HOSPITAL doctors don’t normally found political parties but Clive Peedell is not your run-of-themill consultant. Despite having a punishing work schedule, as a busy cancer specialist at The James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, Clive finds the energy to campaign relentlessly against what he sees is the creeping privatisation of the NHS.

Last year he attracted national headlines by running 160 miles from Cardiff – the power base of NHS founder Nye Bevan – to the Department of Health’s headquarters in London to raise awareness of what Dr Peedell sees as the Coalition Government’s threat to the NHS.

In fact, the consultant was recently elected as joint leader of a new political party – The NHS Action Party – which plans to field up to 50 candidates at the next General Election.

While he has decided not to stand – because of the impact this would have on his patients and his love of medicine – he will do his utmost to ensure the party will be a thorn in the side of all the major parties at the polls.

But where did he get what he calls “the fire in my belly” to defend what is probably Britain’s best-loved institution.

Dr Peedell says he was completely non-political in his younger days.

But some unusual aspects of his start in life may have some bearing on his later political views. While he was born in Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, Clive came from a pretty ordinary background.

“My dad was a bricklayer and my mum was a medical secretary and I was the first person in my family to go to university,” the consultant says.

Because his parents “sacrificed a lot in order for me to get a good education”

the young Clive went to Magdalene College School, a fee-paying institution, founded in 1480, next to Magdalene College.

The investment clearly paid off for the young doctor who became a consultant at 32. “I only made the decision to go into medicine when I was 16. I was too into football to think about anything else before that.”

His patients might be impressed that the teenage Clive had professional trials for his local football club, Oxford United, as well as Leyton Orient, in London.

“I wasn’t good enough at the end of the day, but it was a great experience and a I still play football now.”

Clive studied medicine at Southampton University, where he “played football and had a few beers”

on his way to graduating.

After training at various locations – including five years studying cancer medicine in Leeds – he was appointed as a consultant at James Cook, in 2004. It was three years later when Clive began to develop a keen interest in what politicians were doing to the NHS.

“Around 2007, there was a change to medical training which I felt was a serious threat to the professionalism of doctors. They were talking about creating a new sub-consultant grade, and people were saying that this was part of a privatisation agenda driven by companies seeking the cheapest people, who had ticked certain boxes rather than the best.”

That’s when the Teesside consultant began reading up about the politics of healthcare.

“I started to understand what the NHS is all about and how the health care system had become increasingly commercialised and Americanised because of piecemeal changes.”

Clive was dismayed how this could be happening under a socialist government.

“This was happening under New Labour, which was remarkable. You had a social democratic government that was making more Thatcherite reforms than Mrs T would have dared to make.”

His first step towards activism was to join a pressure group for junior doctors called Remedy UK. Ironically, considering his recent criticism of former Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, Clive recalls sharing a speaking platform with the then Shadow Health Secretary, at a rally organised by Remedy UK in 2007.

“It was my first political speech in front of 12,000 doctors, so it was quite a scary experience,” he says.

By campaigning with Remedy UK – which had about 6,000 members – changes were made to the training proposals, which were generally welcomed by junior doctors.

“That was my first taste of activism, which I enjoyed,” says Clive, who used his membership of a social media website for doctors – called Doctorsnet – as a launch-pad for a career in medical politics.

“From Doctorsnet I got pretty well-known, which led to me be being elected on to the national council of the British Medical Association.”

Once inside the BMA, Clive started campaigning against privatisation of the NHS, which he’s continued to this day.

He was also invited to be co-chair of the NHS Consultants Association, a 700-strong group of specialists set up to defend the NHS.

“We are a pressure group that supports the founding principles of the NHS and opposes the marketisation of healthcare. I am not against a market in drugs and medical devices, these are global industries and you can’t nationalise the production of CT scanners or drugs, that is a nonsense, but what you can nationalise is the delivery of healthcare.”

Clive has been in the forefront of opposition to the Coalition Government’s Health and Care Bill, which recently became law. He and his supporters are convinced that the legislation is a threat to the collaborative spirit within the Health Service and will result in the privatisation of more and more NHS services.

HE argues that the Coalition has “no democratic mandate”

for the changes to the NHS.

While Clive has decided not to stand for Parliament – because he wants to concentrate on medicine – he believes his activism could be his most important contribution to the NHS.

“In the long run, I could do a lot more for the Health Service by raising awareness of the damage being done to it as I could in my career as an oncologist. If I can help to keep the NHS together and stop it being fragmented, that would make a bigger difference.”