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]

The Covid Memorial Wall

The National Covid Memorial Wall has been painted over the last month by volunteers along the South Bank of the Thames between Lambeth Bridge and Westminster Bridge, opposite the Houses of Parliament, and including the riverside wall in front of St Thomas' Hospital. There are around 150,000 hearts, each representing one of the UK Covid dead (so far) and many of them dedicated to named individuals. This unofficial memorial was started by people involved with Covid-19 Bereaved Families For Justice UK.

It is hard to do justice to the scale of this monument in photographs, stretching as it does for around 500 metres. I strongly recommend that if you get the chance you visit it yourself.

Harder too to keep a dry eye as you read the names and messages on the wall, and feel a rising sense of sadness and anger.

The impact of Covid is so often rendered as a series of statistics in which the individual lives lost and damaged are rendered invisible, the wall places these lives back at the centre - mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, lovers and friends.

'The UK has one of the highest death tolls in the world. While many have become used to seeing the statistics associated with Covid-19, it is important to remember that each one of these numbers represents a loved person, a life gone too soon and a family torn apart. Our loved ones were not just numbers, but treasured relatives who will be missed forever.

As more and more information comes to light, it has become clear that the UK hasn’t ended up with one of the highest death tolls in the world by coincidence. Gaps in the country’s pandemic preparedness, delays to locking down, inadequate supplies of PPE and the policy of discharging into care homes among other issues have all been identified as having contributed to the level of the death toll. Despite this, the government continues to refer to its ‘apparent success’ and being ‘proud’ of its record. Not only is this deeply hurtful for bereaved families who have already gone through a traumatic loss to hear, but this reluctance to engage honestly with what has gone wrong is a barrier to learning. Every day the government fails to learn lessons, more families are going through the same loss and trauma. It is heart breaking to see the same mistakes repeated over and over'

(Covid 19 Bereaved Families for Justice)

Most of the names on the memorial are of UK dead but good to see acknowledgement too of the global dimension of the pandemic including a heart for Li Wenliang, the Wuhan doctor who was one of the first to raise the alarm about Covid.

'When politicians and experts say that they are willing to allow tens of thousands of premature deaths for the sake of population immunity or in the hope of propping up the economy, is that not premeditated and reckless indifference to human life? If policy failures lead to recurrent and mistimed lockdowns, who is responsible for the resulting non-covid excess deaths? When politicians wilfully neglect scientific advice, international and historical experience, and their own alarming statistics and modelling because to act goes against their political strategy or ideology, is that lawful? Is inaction, action? How big an omission is not acting immediately after the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020? At the very least, covid-19 might be classified as “social murder”'

(Kamran Abbasi, Covid-19: Social murder, they wrote—elected, unaccountable, and unrepentant, British Medical Journal editorial, 4 February 2021)

The transpontine people in Exile (1846)

Here's some more 19th century uses of the word 'transpontine' in a South London context. Interestingly two of them feature Westminster Bridge. If the word literally means something like 'over the bridge', we should remember that Westminster Bridge was the only the third bridge to be built over the Thames in London, after London Bridge and Putney Bridge. The original Westminster Bridge, built in the 18th century, was in poor condition by the time of these articles and in fact a new bridge was built in 1862.

At the time of the first article in 1846 the Bridge was evidently closed leading Punch magazine to joke about 'the transpontine people' on the southern shore descending into 'barbarism'

'The Exiles of Lambeth

Lambeth has become a sort of Siberia since the stopping up of Westminster Bridge, for there is now literally no communication between the inhabitants of the northern shore and the transpontine people. All means of social intercourse are completely cut off, and Astley’s Amphitheatre might as well be on Salisbury Plain, as far as there is any possibility of getting to it from any part of Westminster. We have heard of vessels wrecked in sight of port, but here is a place of amusement remaining comparatively empty, with crowds walking within a stone’s throw and unable to get to it.

Lambeth is in a state of utter desolation, and the principal street reminds one of a strada in Pompeii. A civil war might break out and all be over before any one on this side of the Thames could know anything about it. The people are becoming quite isolated from the rest of their fellow subjects, and the interests of civilisation are severely suffering. Already Lambeth is a week behind us in the polite arts, and every day that the blockade continues will send them backward four-and-twenty hours towards the barbarism which it has taken centuries to get out of. We should not be at all surprised at hearing through some circuitous channel that provisional government has been established in the New-cut, and that the whole of the Marsh has thrown off its allegiance. During the stoppage of Westminster Bridge the Lambethites are aliens in geography, not in blood, and we can scarcely expect submission when protection is not afforded (Punch, reprinted in Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle - 6 September 1846)

Chartists on the bridge

The second example is from a report of the great Chartist demonstration of April 1848:

'It would be perhaps difficult to define the precise nature of the political opinions of the Jack Cades and Wat Tylers who swarmed about Trafalgar-square, Parliament-street, and Westminster Bridge, as the expression of their opinions was confined to most discordant yells and sarcastic shouts whenever a band of special constables appeared. And, as these motley groups were marshalled, they presented a somewhat quaint appearance, from the odd jumble of aristocrats and mechanics, making a sort of "Constable's Miscellany." But they, as well as the more practised policeman, did their duty manfully, and promptly silenced the lively vociferations of the rebellious rabble. Soon after one o'clock there was a slight collision, but the multitude at once discovered that they were not to be the master, and the Plebs made a retreat more precipitate than Parthian. The softer sex seemed to predominate, and it really was a marvel where all these women could have come from. They halloed and shouted and jumped about, running to and fro with the most surprising activity; and these chaste Chartists were the most resolute foes with whom the police had to deal.

Lord Frank Gordon, with Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence, and some listless Life Guardsmen, were leaning out of a window, but their uniform did not appear to excite what Horace calls the pus of the people half so much as the sight of the more sombre trappings of the police. The decrepid piles of poor old Westminster Bridge could hardly bear at one time the crowds who thronged over its crazy arches. We expected here to have found it rivalling the glories of the Pont d'Arcole; but it more resembled the Pons Asinorum, and was cleared in a most summary manner by the indefatigable heroes of Scotland-yard, who allowed none but respectable and peaceably-disposed persons to pass over; and thus the transpontine passengers soon became as select a field as after a sharp burst with the Quorn or Pytchley'  (Morning Post - Tuesday 11 April 1848)

Some other examples...

'a musical mania seems to have taken possession of the transpontine population'

(Sunday 24 August 1851,  Reynolds's Newspaper)

'The piece is wholly destitute of literary merit, and the acting is of that school which excites the enthusiasm of our transpontine public'

(Tuesday 4 November 1851,  Morning Post)

'The whole action and tone were, in the highest degree, melodramatic, and would have drawn immense applause from a transpontine pit and gallery'

(Friday 21 March 1856 , Elgin Courant and Morayshire Advertiser)

'They came in groups across Westminster-bridge, from the transpontine districts of Southwark and Lambeth” (20 April 1855,  Morning Chronicle  - describing crowds during French Emperor's visit)