Spectator's Notebook
lr seems against nature for doctors to strike, and I hope that, this latest dispute, the most serious since the National Health Service began, will end in peace. If it does, it will be due to the calmness of the doctors' leaders, in the face of an arrogantly provocative speech by the Minister of Health in the House of Commons. Mr. Robinson, son of a GP, seems aggrieved that the family doctors are angry with him. Per- haps I can tell him why. I am the son and the grandson of general practitioners and if I had not been something of a late developer would have been a GP myself. As it was, I became Minister of Health instead, and it is not for me to speculate on whether the country gained or not from the switch. But I was Minister of Health for as many years as Mr. Kenneth Robinson has been for months, and I do re- member in my first speech laying down that 'the GP had to be, and be seen to be, the kingpin of the National Health Service.' Of course the Minister of Health. is now talking to the doctors --he should have done so on this subject long ago. And two sentences the minister used in the House are scarcely calculated to sweeten the talks. First, the charge: 'Disappointed as they were, it is very hard to exonerate the leaders of the BMA from the charge of misleading their members . . .'; and, second, the comment: `to use such words as "snub" and "insult" to de- scribe such an award, coming on top of a 14 per cent increase two years ago, which was intended to last for three years, must seem to many trade unionists a strange use of language.' Doctors, Mr. Robinson, are' not trade unionists and they may reasonably find your language strange in
view of the increase of 80 per cent we have voted for your salary and mine.
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