RCGP at 70

The College celebrates its 70th anniversary in November, and a range of national and local Faculty events are being planned throughout the year across the whole of the UK to mark the event – including the joint RCGP/ Wonca Europe conference in June.

While the RCGP in 2022 looks very different to how it did in 1952, our mission remains the same: Cum Scientia Caritas – to deliver compassionate care with knowledge.

RCGP original logo

When the NHS was set up in 1948, general practice was in decline and struggling to cope. Matters came to a head following the publication of the critical Collings report in 1950, which highlighted the perilous state of British general practice, with demoralised doctors, hurried work, and poor facilities.

It was against this background that a few influential GPs began to develop the idea of a college. These doctors shared a belief that what was needed was an academic body to support good standards of practice, education and research, such as already existed for other medical specialties.

Such a college, they argued, could provide leadership for the many doctors who were passionate about working for better standards in general practice, and make it possible to attract young doctors of the highest quality.

In 1951, Dr John Hunt and Dr Fraser Rose published a joint letter in the British Medical Journal and The Lancet seeking support. The response from grassroots GPs was overwhelmingly enthusiastic – but it was far from plain sailing, with a lot of resistance and hostility, including from other Royal Medical Colleges.

Original letter to The Lancet by Drs Rose and Hunt

RCGP archives

Later that year Hunt, Rose and a small group of doctors met to form a Steering Committee. At its final session in November 1952, nine months after its inception, the College of General Practitioners was legally constituted.

Its Foundation Council comprised just one woman, Annis Gillie, who went on to become the College’s first female Chair in 1959 and President in 1964. In 1972, we were granted our Royal Charter and became the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Dr John Hunt

RCGP archives

Dr Fraser Rose

RCGP archives

Today, we are the UK’s largest Medical Royal College with a thriving community of over 54,000 members.

New RCGP 70th anniversary logo

As general practice has changed over the past 70 years, so the College membership has changed.

In 1952, under 10% of general practitioners were women – today there are more women GPs than men. A third of College members are women under the age of 45 and International Medical Graduates make up 29% of our membership.

Unlike other medical Royal Colleges, the RCGP has a Chair and a President, and we have had six women Chairs so far, including three in succession – Clare Gerada, Maureen Baker and Helen Stokes-Lampard from 2010 to 2019 – meaning that the College had a female Chair for almost a decade, something no other medical Royal College has achieved. To mark the start of our 70th anniversary year, 30 Euston Square is hosting an exhibition – Women at the heart of general practice – exploring the roles that women have played in general practice through the College’s history and earlier.

RCGP chairs 2010-2019, Clare Gerada, Maureen Baker, Helen Stokes-Lampard

Dr Mayur Lakhani became the first Chair from an ethnic minority community in 2004 and President in 2017. Mayur is a British Indian whose family fled to the UK as refugees to escape Idi Amin’s brutal regime in Uganda, 50 years ago this year.

Then RCGP President Mayur Lakhani at a New Members' Ceremony in 2018

We have also had a Royal President – our patron, the late Duke of Edinburgh became President for a year to mark our 50th anniversary in 2002. Prince Philip visited the College to formally open our new London headquarters at 30 Euston Square in 2014.

The College was based at 14 Princes Gate in Kensington for over 40 years – hence the naming of the Princes Gate room in 30 Euston Square.

30 Euston Square has been our headquarters since 2012 and is our fourth headquarters. One of its former uses was as the Department of Health and Social Security.

After the First World War, Princes Gate was offered to the American government as a home for their ambassadors. Eight ambassadors and their families lived there from 1921 to the mid-1950s, including Joseph P Kennedy, father of future American President John F Kennedy. It then became the headquarters of the Independent Television Authority for six years until the College bought it in 1962.

In April 1980, it inadvertently became the backdrop for one of the most defining moments in British history when the College had to be evacuated due to the Iranian Embassy siege next door. The SAS (Special Air Service) took over the College’s rooms to plot their movements to end the siege – including abseiling from the roof and forcing the windows. The siege lasted for six days and two hostages were killed, two wounded and one SAS soldier wounded (see above).

Courtesy of Combined Military Services Museum, Maldon, Essex

Five of the gunmen were killed and one captured, going on to serve 27 years in prison. No College members or staff were harmed.

Back to the present day and general practice is no longer the ‘cottage industry’ it was in 1952. Even before the pandemic, it was clear that the NHS cannot survive without thriving primary care provision. General practice is the bedrock of the NHS, easing the pressure on other parts of the service and delivering safe care to patients in their communities, close to home. It is also the most cost-effective arm of the NHS, delivering excel- lent value for money to the taxpayer and public purse.

Just as John Hunt, Fraser Rose and their forward-thinking colleagues envisioned, the College continues to support GPs in their care of patients by offering lifelong learning and CPD courses and events, both locally through our Faculty network and nationally – and increasingly online to accommodate GPs’ busy lives.

Unfortunately, general practice in 2022 is again under enormous strain due to a lack of investment by successive governments across the UK for over a decade. Therefore, a great deal of College time and effort is spent on campaigning to get GPs the support they need, both financial and staffing, to do their jobs – and to protect our members’ own welfare and wellbeing to prevent them from burning out or leaving the profession.

We set standards for general practice through our College exam, the MRCGP. First established in 1968 as a requirement for College membership, the MRCGP became the only route into general practice for trainee GPs in 2007. Without the College there would be no new GPs and the MRCGP guarantees that all new qualified GPs can deliver the same high quality of safe care to patients wherever they are trained, due to a universal GP curriculum developed by the College.

On the research front, the College’s Research and Surveillance Centre is an internationally renowned network that collects and monitors data from more than 1700 GP practices across England and Wales. As well as its weekly report on flu prevalence and other illnesses such as chickenpox, it played a lead role in the Covid pandemic, rapidly evaluating different treatments to stem the progression of the virus, particularly in elderly and clinically vulnerable patients.

College President Dame Clare Gerada, who is a GP in south London and who is leading the 70th anniversary plans, said: “Despite the pressures we’re all under, I hope that all our members will be able to celebrate what the College has achieved over the past 70 years and what hardworking GPs, past and present, have achieved in caring for generations of patients and in making general practice the speciality it is today.“

“The College is its members and we are proud to be representing family doctors, both across the UK and internationally, 70 years on.” •