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The History of the NHS

  • Series
Photographic portrait of urological surgeon, Sarah Itam outside University College Hospital.
Sarah Itam, urological surgeon. Fellow at University College Hospital, London, Benjamin Gilbert. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

The birth of Britain's National Health Service

Starkly unequal access to healthcare gave rise to Nye Bevan’s creation of a truly national health service.

Fees, funding and the NHS

In the 1950s, dramatic political battles over NHS charges brought down a government. But public confidence in the service still grew.

Medics, migration and the NHS

In the 1960s the NHS became Britain’s biggest employer. So to help fill all those jobs, the government brought in thousands of workers from abroad.

NHS strikes and the decade of discontent

When the social unrest of the 1970s spread to the NHS, dissatisfied staff challenged the status quo for the first time in quarter of a century.

NHS Blue: the colour of universal healthcare

The 1980s and 1990s saw ideas from the world of business infiltrating the NHS, including the introduction of an internal market, followed by a corporate branding exercise.

Born in the NHS

Despite underfunding, strikes and scandals, the first two decades of the 2000s has seen the British people’s love of and loyalty to the NHS soar.