doctors and the Government to a head. What can be
done on that occasion to ease, rather than aggravate the situa- tion ? One suggestion I have heard, and it seems to me an extremely good one, is that the B.M.A. should have the courage and imagination to invite Mr. Bevan to come and address the Representative Meeting. To most of the doctors attend- ing that meeting he is the devil, but a personally unknown devil, and a closer acquaintance would be all to the good. The Minister of Health can be both frank and reasonable when he chooses, and he could certainly count on a courteous hearing and a fusillade of honest questions. There is one other pofsibility. In reply to a question in the House of Commons last week as to whether the Prime Minister would himself lend a hand in any further negotiations if he felt it would help matters, Mr. Attlee replied that he was ready to consider any suggestion put before him ; the address, I may observe, is so Downing Street. A third apparent possibility is, in fact, not a possibility at all. The last issue of the British Medical Journal is full of letters urging the B.M.A. to put forward proposals of its own for a National Health Service. That is clearly quite impracticable. What is under discussion, and under fire, is not a Government draft but an Act of Parliament, passed by large majorities by both Houses. It can be amended in certain particulars (I should advise the doctors to concentrate on the basic salary) ; to scrap it at this stage and start fresh is out of the questidn.
* *
Previous page
