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Celebrating the NHS Barrie Mahoney

We remember and celebrate the foundation of the National Health Service by the Labour Government on
5 July 1948. The NHS, despite its current difficulties with funding, staffing levels and retention of staff, is
one of the very few areas that unites most of the country. It is often described as the country’s national
religion and supported by most people. Despite current difficulties in accessing treatment, long waiting
lists and lack of follow up care, surveys indicate that the founding principles of the NHS, which was to be
universal, equitable, comprehensive, high quality, free at the point of delivery and centrally funded, are
still supported by most people.

Many commentators are currently taking the view that we are in a period of ‘managed decline’ by the
current government. There are many factors at play here, such as serious reduction in funding levels
following the financial crisis, austerity, loss of staff from Europe following Brexit, additional pressures and
demands following Covid, as well as deep suspicion by many that some right-wing politicians welcome
‘managed decline’ since they want to see the NHS fail and for it to be replaced by a privatised health
service, similar to an insurance based system as deployed in the USA.

This period of remembering and celebration reminds me of the small part that both my father and
mother played in the establishment of a cottage hospital within the NHS in 1948. I was born in this
hospital, just three years after the NHS was established. Holbeach was a small, largely forgotten village in
the Lincolnshire fenlands. The nearest large town is Spalding, which in those days was famous for its bulb
industry and the annual Tulip Parade. For seventeen years, I grew up in the house next to Holbeach
Hospital where my father, Ronald John Mahoney, was Hospital Secretary or Hospital Administrator, as the
job title was renamed. My mother, Phyllis Mahoney was the hospital matron during its early years, but a
post that she left in the 1940s to bring up my two elder brothers and myself.

Before its incorporation into the NHS, Holbeach Hospital had an interesting history, and much may be
attributed to my father. He opened the building as ‘casual wards’ when he was first appointed in 1937. It
was then transformed into an Emergency Hospital during the Second World War, before becoming a fully-
fledged NHS hospital when the NHS came into being in 1948. Holbeach Hospital offered both care and
surgical procedures by local doctors, as well as for visiting specialist surgeons during the time that I was
growing up. I remember it as always being very busy and spoken of highly by the local community.

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