15 November: Aneurin Bevan (founder of the NHS)

Born on this date in 1897 was Aneurin Bevan, British Labour politician, son of a miner, Minister for Health in the UK from 1945 to 1951, who founded the National Health Service (NHS), which celebrates its 70^th anniversary this year. 10 things you might not know about him.

1. Bevan was born in Tredegar, Monmouthshire, in the South Wales Valleys. His father was a miner and his mother a seamstress. He was one of ten children.
2. He didn't do well at school. In fact he did so badly that he had to repeat a year. He left school at 13 and got a job at the local colliery.
3. He had a stammer as a child, but overcame it by reciting long passages by William Morris.
4. At work, he quickly became involved in trade unions and was head of his local Miners' Lodge at nineteen. His activism didn't go down well with his bosses who saw him as a troublemaker and sacked him. However, the Miners' Federation successfully claimed it was victimisation and got him his job back.
5. Later on, when Bevan was in his early 20s, the South Wales Miners' Federation sponsored his return to education. He went to the Central Labour College in London and studied economics, politics and history. However, the colliery didn't keep his job open for him while he was away.
6. He became a Labour MP in 1928 where he became a champion of the working classes. In 1955, he lost to Hugh Gaitskill in a leadership contest. In 1959, Bevan was elected as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. However, he is best remembered for being the architect of the National Health Service Act 1946, which led to the setting up of the UK National Health Service. At the time, he'd had to overcome opposition to the service from not only his political opponents, but from the British Medical Association, with doctors refusing to support it.
7. Bevan refused to wear formal dress at Buckingham Palace functions, because, he claimed, his constituents hadn't sent him to Parliament to dress up.
8. Bevan often quoted Karl Marx: "The redeeming feature of war is that it puts a nation to the test.” Bevan believed the Second World War gave Britain an opportunity to rebuild society.
9. He died of stomach cancer in 1960 aged 62. In 2004, over forty years after his death, he came top in a list of 100 Welsh Heroes voted for by the public.
10. To round off, a few interesting facts about the NHS. The NHS is the fifth largest employer in the world with 1.7 million employees. The top four are the US Department of Defense (3.2 million), China’s People’s Liberation Army (3.2 million), Walmart (2.3 million) and McDonalds (1.9 million). 5% of the workforce in Britain work for the NHS. 30% of them are nurses. The very first person to be treated was 13-year-old Sylvia Diggery who was admitted to hospital in Manchester with a liver condition in 1948. Today, the NHS sees 1.5 million patients a day with the equivalent of three times the population of London (23 million) visiting their GP every month.

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