of you interested in the burgeoning literature and research into this history – much of it written by socialist writers – see comment number two:

“Even those who like the NHS have to accept that it does have some very strange intellectual underpinnings.

It is curious how the existence of an alliance of statist Toryism and Socialism has fallen out of any popular consciousness. One of the few studies can be found in Semmel, B., (1960) Imperialism and State Reform: English Social-Imperial Thought, 1895-1914, Harvard University Press, Cambridge M.A. There is a growing literature on eugenics, ‘right wing’ (that is, anti-capitalist and anti-liberal) social Darwinism and paternalism. See: Searle, G. R, (1971) The Quest for National Efficiency, Oxford Universisty Press, Oxford and (1986) Social Hygiene in Twentieth Century Britain, Croom Helm, London. Soloway, R. A., (1990) Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth Century Britain, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill. Some socialist scholars are also beginning to reconsider the origins and nature of the rise of the welfare state in light of such evidence. See: Skocpol, T., (1992) Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States, Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, Cambridge M.A. Jamieson, L., and Corr, H., (eds) (1990) State, Private Life and Political Change, Macmillan, London. Dwork, D., (1987) War is Good For Babies and Other Young Children, Tavistock Publications, London.

Under analysis, the origins of the welfare state looks less like the pure juice of human kindness and altruism, a liberation of the masses, and increasingly more like authoritarian social engineering for the sake of national strength, war or racial hygiene.”