National Health Service Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Nye — Churchill broadcasting on VE-Day, 8 May 1945. On national health he earlier told Lord Moran: “The doctors aren’t going to dictate to the country, they tried that with Lloyd George.” (Imperial War Museum, public domain)

Gotcher in the Nye: Winston Churchill on the National Health

20 March 2024

Winston Churchill was fighting for national health services when Nye Bevan was still in short pants. After July 1945, national health policy fell to Labour, Robert Colville writes: "In other words, we owe to Bevan not THE National Health Service but THIS National Health Service—the one that turned the existing profusion of provision into something regimented, standardised, centralised and nationalised.... Bevan’s role in persuading America to enter the war is grossly overblown; his enthusiasm for Soviet Russia completely unmentioned. In John Bew’s biography of Attlee, Bevan’s index entry starts with 'tries to undermine Attlee and his supporters,' and goes on from there."

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Hillsdale’s Churchill Documents: Harold Wilson, 1951

30 July 2018

“Two days earlier I had been a Minister of the Crown, red box and all. Now I was reduced to the position of a messenger between my wife and Winston Churchill, each of whom burst into tears on receipt of a message from the other.” —Harold Wilson

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The Hillsdale College Churchill Project is rapidly completing final volumes of Winston S. Churchill, the official biography. (The name is somewhat of a misnomer; no one has ever censored any material.) Suitably, all thirty-one volumes will be complete by June 2019: the 75th Anniversary of D-Day. It will be fifty-six years since Randolph Churchill and his “Young Gentlemen” including Martin Gilbert began their work.…

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quotations — Holding forth in Parliament, 1912. (Illustrated London News)

How Would Churchill Tweet? -National Review

13 August 2017

“How Would Churchill Tweet?” appeared in National Review, 12 August 2017.

Since President Trump has taken office, the public has quickly learned to get its political news from a novel source—namely, the President’s Twitter account.

The move to this platform represents a shift in the nature of politics, both for good and for ill. Trump might be among the first political leaders to use this medium to attack opponents or make major announcements. He is certainly not the first to utilize the kind of brevity the platform requires to make his points.

Such brevity also characterized the rhetorical style of Winston Churchill, whose wit, humor and insight complemented his decisive and effective political leadership.…

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Britain’s Leave Debate: Who’s Churchill? Who’s Stalin?

22 February 2016

The campaign to Leave is heating up. Take Grassroots Out, a “combined operation” supporting Brexit—the campaign for Great Britain to exit the European Union. G-O fielded a broad spectrum of speakers in London February 19th. Along with UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage were Conservative Sir William Cash, Labour’s Kate Hoey, economist Ruth Lea, and a London cab driver.

The most unexpected Leave speaker was the far-left former Labour MP and head of the socialist Respect Party. Mr. George Galloway was immediately queried about his new colleagues.

“We are not pals,” Galloway replied.…

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“Winston” Olbermann and the Healthcare Debate

19 October 2009

N.B.: If Mr. Olbermann had done more research, he would know what Churchill did say about national healthcare, which is more to the point: see Churchill and Healthcare.

MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann is for the proposed American healthcare reform bill, which is neither here nor there.

What is interesting to Churchillians is his use of Winston Churchill’s words to support it—from both 1945 (when Churchill was campaigning against socialism), and 1936 (when Churchill was urging rearmament in the face of Nazi Germany).

In 1945, Olbermann says, Churchill

equated his opponents, the party that sought to introduce “The National Health,” to the Gestapo of the Germans that he and we had just beaten just as those opposing reform now have invoked Nazis as frequently and falsely as if they were invoking Zombies.…

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