Hastings was founder President of the Socialist Medical Association (SMA) 1930–51.[4] He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War, followed by work as an aural surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital. He was a Member of the London County Council (LCC) for fourteen years. Edith Summerskill felt that the "idea of a National Health Service germinated in the hospitable atmosphere" of Hastings’ home.[5] He successfully proposed a resolution at the 1934 Labour Party Conference that the party should be committed to the establishment of a State Health Service.[6] He was a member of the Party's Medical Services sub-committee which produced the report A State Health Service which was accepted as the basis for the Party's policy.[7] He represented the LCC on the Nurses Salaries Committee which published two reports in 1943[8][9]
Death
Somerville Hastings died at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, on 7 July 1967, aged 89.[10]
Publications
Hastings was the author of:
Toadstools at Home (1906)
Wild Flowers at Home (1906)
Alpine Plants At Home (1908)
Summer Flowers Of The High Alps (1910)
First Aid for the Trenches (1917)
The Future of Medical Practice in EnglandThe Lancet (1928)
^First Report Of Nurses Salaries Committee Salaries And Emoluments Of Female Nurses In Hospitals. London: HMSO. 1943.
^Second Report of Nurses Salaries Committee Salaries and Emoluments of Male Nurses, Public Health Nurses, District Nurses And State Registered Nurses In Nurseries. HMSO. 1943.