IHEEM 75TH ANNIVERSARY DINNER
was pleased to be able report that he believed the engineer was ‘still out in front’.
A very eventful year
Pete Sellars then introduced Nygaire Bevan, who thanked IHEEM for inviting her, and Helen Howson, director of the Bevan Commission and Bevan Academy, to speak at such a momentous occasion. She said: “I feel very privileged to be here. It’s been a very interesting year for me and my family with the 70th anniversary of the NHS. I have been asked to give a personal view on what it has been like to be part of the Bevan family. In fact I was a baby when Nye died – from stomach cancer in his early 60s, and my memories are thus a bit faint. My older siblings tell me, however, that he was a huge presence, and that he when he walked into a room you certainly felt a bit of a jolt. I was, in fact, named after Aneurin. My father left the house to register me as ‘Catherine’, as agreed with my mother. However, he stopped off the pub to wet my head, and I ended up being called Nygaire. The spelling has been a bit of a challenge throughout my life; in fact even my siblings have failed to master it, and often just call me ‘Nyg’.
A ‘political’ environment “Both my grandfather, who was Nye’s brother, my father, and my uncle, were very political,” she continued. “As a child I remember many a debate at home, voices getting raised, and tables getting bashed, as the alcohol intake increased. My grandfather was the chair and leader of the old Monmouthshire County Council for many years. Some of this must have rubbed off on me, as I trained as a nurse on leaving school, and have had a career in social care all my life. My own grandfather, who we called ‘Bampi’, spoke often of his brother, Nye. He would visit our home every day when I was a child for his cup of coffee – half Camp Coffee and half Wood’s Old Navy Rum, which he said ‘set him up’ for the day.
Nygaire Bevan said: “If Nye was here today he would be very honoured to see his great achievement marked all these decades later.” Right: Aneurin Bevan MP speaking at a meeting of the Merionethshire Labour Party in Corwen in 1952.
“My grandfather said of Nye: ‘If he had had a more supportive headmaster, he would have achieved academic greatness.’ Nye was left-handed, which was very much frowned upon at the time, and he was forced to use his right hand. That, in effect, exacerbated his stammer, so he hated school, left early, and went to work in the mines, His reading, education, and political life, were thus mostly self- taught. The family lived in a tiny little terraced house in Tredegar in the Valleys. There were seven children, three others having died in childhood, and mum and dad. It was a tiny little house. Nye apparently had a wicked sense of
humour; he was a bit of an edgy guy, and always in trouble with the management at his mine, being very fond of the unions. While Minister of Health, one of his big statements in Westminster, as he was trying to get the NHS plans through, was: ‘If a bedpan is dropped in a hospital corridor in Tredegar, the reverberations need to echo around Whitehall.’ He pushed the NHS’s Foundation through in two years – an immense achievement, especially just post-war.”
A memorable year so far Nygaire Bevan said the family had many memorabilia of her great uncle, who
About the Bevan Commission
Established in 2008 on the 60th anniversary of the NHS, the Bevan Commission, hosted and supported by Swansea University, provides independent, authoritative advice on health and care to the Welsh Government ‘and leaders in NHS Wales, the UK, and beyond’. It ‘translates thinking into action’ by supporting health and care professionals across NHS Wales, called Bevan Exemplars, to test out their own expert ideas. These Bevan Exemplar projects demonstrate a project completion success rate of 70%, which the Commission says is ‘a 5:1 return on investment in economic benefits, and improved health outcomes, patient experiences, and service delivery’.
The Commission, chaired by Profession Sir Mansel Aylward, draws its expertise from members based in Wales, the UK, and internationally, with its global reach demonstrated by the firm links it has with national governments, academia, and national health systems in Australasia, Europe, and North America. The Commission’s role is to:
n Observe, interpret, analyse, scrutinise, advise, and comment on, health and health-related matters in Wales, and
n To provide expert advice, informed by sound evidence and consensus of the authoritative opinion to the Minister.
Helen Howson, director of the Bevan Commission and Bevan Academy, explained that the former draws its expertise ‘from members based in Wales, the UK, and internationally’.
The Commission ‘focuses on how Wales may achieve its ambition of building healthcare services based upon Aneurin Bevan’s core principles to best meet the needs of the people of Wales, matching the best comparable systems elsewhere in the world’. The Commission said: “We believe that good health and care is everyone’s responsibility, so we work with individual community members and community networks to ensure their views are heard and inform the health and care debate.”
October 2018 Health Estate Journal 11
commons.wikimedia.org CC BY 1.0 PD
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116