ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates how the causal factor has been adequately addressed by state welfarism, and that the neglect is reflected in the state’s failure to establish an occupational health service within the National Health Service (NHS) - thus meeting work-determined health inequalities head on. It argues that the NHS’s emphasis on cure rather than prevention resulted in the work wounded being patched up and returned to unsafe working environments. The chapter also argues that little positive contribution was made to addressing the root causes of occupation-related disease, mortality and morbidity from work-related disease. The initiation of the NHS in 1948 meant Britain once again led the world by providing free medical care to its entire population. In Britain, the evolution of occupational health has lagged well behind the development of industrial capitalism. The interface between medical knowledge and occupational health has also been slow to form.
