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→Reduction of practice: Reorder sentence.
A national election was held in the United Kingdom at the end of World War II. The Labour Party gained a majority of the seats in Parliament and its leader, Clement Atlee became prime minister. The party leaned to the left and supported social welfare. Aneurin Bevan was Minister of Health. The National Health Service (NHS) was created in 1948 to provide free medical treatment for all. Services were provided based on clinical need, not ability to pay.
Sir James Spence, a prominent senior British paediatrician, urged his younger colleague, [[Douglas Gairdner]], to produce a paper on infant circumcision. The now famous classic paper, ''The fate of the foreskin: a study of circumcision'', was published on Christmas Eve, 1949 in the ''British Medical Journal''on Christmas Eve, 1949. The paper reported 16 deaths per year from non-therapeutic infant circumcision and concluded in part: "'''The prepuce of the young infant should therefore be left in its natural state.'''"<ref name="gairdner1949">{{GairdnerDM 1949}}</ref>
The NHS provides male circumcision when there was a clinical need.<ref>{{REFweb
}}</ref>
The ''British Medical Journal'', the house organ of the British Medical Association, in an unsigned editorial in 29791979, slammed the practice of child circumcision, calling it unnecessary, and citing the danger of contracting staphylococcal infection in the newborn nursery. The editorial reported that the incidence of newborn circumcision in Britain had dropped from one-third in the 1930s to one
fifth in 1949, to ten percent in 1963, and to six percent in 1975.<ref name="bmj1979">{{REFjournal
|last=Anonymous