Page 17 - Great Elizabethans

Nye was proud to be
a revolutionary. He described himself not as a politician but as “a projectile discharged from the Welsh valleys”!
BIRTH OF OUR
FOR THE PEOPLE
In 1919, Nye won a scholarship to study in London, where he decided that socialism – a system where a country’s wealth is shared equally between
its people – was a better way to run a country than capitalism, where people who own businesses have a lot of wealth and power. The rich factory and mine owners might not look after their workers or pay them fairly. Nye became a trade union activist, demanding better conditions for poor people.
Soon after this, Nye was chosen as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Labour party, and became known for criticising other politicians whom he felt weren’t
on the side of working men and women. He got married to Jennie Lee, another Labour MP, in 1934. During the Second World War, which started in 1939, he often criticised the prime minister, Winston Churchill (page 12). This made him very
unpopular, but he believed that many of Churchill’s decisions were wrong.
After the hardship of the war, many British people wanted a change. Churchill’s Conservative party, which had been in charge of the country, was voted out and the Labour party came to power instead. Nye was given the job of Minister of Health. He was determined to make sure everyone in Britain could have medical treatment when they needed it, just as they had in Tredegar. Although many politicians were against it – as were a lot of doctors who wanted to carry on charging people for treatment! – the National Health Service Act was passed in 1946, and the NHS began treating people in 1948. This meant that thousands of people who couldn’t afford to pay could now have medical care that improved or even saved their lives.
A LEGACY FOR ALL
In Parliament, Nye was known as a prickly, difficult figure, someone who would fight to defend the rights of the underdog – not always politely. When NHS charges for dental care and glasses were introduced in 1951, Nye resigned from his job in protest. But he remained someone who was loved and trusted by the people who had elected him.
When Nye died of stomach cancer at the age of 62, the whole nation mourned. MPs wept in Parliament, and one newspaper said that there was “sorrow at every street corner” in the South Wales valleys where he came from. But his legacy – free healthcare for everyone, whether they could pay for it or not – has looked after millions of people their whole lives long, from the cradle to the grave.
Nye was always on the side of the poor and the downtrodden. As he said himself: “I do not represent the big bosses at the top. I represent the people at the bottom.”
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