Events Leading up to the Formation of the Steering Committee

Abstract

During the next hundred years (1850–1950), an academic body to represent general practitioners was again considered occasionally, but no other serious or combined attempts were made to follow up the matter. In 1944 Frank Gray¹ referred to it and, during the next seven years, several others spoke or wrote of a possible new college². When the National Health Service was being planned many general practitioners felt lost without headquarters of their own, just as they had done more than a century before. After the introduction of the National Health Service in 1949, and the publication of the Collings Report³ this need was appreciated more and more, and it was realized that there was a danger of general practitioners becoming isolated and of many of the standards and traditions of good general practice being lost. For too long, it was argued, had general practitioners carried on without headquarters, without academic leadership of their own, without much influence over undergraduate or postgraduate teaching, and without the status of their specialist colleagues. Specialists had rightly and properly built up for themselves their colleges, hospitals, diagnostic facilities, and many other things to help them in both the practical and academic aspects of their work and in research.

Geoffrey O. Barber, A. Talbot Rogers, Richard Scott and others have all helped greatly with their recollections of the early days of the College