GWEN VARDIGANS was born just before the founding of the NHS in July, 1948. As an adult she has spent more than half her life steeped in the National Health Service.

For 42 years she was part of NHS in York, most of them as an operating theatre nurse dealing with bowel cancer patients, and eventually as an employee of her union the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) where she trained nurses.

She’s seen the deteriorating standards caused by underfunding. But she also knows what life was like before the NHS, mainly from her parents and grandparents but also from something she was not aware of at the time it happened — her own birth.

“My mother had to have a caesarean and was very poorly,” she said.

“My father had just come out of REME [the army’s Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers]. My grandfather paid for the operation. It was a guinea. They also had to pay for all the theatre staff.”

A guinea was one pound and one shilling, £1.05 pence in today’s currency, and equal to about £50 today.

“After that was 2/6 for every doctor’s visit, and the same for every visit by a district nurse, so it would all rack up. I’ve still got the receipts.”

Something else from 1948 stuck in her memory.

“The day before July 5 1948, the nurses and doctors got all the IOUs for money that patients had and made a bonfire and burned them. The health service staff put them on a bonfire and burned them all.”

After leaving school she became a nurse herself in York.

“I worked in the operating theatre but I ended up being a nurse teacher,” she said. “I worked for the RCN as a trade union trainer. I did that for 16 years.

“The only reason I had to retire was that when I was working for the RCN an articulated lorry crushed me in my car. I had to have my knees replaced. The NHS saved my life and has been helping me ever since.”

Although she’s now well into her seventies — just a little older than the NHS — retirement did not sever her links with the service. In the years since then she’s been a relentless campaigner for the NHS.

“I’ve spent all my retirement as an activist,” she told the Morning Star. “I’ve supported all the strikes — doctors, nurses, and also RMT, the lot. I’m a full-time activist.”

Every Wednesday she runs a stall in York supporting the NHS.

“I get people to write what they feel about the NHS and it’s all going on a big birthday card on July 5. We’re going to give it to the York MP, Rachael Maskell. It’s her birthday as well on July 5, and she’s proud of that.”

Vardigans is active with Unite Community union which runs a stall in York advising people about benefit entitlements.

On Saturday she was one of the speakers at a Northern March for the NHS which was backed by NHS campaign groups and dozens of trade union branches. 

She was with a small team running a stall for the SOS NHS group of health service campaigns.

Standing next to the stall was a home-made placard — a life-size skeleton representing the NHS and bearing the words: “Cut to the bone.”