Berlin’s Soviet war memorials are becoming the latest front in a political struggle to ‘de-Sovietise’ German history. NICO POPP reports
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The NHS - A manifesto for renewal
FAWZI IBRAHIM argues that the NHS needs reforms to bring it back to its original tenets and outlines five fundamental changes that are critical to achieving this
GETTING THE PULSE? Keir Starmer, and Health Secretary Wes Streeting, with chief paramedic at London Ambulance Service Pauline Cranmer, meet NHS staff during a visit in east London
Newly revealed documents reveal that MI5 taught Brazilian secret police the techniques deployed by the 1964-85 military dictatorship in horrific prisons like Rio de Janeiro’s House of Death. SARA VIVACQUA reports
Western Marxism is a particular version of Marxist theory developed in – and acceptable to – the capitalist nations of Europe and North America and largely divorced from political action, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
CHRISTOPHE DOMEC speaks to the France Insoumise politician facing constant persecution from French authorities
The new Scottish Parliament looks set to continue a cycle of managerial tinkering while public services face the axe, writes STEPHEN LOW
It can be hard to discern conspiracy theory from reality and under the Trump regime the two might just be the same thing, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
SOON after the establishment of the NHS in 1948, efforts were made to dilute its provisions and undermine its principles from the introduction of charges for prescriptions, for dental care and for spectacles in 1952 right through to Margaret Thatcher’s internal market, the closer collaboration with the private providers and PFI under the Tony Blair government and the removal of the duty on the secretary of state to secure and provide healthcare for all in the 2012 Health and Social Care Act.
The assault was incessant resulting in significant erosion of NHS provisions and a gradual undermining of the core principle of the NHS as outlined in the 1948 Act which placed a duty on the secretary of state to provide key universal health services throughout England.
This core principle was deliberately subverted and substituted with “free at the point of delivery,” promoted energetically by the Blair and subsequent governments which went unchallenged at the time.
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In the second part of her critique of Wes Streeting’s TenYear Plan for Health, HELEN MERCER looks at the central planks of this privatisation blueprint
Government urged ‘to tackle the root causes’ of the NHS crisis and improve ‘social care services’