We are going to ‘Tredegar-ise’ you, Bevan told rest of the UK

Mar 5 2008 by Our Correspondent, Western Mail

Aneurin Bevan may have been the architect of the NHS, but the inspiration for enduring state-funded healthcare was the Tredegar Medical Aid Society, as Irena Morgan explains

ANEURIN BEVAN was ultimately responsible for the establishing the NHS in 1948. But the Tredegar politician and MP for Ebbw Vale, who became Minister for Health and Housing in 1945, had an ideal model on which to base his new health service, which has been described as “the most far-reaching piece of social legislation in British history”.

That model was the local community self-help scheme run by the Tredegar Workmen’s Medical Aid Society on which Bevan had served as a committee member in the 1920s.

When he created the NHS, Bevan said, “All I am doing is extending to the entire population of Britain the benefits we had in Tredegar for a generation or more. We are going to ‘Tredegar-ise’ you.”

And as former Labour leader Neil Kinnock later wrote, in the forward to Dr Gareth Jones’s book, The Aneurin Bevan Inheritance, “The mixture of cunning and passion that he [Bevan] had to employ in establishing the NHS is widely recognised.

“Less attention has been given to the way in which he learned the arts and crafts of providing and managing communal health care in the Tredegar Workmen’s Medical Aid Society.

“But, as he testified, the experience of a local working model that embodied all the principles of universal donation during fitness for universal provision during illness was invaluable. It made the rapid establishment of a national system feasible because that task was then more a matter of refinement and enlargement rather than one of raw invention.”

The Tredegar Medical Aid Society was formed around 1890 and was widely regarded as one of the best of its kind. Under this local health service, almost all of the town’s residents were covered by the scheme through subscriptions which entitled members and their dependants to the most comprehensive and the best medical, surgical and dental services in the country, according to need and free at point of care.

The plaque outside 10 The Circle, in Tredegar, reads, “These were the offices of a mutual society (1890) formed by miners and ironworkers of the Tredegar Iron and Coal Co.

“Through modest weekly contributions, they were able to employ doctors, a surgeon and run a hospital. Bevan’s political influence locally enabled socialist working-class nominees to gain control.”

Tredegar’s Medical Aid Society had emerged from the Health and Education Fund established in the town around 1871. This had been set up with representatives of workers and the management of the Tredegar iron and coal companies, which later merged. The society was one of a number of community health schemes set up during the 19th century, especially in the industrialised South Wales valleys.

They were initially a means of treating victims of work-related accidents and combating diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis and cholera.

Under these medical aid and health fund schemes, each worker employed in the ironworks and collieries paid 3d in the pound from their wages to receive medical care for themselves and their families.

Part of the fund financed sick pay at different rates for men, women and boys for a period of 12 months. Other people who were not directly employed by the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company could subscribe to the society and enjoy the same benefits with the exception of sick pay. This early fund also helped to maintain schools in the area.

In around 1890, the company scheme merged with others developed independently by benevolent societies in the town and all their funds were combined.

The new society became known as Tredegar Workmen’s Medical Aid and Sick Relief Fund, and eventually had a membership of nearly 5,000.

Tredegar General Hospital was opened in December, 1904 – the initiative came from the Medical Aid Society.

Land for the new Tredegar Park Cottage Hospital – as it was then called – was donated by Lord Tredegar, who also gave Bedwellty Park to the town’s people.

Funding came from the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company, other local employers and organisations, donations from individuals, public donations and above all from men employed in the pits who agreed to maintain the hospital by having an extra halfpenny a week deducted from their wages – in 1909 it rose to an additional 1d per week.

Bevan was a member of the cottage hospital’s management committee around 1928 and became chairman in 1929/30.

Between 1915 and the birth of the NHS, the society employed a team of five doctors, two dentists, two dental mechanics, three dispensers and their assistants and a nurse.

Members, their dependants – plus retired members and widows – also received free spectacles, drugs, and any appliances they might have needed. If a referral was needed, they could receive free treatment, said to be within days, at hospitals outside the Tredegar area. Fares for buses or trains were paid for or transport provided.

When the NHS was launched in 1948, the new Ministry of Health took over most of the facilities and staff provided by the Medical Aid Society and the hospital committee. Members, however, decided that the society should carry on in a modified way – it was eventually wound up in 1995.

More information about the medical aid society is available from the Tredegar Development Trust’s website www.cradleofnhs.org.uk

Page 2 - Edna Adams on life before the welfare state