Home from an excellent evening (an old friend regaling me over the sherry with the tale of his long-ago encounter with Gaddafi, a sumptuous dinner, a talk by John Polkinghorne - ah, the lot of a President of a Senior Common Room), I caught parts of Mrs Brown’s Boys, which was not terribly good, but which, being set in Dublin, did contain several telling references to having to pay for medical treatment.
The absence of any significant Marxist influence in this country has been due to the universal and comprehensive Welfare State, and the strong statutory protection of workers and consumers, the former paid for by progressive taxation, and all underwritten by full employment. These are very largely the fruits of Catholic Social Teaching. Such fruits have been of disproportionate benefit to ethnically Gaelic-Irish Catholics throughout the United Kingdom.
Even in the 1940s, Sinn Féin worried that they were eroding its support. She who led the assault on these things remains a Unionist hate figure. The Civil Rights Movement was explicitly for equal British citizenship. Even the old Nationalist Party, never mind Sinn Féin, was permitted no part in it. And it was classically British Labour in identifying education, healthcare, decent homes and proper wages as the rights of citizens, who are demeaned precisely as citizens when they are denied those rights. The fruits of Catholic Social Teaching, indeed.
Yet imagine how much more Catholic and more concerned with rural issues British social democracy would have been if, as it continued to develop after the First World War, it had continued to include the whole of Ireland. If most of Ireland had not left the United Kingdom in 1922, then all of Ireland would have received the National Health Service a generation later, and Irish votes at Westminster would have been crucial to sparing these Islands, as a whole, the abortion and divorce free-for-alls a generation after that.
The Attlee Government’s firmly Unionist reaction to the proclamation of the Irish Republic was opposed only by a handful of Labour MPs, mostly Soviet agents or sympathisers, and it resulted in no negative reaction from unions and local parties, numerous of which were dominated by Irish Catholics at that time. Those Irish Catholics had moved from one part of the United Kingdom to another, or at the very latest from one part of the Commonwealth as it then existed to another, and no one had asked them if they wanted to be turned into foreigners. They did not.
Does anyone seriously imagine that the inhabitants of the Falls Road or the Bogside would ever vote themselves into a situation in which they had to pay to visit the doctor, as is the arrangement in the Republic? They were never really voting for that when they voted for the SDLP, which was why they voted for the SDLP. And now that they are no longer voting for it by voting for Sinn Féin, they vote for Sinn Féin. Almost no one votes for the “dissident Republicans” who, in effect, really would wish for such a thing. Indeed, they hardly ever present themselves for humiliation at the ballot box.
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Yet imagine how much more Catholic and more concerned with rural issues British social democracy would have been if, as it continued to develop after the "First World War, it had continued to include the whole of Ireland. If most of Ireland had not left the United Kingdom in 1922, then all of Ireland would have received the National Health Service a generation later, and Irish votes at Westminster would have been crucial to sparing these Islands, as a whole, the abortion and divorce free-for-alls a generation after that."
ReplyDeleteOh fantasies, fantasies!
Considering Ireland both sides of the border were then and still now predominately right-wing, your fantasy is frankly that.
And the left in Ireland - both sides of the border - was and is mainly nationalist. Hail James Connolly and James Larkin the hardest of hardest of unionists!
Ireland - with home rule in the UK - would have less MPs in the Commons and would have been outvoted on abortion, divorce etc if not outright banned from doing so in the name of "Dublin West" question (sic)
As for your ramblings concerning about the Irish language, you support the official use of it eh?
"with home rule in the UK"
ReplyDeletePrecisely not. That is my point.
Oh, what hysterical, predictable nonsense. That there are charges for visiting the doctor in the Irish Republic would come as a genuine shock to most people in Britain, including most Irish-descended ones. It is the sort of thing that we associate with the distant past and the Third World. Draw your own conclusions from the fact that you still have it.
Including as to whether anyone accustomed to the NHS (in all three manifestoes in 1945, and over half of its life to date lived under Tory governments) would ever vote to join you instead, if that were the straight question in front of them.
No wonder more of them live over here than live there. 'Twas ever thus, more of them lived here than there at the points of the Easter Rising, Home Rule and the declaration of the Republic.
ReplyDeleteEmigration continued apace long after independence, a lot of it to Britain. It still does and it is about to pick back up to pre "Celtic Tiger" levels if it has not already done so. Dublin must have been the only West European capital where you still saw children running about barefoot in the 1970s. And still no NHS even in 2011. Think what they could have had if they had never gone down the Home Rule road. They know it, that is why more of them live over here than live there and huge numbers of the young ones are about to make the move if they have not already stated.
As for voting to join them, who is going to be made the offer? While Sinn Fein administers British rule in the North, the South has long since rejected all claim to it in a referendum. Don't think of them as proper Irish like themselves, and could not afford to keep them in the style to which they are accustomed with their NHS and all that.
Well why did the UUP try to block the creation of the NHS in NI?
ReplyDelete"It is the sort of thing that we associate with the distant past and the Third World. Draw your own conclusions from the fact that you still have it."
Those who can afford to pay subsidised charges. Those who cannot, such as the elderly, children unemployed, students etc do not. They have "medical cards".
The way things are going in the UK "hotel charges" and "doctors fees" will not be too far around the corner. Brits meekly accept charging student fees, eye tests, dental fees etc. It is because they do not believe they will need the services and take the attitude "Why should I have to pay for----"
On the other hand which country pays better pensions, social benefits and provides free education at all levels? Who still has student grants?
Believe in hotel charges when you see them, and in doctors' fees when hell freezes over. Whereas you already have them. You have never stopped having them.
ReplyDeleteThe system that you describe is the sort of thing that people over here who have now retired talk of having been told about by their parents. I say again, the distant past and the Third World, and jaw-droppingly shocking to the mind of anyone over here, not least including those of Irish descent. Frankly, I suspect that a lot of them simply would not believe it. Not in Western Europe, in 2011. Not in Western Europe a long time before that.
By the way, the family depicted (and the piece itself was set in the present day, entirely Irish-written, Irish-produced and Irish-acted before a Dublin studio audience) was thoroughly working-class. The inability to pay for the elderly grandfather's medical treatment was presupposed as a fact of life. Like Britain. Before the War. Before most people were born.
"By the way, the family depicted (and the piece itself was set in the present day, entirely Irish-written, Irish-produced and Irish-acted before a Dublin studio audience) was thoroughly working-class. The inability to pay for the elderly grandfather's medical treatment was presupposed as a fact of life."
ReplyDeleteWhat piece? What are you jabbering about? Elderly are covered by the medical card.
"Not in Western Europe, in 2011. Not in Western Europe a long time before that."
Obviously not aware of the French system of state, personal payment and private insurance then are we?
And on British Consultation fees and hospital charges, we will see. Already the arguments "Charges will make sure people turn up to appointments", "Why should the rich sick be subsidised by the poor", "People who live lifestyles which make them ill should pay" etc. Then promise a tax cut/delay in tax rise to sweeten the pain of the charges.
The crypto-Thatcherite mentality of the British people will swallow it hook, line and sinker. You know this to be true.
No, I know the exact opposite. You know nothing about any part of the United Kingdom if you think that this is remotely conscionable politically. There really would be riots in the streets. You must be thinking of the adjacent failed state, the Irish Republic.
ReplyDelete