A study of the BMA-TUC Joint Committee on Medical Questions, 1935-1939

The BMA (British Medical Association)-TUC (Trades Union Congress) Joint Committee on Medical Questions, established in 1936, was an experiment in consensus. It was the first attempt to cross the barriers in medical politics. In the 1930s the strategy of 'administration rather than advocacy' prompted the co-operation of the TUC with the BMA on medical questions of mutual interest. The operation of the partnership is explored here in the formulation of a scheme for a national maternity service acceptable to both parties. However, the reality of co-operation at the level of specific proposals was an insistence by the BMA on its own point of view. The TUC had to decide whether a joint scheme was worth the price. Although a scheme was eventually produced, as an experiment in consensus the committee had failed. To some extent the war obscured this failure, but the consensus itself was wrecked by the intransigence of the BMA and the hostility of the Labour movement, which was angry at the extent of the concessions which the TUC had made for a national maternity scheme.