I was one of the fortunate generation who grew up in the Welfare State, some of my earliest memories are of the path which led under a large Cedar of Lebanon to the clinic, where my mother took me to be weighed, measured and checked and to collect the free orange juice and (less welcome) cod liver oil.
The tree is still there, doubtless protected by a preservation order, but everything else has gone, and the NHS is rapidly being transformed into a service run for the private profit of large health companies rather than its only aim being to improve the health and welfare of the people.
Ten years ago, after years of reasonable health, I desperately needed the NHS, and it was there for me. Nobody asked for my insurance plan or credit card details and I got the treatment I needed from dedicated and skilled professionals.
I can’t say everything was perfect – the hospital cleaning had been outsourced and two of the three hospitals in which I spent the best part of a month were filthy; there were obvious staff shortages at various levels; a glaring waste of money through the use of agency nurses and obvious inefficiencies due to poor management practices which, among other things doubled the length of my own stay in hospital – but I felt that I was in the hands of people who knew their job and were getting on with it as best they could despite some unfortunate interference from politicians (mainly but not just Tories) with no love for the system and shares in various aspects of private health care. I’ve often felt we would get better health and education systems in this country if a condition of being in Parliament was that members and their families were obliged to make use of our national systems rather than pay as so many do for privileged treatment.
The current coalition government seems determined to undermine the NHS in any way possible and the 65th birthday seemed more of an occasion for a wake rather than celebration. So I had great sympathy with the National Health Action Party’s mock funeral procession, though I’m less convinced that the party has much hope of electoral success – except in a very few areas.
Photographically I wasn’t too happy with the results I got, partly because many of the images taken with the 16-35mm were ruined by an area of softness and flare. I think it was down to the weather, the hot afternoon sun on the black lens barrel vapourising some residual water left in the lens from our month of rain which then condensed on the less rapidly warming large chunks of glass in this heavy optic and was very slow to clear. Mostly it was hardly noticeable in the small viewfinder image, and I took quite a few pictures before realising there was a problem – and that it was inside the lens.
The above image shows it clearly because of the flare – the late afternoon sun was only just out of frame – and lens hoods are not very effective with wide-angle zooms. It also shows a second problem (even after quite a lot of post-processing) which was that the SB-800 flash was misbehaving. It sometimes just seems to ignore all signals from the camera and fire at full power whatever, but always behaves itself when I test it! Cleaning the contacts on the flash and camera sometimes seems to help, but I think it’s something more basic.
But the 70-300mm proved useful in getting images of the speakers, though I was less good at getting down everyone’s name. Whenever I think to myself ‘I’ll remember that’ it is disastrous, and even if I record sound, names are so often not pronounced clearly and can be impossible to spell. In the absence of a decent press release I should always use a notebook and ask to check. But I didn’t.
One speaker I didn’t need to ask about, as I’d photographed her earlier in the day at Lewisham, and should Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign‘s Chair Louise Irvine chose to stand for election for the National Health Action Party I think she would have a good chance of election. The campaign held a 65th birthday party opposite the hospital at lunchtime, where I enjoyed both some chicken curry and a small slice of the impressive Lewisham Hospital cake, though again I had reason to curse that misbehaving SB800 – and this image was one of its better efforts. In the picture she is holding a blue card with a picture of Nye Bevan and the message “65 Years of the NHS – Happy Birthday – Celebrate! Organise! and Defend!’ and we need to do all three.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
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