The • Doctors' Vote •
To the documents circulated by the British Medical Association in connection with the new plebiscite to be held in the light of Mr. Bevan's new proposals no exception can be taken. The issues are quite fairly set out, doctors are urged to give their decision on the facts as stated—the full text of the Minister's statement in the House of Commons on April 7th and his answers to a number of questions submitted to him by the B.M.A. are included on the plebiscite form—and the importance of recording a vote one way or the other is stressed. If the profession responds to this advice there should be little doubt that the result of the previous plebiscite will be reversed, for as the B.M.A.'s own analysis of the position* shows, the doctors have gained almost everything they asked for except in the matter of right of appeal and of the sale of publicly remunerated practices, and on those two points the demands of a section of doctors—by no means the whole profession—have no justification. It is no doubt because the negotiations with Mr. Bevan have ended in a compromise, as they should, and not in a hundred per cent. victory for either side, that the B.M.A. circular states that " while progress has been made the freedoms of the pro- fession are still not sufficiently safeguarded." To most impartial laymen they will seem to be fully safeguarded, and there are signs that the mass of the profession concede that the whole position has been altered by Mr. Bevan's latest concessions. There will always remain no doubt an extremist minority, whom nothing but total victory will satisfy, and Dr. Dain, the President of the B.M.A., is prepared to put himself at their head, to judge by the speech he delivered at Shrewsbury on Sunday. In urging his hearers re- peatedly to register the same verdict (against accepting service under the Act) as in the previous plebiscite, Dr. Dain went far beyond
anything indicated or contemplated by the B.M.A. Council, by whose decisions he is morally if not formally bound. The value of his subsequent retractation can be measured by a comparison with the words he actually used. It is to be hoped that every doctor will follow the sound advice of the B.M.A. Council and form his own judgement after conscientious and unbiased study of the facts which the Council has put before him.
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