Socialist Medical Association

The Socialist Medical Association (since 1980 the Socialist Health Association) was founded in 1930 to campaign from within the Labour Party for a National Health Service in the United Kingdom.

The Socialist Medical Association was founded in 1930 and absorbed many of those who had been active in the State Medical Service Association which collapsed as a result. The inaugural meeting was convened by Charles Wortham Brook, a doctor with links to the Labour Party who was a member of the London County Council (LCC) during the period when the LCC developed its municipal hospitals. Brook was the first Secretary of the Association, remaining in office until 1938.

Many of those involved in the Association volunteered for the Spanish Medical Aid Committee in the Spanish Civil War.

In 1945 there were nine members of the association in the House of Commons. They hoped to influence the plans for the development of the National Health Service (NHS). There were communications with Aneurin Bevan but his relations with the group were not particularly close. The Association was keen to press for doctors to be salaried and work full-time in health centres. They wanted teaching hospitals to be integrated into the regional hospital organisations and criticised the segmentation of the service as a barrier to integrated services.

The association was active in campaigns against NHS charges, smoking and tuberculosis, and for adequate nutrition, the establishment of health centres and salaried general practitioners. It is associated with the campaigns against health inequality.

It attempted to build an international movement. In October 1962 David Stark Murray went to the University of Chicago to talk to students about the fight for socialized medicine.

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