The War on Error

I have nothing against Neville Chamberlain.

Contrary to the ugly rumours put about by Dr Mustard, I did not actually know him personally. I admit that his nickname, "The Coroner", has occasionally given me pause for thought, and "Approaching dissolution brings relief" as a deathbed contribution to debate, given what was happening in Europe in 1940, was maybe a tad insensitive.

However, let's cut the man some slack. He had just singlehandedly proven, beyond reasonable doubt, that personal diplomacy and appeasement as negotiating tools are the useless last resorts of the fucking moronic.

Don't misunderstand me. I do not believe that Neville could have in any way avoided the carnage of the Second World War. True, he might just as well have taken a Community Mental Health Team to Munich and relied upon a touch of multiskilled crisis-intervention, as attempt to become bestest friends with Herr Hitler. I DO think that a swift sledgehammer to Adolf's Uniball may well have helped matters, particularly if this could have been made to look like an accident, but I can see the problems with this approach and anyway, basically we were stuffed.

The whole unhappy incident did have one solid-gold, no-shit Sherlock outcome. It established for all time that appeasement cannot work. A millisecond of analysis suggests it never could. Used transitively the verb assumes an aggressor; it means "making concessions to an aggressor in an attempt to preserve peace". Its logical extensions are subjection and surrender.


So why has this discredited, suicidal approach been adopted by the GMC and the BMA as their policy of choice in dealing with a blatantly, rabidly anti-doctor government? Why am I always being told that "He who pays the piper calls the fucking tune"?

My theory...and didn't you just know I was going to have one...is that appeasement is hard-wired; it is the reflex response of the well-meaning but weak-minded to terrorism. It surfaces particularly when those being terrorised are slow, or unwilling, to wake up and smell the shit.

Consider if you will the definition of terrorism, "The systematic employment of intimidation (and/or violence) to coerce a community (or government) into acceding to specific political demands". Now there's a process anyone working in the beleaguered NHS has to recognise.

A few years ago, during the protracted Consultant and GP contract "negotiations", those of us with "reservations" were routinely dismissed as paranoid, non-believers in the good faith and good intentions of Tony and his less than Merry Men. We were alarmists with attitude and trust (or perhaps Primary Care Trust?) issues, pitifully unable to accept it would all be alright on the night.

Well, Hello?

Medical Education has been comprehensively hijacked. Modernising Medical Careers is effectively disempowering existing potential dissenters. It has been made all too clear to any SHOs with a mind not to join the Hitler Youth, that they can just fuck off. The pogrom against International Medical Graduates was swift, silent and shamefully unremarked. On a personal level, my pension is being held hostage and has just had its bleeding head cut off.

And, most importantly, our pitiful capitulation and disempowerment means that the NHS, and all who fail in her, is about to be handed over to United Wealth as our REAL final payment on the Marshall plan. This at a time when the great health divide in our rich country is assuming Grand Canyon proportions.

Belatedly, the BMA are showing signs of recognising the error of assuming they are dealing with the well-intentioned. They are beginning to realise that the piper calling the tune is a tone-deaf psychopath with no musical or medical knowledge and highly questionable friends.

But really they, and we, have no more right to be surprised at the catastrophic, destructive chaos enveloping our Health Service than Neville Chamberlain had to wonder, and I paraphrase here, "What the fuck are those tanks doing in Prague?"