(8 of 8)
There have been some complaints about red tape and delays, chiefly against dentists, who must get an O.K. from their Dental Estimates Board before starting expensive dental work. Said one dentist last week: "Sometimes it's a damned nuisance getting authority from some pipsqueak on the board before you can start a job, but I admit there are some chaps who would yank out a mouthful of teeth for the profit they get on the dentures. So in a socialized service I suppose we've got to put up with some interference."
A housewife in the cotton town of Darwen, Lancashire, expressed the verdict of millions. "It's not so much what the plan saved me in money," she said, "because if I'd had to pay, I wouldn't have had us all done. I couldn't have afforded it. If we had paid, it would have cost us nearly £16. Me and the children have all been examined, and the doctor's given me vitamin pills, and ordered two of the children to have specs, and sent another to have exercises for her spine, and I wouldn't have known there was anything wrong with any of us till we got ill."
Look into the Future. Some observers believe that the social welfare state may destroy democracy in Britain and pave the way for Communism. Others say it will provide the best bulwark against Communism, by preventing the want and insecurity on which Communism thrives. That is the way Nye Bevan sees it. Sevan's colleagues say he is one of the party's most active antiCommunists. As a member of the Labor Party's international affairs subcommittee, Bevan engineered the party's appeal to the Italian Socialists against fusion with the Communists before the 1948 Italian elections.
Nye Bevan is pleased with what he has done in Britain. He considers it only a start. Morrison and other party leaders want to sit back and consolidate the party gains. Bevan says the party is like a man on a bicycle: if he stops he will fall. According to his own statement, Bevan will settle for nothing less than "total destruction" of the remnants of British capitalism, including the Conservative Party. He has estimated that completion of his program will take 25 years. Whether or not he and his party will have a chance to finish the job is still up to the people who first sent him to London. They are his judges, and they have not yet relaxed their vigilance.
Every now & then, Nye Bevan gets away from his desk and takes a stroll along the seaside with several old cronies. He will stop at a stall to eat winkles, go wild on the swings, and will not miss a single peep show of the "What the Butler Saw" species. During one of these strolls, recently, Bevan dropped a penny into a fortune-telling slot machine. The note which the machine returned declared: "Not another personality is as sparkling as yours, nor a personality with such inherent righteousness."
One of his former mine mates peered over Bevan's shoulder. "Why, man, that's pretty true, you know," he said. "But by God, mind you live up to it!"