During World War II, Labour had joined a Conservative Party-led coalition government to defend the British Empire’s interests in the interimperialist slaughter. The Labour leadership signed on to Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s call to sacrifice “blood, toil, sweat, and tears.”

Under the impact of mounting struggles by workers at the end of the war, however, Labour decided to shift direction and campaign against the Conservatives. Its platform included calls for nationalization of coal and other industries, public works to build affordable housing, and socialized medicine.

The Fourth International, predecessor of the Marxist magazine New International, published a number of reports at the time on the outbreak of labor battles against the declining living conditions in spite of a wartime no-strike pledge by the union officialdom. “100,000 Yorkshire miners were on strike; 50,000 shipyard, aircraft, munitions workers were out in England, Scotland, and North Ireland,” it reported in its April 1944 issue.

“The British workers are weary of the imperialist war,” said the lead article in the Aug. 4, 1945, Militant, which featured Labour’s electoral victory on its front page. “They are suffering severely under rationing and black markets. Mass unemployment is again on the way. There is a chaotic housing situation, with millions of workers living in slum hovels and bomb-blasted tenements. All Churchill could promise the workers was a continuance of this state of affairs. Meanwhile the British capitalists are on the offensive against the unions.”

The elections in July 1945 brought a crushing defeat for the Tories as working people and many in the middle class saw Labour as the best vehicle for making advances in jobs, working conditions, and a broad range of social demands. The Labour Party won an absolute majority—taking 393 seats in Parliament against 189 for the Conservatives and 12 for the Liberals. Working-class districts were solid for Labour, which also won 90 percent of the vote among soldiers.

The defeat of the Tories was significant because it came “on the very morrow of the Allied imperialists’ victory over their German adversaries,” said the Aug. 4, 1945, Militant. “Churchill personified that victory. Yet the vapors of patriotic imperialist propaganda… could not deflect the British workers from their purpose.”

The establishment of the National Health Service was one of the centerpieces of Labour’s social reform program. When it came into effect in 1948 it sparked a huge surge in demand from workers who had been unable to afford medical care, but could now benefit from free care for all, “irrespective of means, age, sex or occupation.”

Since its introduction the NHS has suffered the fate of most reforms under capitalism, though it took decades to reverse a number of the gains registered in the 1940s. Governments of both of the two main parties of British imperialism—Labour and Tories—have introduced “market reforms.”

Hospitals now employ private contractors and seek additional funding through private companies, resulting in sharpening competition for scarce resources and a more class-divided health-care system. Workers in Scotland, for example, may face waits of up to five years for operations. Prescriptions are no longer free. Dental care, which is available at subsidized rates but has never been free, may be difficult to obtain in some areas because of the lack of dentists who do “NHS work.”

In September the British Medical Association reported there would be job cuts and hospital ward closures.

The struggle for the right to free medical coverage also created a consciousness among health workers that often made it possible for non-UK residents visiting the country to also receive care. As Labour and Tories alike have encouraged hospitals to “compete for patients,” however, these and other gains have been eroded. Yet neither party has dared to outright dismantle this social conquest of the working class.
 
 
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