Why Nye Bevan deserves a festival
It was the workers' own healthcare model in his home town of Tredegar that inspired the socialist's greatest work — the NHS — and it is in his home town that once a year we celebrate him and his ideals, writes MARK TURNER
The welcome news that Cuba has finally been removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list is tempered by the fact that Donald Trump, the man who put it there, is returning to the White House, warns NATASHA HICKMAN
Thanks to impressive progress in Britain with wind and solar generation, clean electricity now costs a fraction of the price of gas — yet the current system keeps bills artificially high to protect fossil fuels, writes TOM HARDY
By spreading race-based conspiracy theories, the billionaire tycoon turned right-wing provocateur has been seriously undermining the case against those who really did let victims of the grooming gangs down, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Many Western countries are grappling with deep political instability. What are the causes of this, and what could be a possible way forward? asks MARC VANDEPITTE
KEITH BENNETT explains why, despite its present meagre economic outcomes, an honest and fruitful partnership with China is worth pursuing
Nick Wright talks to photographer and author JANINA STRUK
NYE BEVAN was ultimately responsible for the establishing the NHS in 1948. But the Tredegar politician and MP for Ebbw Vale, who became minister for health and housing in 1945, had an ideal model on which to base his new health service, which has been described as “the most far-reaching piece of social legislation in British history.”
That model was the local community self-help scheme run by the Tredegar Workmen’s Medical Aid Society on which Bevan had served as a committee member in the 1920s.
When he created the NHS, Bevan said, “All I am doing is extending to the entire population of Britain the benefits we had in Tredegar for a generation or more. We are going to ‘Tredegar-ise’ you.”
More from this author
MARK TURNER gets over his discomfort that US cultural imperialism means we know more about US subcultures than our own
Similar stories
MEIC BIRTWISTLE wanders through an exhibition that captures the soul of the Valleys, past and present, as Archdruids rub shoulders with Cuban ambassadors in Pontypridd
While revisiting his old postie haunts of Harhill, MATT KERR is reminded that Aneurin ‘Nye’ Bevan did build, post-WWII, something that has stood the test of time. Very little else has, if we are honest
PAUL DONOVAN salutes a timely dramatisation of Aneurin Bevin's life, and the political struggle on the left to create the NHS