The first all out nurses strike in London (?): Maudsley Hospital 1988

Striking nurses are in the news, a rare occasion but not unique. There was a wave of nurses strikes in Britain in 1988, starting with a one day walkout at North Manchester Hospital in January and spreading to hospitals in London and elsewhere. Nurses at the Maudsley Hospital in Denmark Hill were the first to strike in London, walking out for the day on 2 February 1988 a day ahead of a national day of action which saw strikes and protests in many places.

Above and below - pickets at the Maudsley on 2 February 1988

Militant, 5 February 1988

 

 The day of action on 3rd February included a march called by London hospital strike committees which was blocked by police in Whitehall with four arrests. I remember the demo moving to block the traffic on Westminster Bridge.  

Two weeks later on the 16th February there was a further day of action in London in which 12,000 hospital workers took part.  The day ended up with several hundred marching to the town hall in Brixton for a rally. Nurses at the Maudsley again went on strike.

Guardian, 17/2/1988

Another day of action on 14th March saw London bus crews, dockers, miners and others taking unofficial action in support of NHS workers. I was working at Lambeth Council at the time and some of us marched to join the protests outside the Maudsley Hospital and Kings Hospital on the other side of the road. I think it was on this day that I took these two rather poor pictures!

'we care, do you?- Kings Hospital, 1988

Pickets in the rain outside the Maudsley

Guardian, 15 March 1988

 It was very much a rank and file led movement with nurses at individual hospitals organising one day strikes and days of action with limited support from national unions. Nurses were divided between three unions- NUPE (National Union of Public Employees), COHSE (Confederation of Health Service Employees) and the Royal College of Nursing. The RCN was opposed to action, though many of its members argued at the time for it to change its no strike policy; the leaderships of the other unions were decidedly lukewarm. The TUC did call a big demonstration in support of the health service on 5th March, with a crowd of up to 100,000 in Hyde Park, though some angry nurses tried to storm the stage to speak as no health workers had been invited to address the crowd

The movement was largely successful. The Government had been planning to offer a 3% pay rise and was also intending to scrap national pay bargaining. In the event a new clinical grading structure resulted in average pay increases of 15%.

Concerns about whether the pay rises would actually be implemented led to another walk out at the Maudsley in September. This was one of the the first indefinite strikes by nurses in Britain, lasting for 12 days from 5 September 1988. 

Guardian, 6 September 1988

'Maudsley Hospital Nurses Strike... the strike is aimed at forcing the government to honour its promise made in May of this year to fully fund the new Clinical Grading system'

'COHSE Maudsley 898 Branch Strike Bulletin - A massive vote of congratulations to all those COHSE members who have contributed to making the first week of the (first ever) indefinite strike by Nurses such a huge success... The sunny weather and generous donations from passers by on Denmark Hill have confirmed that the public (and God!) are behind our struggle to get nurses the rewards they deserve to protect patient services from Tory policies'

As with all strikes in the NHS, workers did not simply abandon patients. As detailed above there was an agreement in place for strikers to provide cover in emergencies or if there was 'a dangerously high proportion of staff who do not know the ward'

 [update - as stated above, the Maudsley workers believed they were the first ever nurses to stage an indefinite strike, and this was how the strike was reported at the time. However Michael Walker at the COHSE history blog records an earlier indefinite strike at Tooting Bec Hospital in 1975. That lasted for two days, so the Maudsley strikers were certainly setting some kind of record with their 12 day walkout- at the very least the first nurses strike to last continuously for more than a week]

Cyclist deaths, 1914 and 2015

Cyclists lay down in the road and blocked traffic on Monday night in Camberwell, to mark the death on 29 May of Esther Hartsilver. Esther , a physiotherapist at Kings College Hosptial, was killed when hit by a lorry while cycling close to the hospital in Denmark Hill. She was the sixth cyclist killed on London's roads this year.

photo from report in Independent

Sadly, the death of cyclists on our roads is not new. I recently came across a similar tragedy from a hundred years ago, with a Lewisham cyclist being killed by a hit and run driver  in Baring Road, Lee. The Daiily Mirror reported:

'Search for Owner of Car That Was Driven Off After Fatal Collision.

 '...the police were still without a definite clue to the motor-car which was involved in a fatal collision with two cyclists at Lewisham on Saturday night and failed to stop after the accident. The cyclists were Mr. Harry Tyrell, of Lewisham, and Miss Caroline Wells, who lives in the same road. Mr. Tyrell was fatally injured and Miss Wells badly hurt. Shortly before the collision a policeman saw a man and woman cycling from the direction of Bromley towards Baring road, Lewisham. A little later he saw a dark-coloured low, open car, with two men in it, proceeding in the same direction. The car had a powerful head light'. (Daily Mirror,Tuesday 14 April 1914).

Lets hope we don't have to wait another hundred years for the roads to be safe for cyclists.

Lewisham Hospital latest - and my tour of A&E

Still waiting for the outcome of the judicial reviews into the Government's planned reductions in services at Lewisham Hospital. Two weeks ago at the High Court both the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign and Lewisham Council submitted their cases that the plans were unlawful.

Campaigners outside the Royal Courts of Justice on 2 July

On 29 June, the Campaign organised their own People's Commission at the Broadway Theatre in Catford. They say:

'The purpose of the People’s Commission was to hear the evidence which had been ignored by the Trust Special Administrator Matthew Kershaw and by Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt who accepted Kershaw’s proposals for Lewisham almost in their entirety.

In front of a packed audience in The Broadway Theatre Catford, a panel chaired by barrister Michael Mansfield QC and including Baroness Warnock and award-winning Lewisham author and journalist Blake Morrison, heard evidence from 25 witnesses – patients, patient group representatives, GPs, hospital consultants and nurses who were questioned by a team of barristers from Tooks Chambers.  More than 50 witnesses, including community members and faith leaders, gave written and video testimony, some of which was shown at the Commission hearing.

Lewisham Mayor Sir Steve Bullock and Lord David Owen spoke passionately in defence of Lewisham Hospital and the NHS.

The initial findings of the Panel are that:

- the consultation exercise was a sham.

- there was unanimous opposition from Lewisham GPs and the CCG to the option to close services at Lewisham Hospital.

- the decision to downgrade Lewisham in the manner described above has nothing to do with the provision of healthcare in SE London              

- the Minister's decision is based entirely on economic considerations and is an unvarnished sleight of hand to reconfigure finances not healthcare

- the proposals demonstrate a lamentable absence of evidence-led research

- where the proposals envisage new facilities there is no evidence to show how they would be implemented, nor what impact the removal of current resources would have on the community.

- the proposal for a small and safe A&E is a contradiction in terms and clearly does not accord with basic clinical  requirements.

- the midwife-led birth unit presents no clinical sense

- a walk-in paediatric urgent care service has no clear parameters, is unsafe and unsustainable.

The panel was also concerned that an admirable record of training at Lewisham Hospital will also fall victim to the proposed changes'.

My tour of South London A&E

As it happened, I spent the day of the Commission in Accident and Emergency with an eye injury. One of the issues with the plans is that people from Lewisham would have to travel further to get care. In some cases that could be a matter of life and death, my case wasn't that serious but I can say that when you are suffering in pain every moment of delay in getting treatment feels like an eternity. It was bad enough being stuck in the traffic in Ladywell, it would have been much worse if I had had to get to Woolwich.

I did (eventually) get some great care, getting to be seen by a specialist doctor which made me very thankful for the NHS. My experience certainly reconfirmed my opposition to cuts in services, but also made me aware of how simply defending the current services is not enough. Hospital services are already under-resourced and over-stretched, sometimes leaving patients in limbo waiting hours with nobody telling them what's going on. 

In my case, I was told at Lewisham that I should have gone to Kings College Hospital as Lewisham didn't have an ophthalmologist. After some pain relief at Lewisham  I ended up going to Kings in Camberwell later on. I don't know how Kings would cope with the increase in patients it would face if Lewisham A&E closes. Along with most people there I waited several hours to be seen after a quick initial chat with the triage nurse. I don't doubt that were people who were more of a priority than me, but they were plainly understaffed. There were times on a busy Saturday night in casualty when there appeared to be nobody on duty at the front desk - people wandering in off the streets to find that both the triage nurse and the admin/receptionist were temporarily off somewhere else. Maybe the hospital was saving its staff to make sure it looked better on Channel 4's 24 Hours in A&E, currently being filmed there!

(on a personal note, my eyes are now fine. Several people have told me that I would have been better off going to Moorfields Eye Hospital Accident and Emergency by Old Street Station, which treats people from all over London and beyond. Maybe, it is good to have specialist centres like that, but it also very important that people can get urgent treatment closer to home. I was lucky enough to have someone to take care of me and drive me around, as I was temporarily blinded, don't know how I would have coped on public transport).

Ellie Veale from Hither Green on top of Mount Kilimanjaro with a Save Lewisham Hospital poster