Black Nurses: The Women Who Saved the NHS

July 22 2013

and Prince George, like countless royal princes before him

is presented to the nation by his proud parents.

This timeless scene is part of our national story.

He's a big boy. He's quite heavy.

Standing discreetly behind him is a black woman -

their midwife, Jacqui Dunkley-Bent.

Jacqui and women like her have played a part in our story, too,

and this was their moment.

Thinking about that time in my life, around the royal births,

the midwives were very proud

and there were many midwives from BME extraction who talked about

showing their children the television.

In all honesty, I was overwhelmed by the impact

that it had had on others.

Jacqui and her colleague Arona Ahmed

were following in the footsteps of thousands

of Caribbean and African women

whose contribution over the years has largely gone unnoticed.

Those days, people, when you put on this uniform,

and your hat and your apron and your belt,

the people respected you for that.

Oh, I couldn't part with this.

This is history.

And yet they have helped create and sustain the NHS for almost 70 years.

Without those nurses,

we would not have the National Health Service we have now.

There is no doubt in my mind

that those of us who migrated into England,

to the National Health Service, saved it.

They looked after us even at the expense

of caring for their own families.

My children were always complaining that they never saw me.

They never... You know, "What is happening, Mum?

"Are these women going to stop having babies?"

The nation has much to thank them for, but we haven't always shown it.

When I turned up on the doorstep, they didn't want me,

herself and her husband.

"I don't want a black nurse coming into my house.

"I want my own midwife."

If you complained about me being black,

there's nothing I can change about it. That's who I am, a black woman,

who happened to be a nurse, caring for you.

I don't know if any of this is familiar.

It shows life at Musgrove in the '40s, '50s and '60s.

-Yes.

-So, were you here in the '50s?

-I was here in the late '50s.

-And the Queen Mother came?

-And the Queen Mother came.

And I remember us forming a guard of honour for her.

And you can see that we were wearing our yellow dresses and white aprons,

with our caps on.

It is really a special day.

78-year-old Lynette Richards-Lorde qualified as a nurse in 1962

at Musgrove Park Hospital in Somerset,

before going on to become a midwife.

We had our training school,

that was...

and I think the maternity wards were on the other side of the building,

but these were all general wards.

It was very hard work, because you had three years of training,

and your first year, your first year, you were, like...

in sluice.

Bedpans. You were the bedpan queen.

You made them shine and you cleaned them,

that was your job,

but when you became a second-year nurse

and you passed your first exams,

that was when you started doing the interesting jobs.

-That's Anita.

-Oh!

She's from Guyana, like me.

I remember being in that group there.

She was a good friend.

When I became a second-year nurse,

I was supposed to graduate from the bedpans and start doing nice jobs.

There was an English girl who was in my set and she,

she was doing these things, but I was still doing bedpans.

And I mentioned this to the sister. She said, "Well, you know,

"your turn will come." So I didn't wait for my turn.

I went to the matron and I said to her,

"Matron, this is what is happening to me."

And she said, "You leave it with me, Lynette.

"I will see to it."

By the time I went back to the ward, things had changed.

You have to give me some of your nursing skills

that you've imposed over the years.

Oh, I'm sure you can teach me a few things, too.

-We'll teach each other, then.

-Yes, we will teach other.

This is sort of a very typical ward, what it was like.

-Yes, Nightingale Wards.

-Nightingale Ward, yes.

And everything had to be straight,

you know, all the patients,

they can't be lying on top of the bed, they have to be in the bed,

that type of thing.

You know, it was very, sort of, army-style.

Lynette's journey to Nightingale Wards had its roots in a time

when the country needed help to repair the damage of war.

Health Minister Aneurin Bevan wasn't shy of declaring his ambition

for his new National Health Service in 1948.

I'm proud about the National Health Service.

It's a piece of real socialism.

It's a piece of real Christianity too, you know,

and there is nowhere in any nation in the world,

communist or capitalist, any health service to compare with.

APPLAUSE

But there just weren't enough

doctors, nurses and midwives to run it.

The National Health Service, at that time, was straining again,

as it is now, under the weight of what it needed to deliver

and there were not enough nurses.

There were not enough nurses to do the job.

On July 5th, the new National Health Service starts,

providing hospital and specialist services, medicines,

drugs and appliances.

Months into its launch, Bevan announced that the popularity

of the service meant it was costing nearly 30% more

than he had anticipated.

The cost of prescription charges,

dentistry and eye care was crippling the service

and creating a staffing crisis.

It was only a matter of time before the government would have to look

beyond its borders for help.

Within 12 months of the NHS being created,

a report came out which identified there was a shortage,

they needed another 40-odd thousand nurses and midwives.

So, really, from 1949 onwards,

there was actually a proactive campaign done

by the Department of Health and the Minister of Labour

where they went out to the Caribbean and other parts of the Commonwealth

to attract and recruit nurses.

We helped the mother country during war,

we were now being called upon by the mother country

to help them in another hour of need.

This was not the war.

This was care of the British public at time of illness.

Thousands of young women answered the call over the years,

many with their own reasons for wanting to leave home.

I came here pursuing a nursing career.

All I wanted, ever, was to be a nurse.

Zena Edmund-Charles came to the UK from Jamaica in 1956, aged 24,

set on fulfilling her childhood dream.

At the age of five,

I told my teachers, family, friends, everybody,

that I want to be a nurse

and I'm going to be a nurse.

At the age of 16, my father, he was a minister,

and he thought I was too scornful to do nursing,

so he discouraged me from nursing.

My mother was a seamstress, so he said, "Take your mother's trade

"or be a teacher."

I wasn't interested in either.

This is my original uniform.

It's something that is the most precious thing that I have.

It's my pride and joy.

Beverley Chapman arrived in September 1969 as an 18-year-old

with a burning sense of national pride.

I remember mainly one of the things that the lady said to me

at the embassy. "What do you feel about yourself...

"as somebody that was born in Jamaica, going to England?"

And I remember saying,

"I am an ambassador to Jamaica."

I said that I will always put forward the best,

the best of Jamaica as I walk round England and nurse people.

In 1956, 18-year-old Jean Gay came to the UK

to escape the cultural constraints of her life in Barbados.

God rest my mum, but I was motivated to come to England

because I was in this very strict home.

We went to church most days of the week

and then two or three times on Sundays and so on and so forth.

And I just, you know, I wanted to

go to the pictures and I wanted to go to a party

and to dance and stuff like that.

I had this ambition - I wanted to swear.

It wasn't allowed in my mum's home!

And so on, so...

..when I got to England, the first thing I was going to do

was to swear at somebody.

In some cases, families helped save money

and in others, government bonds were purchased

by the young would-be nurses and midwives

to secure their passage to the mother country.

I came by boat, it was a 21-day voyage.

The ship was called the SS Auriga.

Others arrived by air,

all were expecting an idealised vision of England,

influenced by Shakespeare, Bronte and traditional country pursuits.

I remember being on this very nice train and everything was grey.

Grey. Very, very grey.

It was sort of scary, but it was adventurous at the same time.

We ended up at King's Cross

and train stations in Jamaica are in the open air

and there you can see the sky.

You can see fields, you can see cows and the odd sheep.

This was this cathedral of steam

or smoke. It was...

It was like something out of a novel.

I was completely transfixed by the noise and the smell.

It was filthy.

I couldn't believe that I was in London.

I thought it was the ugliest, the darkest,

the most dismal place I had ever seen.

My father had a brother in England.

When I came to London, I had to get in touch with him.

When I got to his house, they didn't have a bath.

And I thought, "No, this is England. Is this...?"

And I realised it was normal.

And I asked him, I said, "Where's your bath?

"Where do you all bathe?"

And he said, "Oh, well, we don't.

"We go once a week to Caledonian Road baths."

And I...

I thought, "But this is my father's brother.

"He's a West Indian, how could he live and not bathe?!"

SHE LAUGHS

This is something that's inherent with us.

You bathe twice a day, minimum, in Trinidad, you know? And I thought,

"My God, he's really lived here a long time."

The women had little time to adjust

before being sent to their training hospitals around the country.

There they would encounter long hours, low wages and little sleep.

For those who could stand the pace,

it was the start of a lifetime working for the NHS.

When we started in the training, we used to go to a classroom

and we were taught the theory of nursing.

And then they had another room,

which they called the practical room.

They had dummies and you were shown how to wash patients and so on.

We had things like, what they call the pressure areas,

show you how to rub the backs and rub the bottoms,

and you were shown how to do the injections, that type of thing.

And then, after three months,

you took an exam and you were sent to the wards,

that's when you were let loose to the patients. Right?

SHE LAUGHS

Poor patients!

By 1955, recruitment was still ongoing

despite tens of thousands of black nurses having arrived in the UK -

the majority coming from the Caribbean.

But there was a catch.

It seemed not all NHS recruits were created equal.

State Enrolled Nurses sat a two-year course

and were seen as practical support staff,

as opposed to the State Registered Nurses who trained for three years

and were eligible for promotion to roles such as ward sister.

Many black women, regardless of ability,

were funnelled into the Junior SEN category

right up until it was abolished in the mid-1980s.

There are also a lot of very negative cultural assumptions going on.

There was an expectation that they would not be able to cope

with the higher nursing qualification

of the State Registered Nurse,

compared to the slightly lower one

of the State Enrolled Nurse.

And a lot of them ended up on the State Enrolled Nurse programme,

which was an inferior qualification,

didn't have international recognition,

and they didn't realise until it was too late to opt out.

I felt like I was nothing.

I was just a slave. Just...

Just taken for granted.

I feel low, very low,

as if I was inferior.

They made you feel like that.

They did, they made you feel like that.

And the funny thing, I'm a very outspoken person,

but then I swallowed my pride because I wanted to achieve.

Life in the mother country was proving to be far more challenging

than they had expected as they strive to build careers.

Many white patients just didn't want to be treated by black nurses.

They never prepared you for how the patients would treat you

and, you know, they'd slap your hand away

and say, "Don't touch me."

And, you know, "Your black is going to rub off."

I was looking after this woman, she said, "Don't touch me!

"Don't touch me! Take your black hands off! Nigger! Nigger!

"Go back to your country! Don't touch me! Don't touch me!"

"What kind of houses you all lived in?

"Is it mud hut, or treehouses?

"Is it true that black people's got tails?"

This man called me, you know, black bastard.

And I just screamed at him,

and I said, "Oh, I am so sick to death of you!"

I said, "Now tell me something I don't know. Surprise me.

"Tell me something I don't know."

How could people actually look at you without knowing you

and make assumptions about you that were so horrible?

You just reached a stage you cannot believe that this is the country

that you are told is your mother country.

You can't believe that this degree of ignorance exists.

I knew I couldn't change being black,

and as long as my behaviour,

my care was impeccable,

you couldn't find anything to complain about my care,

if you complained about me being black,

there's nothing I can change about it. That's who I am,

a black woman, who happened to be a nurse,

caring for you.

Outside of the workplace, life was proving just as difficult.

The 1948 Nationality Act had granted all subjects of Crown Colonies

a legal right to live and work in the UK.

But there was no law against prejudice.

They're a nuisance at work,

they won't work,

and for folks who've got them living by them,

they're more nuisance still.

I've got to bring this little boy up amongst them and...

they're not clean.

And the smell of the cooking makes you feel sick.

You can get them all out of the country

and as soon as you can get them out, the better.

I'll be pleased, I'll tell you that.

Although thousands from the Caribbean and Africa had been asked

for help, the public, and perhaps the government,

did not expect or want these economic migrants

to stay more than a few years.

When people were first invited,

it was very much on the idea that it would be temporary.

There wouldn't be that many. That was how it was sold.

You're talking mid-'50s, when it became, as large numbers, 20,000,

30,000 a year. Then it becomes clear this is going to be people staying.

This is going to be people bringing families.

This is really when "Keep Britain White" emerges,

when the more overt forms of racism emerge,

because Britain never wanted us here.

The British people never invited us here, the British state didn't

really want us to stay here. It was just to fill a void.

On the streets and the pubs and the factories,

the government did not communicate to white people that, by the way,

we are inviting people from the Caribbean to work and keep jobs,

we need this labour.

Please welcome them with open arms.

I didn't feel in any way strange when they started talking about

immigrants coming in and taking their jobs,

because I knew, one, it wasn't true.

I knew that immigrants got the jobs that they didn't want to do.

I've known that all along.

They thought we would come in, run the buses,

work at Lyons, do the nursing,

and all the other things that we did, and we would go home at night

and somehow, miraculously,

wherever we came from, we would fly back in the following morning

to continue our shifts.

It wouldn't... How we lived in the interim was of no concern to them.

Some of the women who did want to return home with experience

and qualifications under their belt found that they couldn't afford to.

It became apparent after a year or so

that this plan is not going to work.

Firstly, one wasn't saving any money, there wasn't enough to save.

The wages were small.

Other needs were met, we were fed and sheltered,

but the actual cash you had in your hand at the end of a month

would be £9 or £10.

To get back by air at the time, when I enquired, was £500.

Our parents wouldn't have had that sort of money.

Having helped us to get to England,

there was no money to bring us back home.

I felt out of sorts

and I remember calling my mother up,

made a reverse charge call to Jamaica, and this long sob story

and she says, "You are a Tate

"and Tates do not quit.

"Furthermore, you are 4,000 miles from Jamaica,

"there are no buses to Jamaica," and put the phone down.

That was it. I had to shape up.

There was no... There was no excuse. There was no...

"I know I can't, because..."

That's not how I was raised

and that's not how she expected me to perform.

As staying in the UK became a reality

for more and more black people,

far-right leaders were quick to exploit the government's failure

to deal with the rising tension.

There are many immediate evils of the coloured invasion, which are

well-known to everybody living in this area,

but in our opinion, the most important is the long-term one

of mass interbreeding. We feel that you cannot have coloured immigration

on the scale in which you're having it today without, sooner or later,

having mass interbreeding. That must lead...

Nurses and midwives had to go to work every day

against a backdrop of racial violence in the news.

1958 is where you see the flashpoints,

so the Notting Hill race riots,

which actually, when we remember them,

we kind of remember those as being unrelated to black people.

This was not black people. This was white racists

who ran around Notting Hill causing trouble

and that is, kind of, one of the first flashpoints you see.

People were afraid to go out on the streets

and people were legitimately afraid,

because you had things like the teddy boys roaming around you,

you had people getting beaten.

You can go through history and pick out periods where you can find

there's lots of violence which was done to black people,

and black women as well as black men, where people were afraid,

and legitimately afraid to go out.

I had my own fight with teddy boys.

I remember leaving work one night.

As I was coming out of the hospital,

I stopped in the shop and bought a portion of fish and chips,

and there was this group of teddy boys.

About... I would say about ten of them.

They knocked the fish and chips out of my hand.

I remember being pushed and kicked and so on.

And then the Bajan swelled up in me.

So I decided to ignore the blows,

I was kicked in places I didn't know I possessed, and...

ignored the blows and I just focused on one of them.

And I remember poking my finger in his eye.

And he swore and they all ran after that.

Even though it was all those years ago,

it's something that is still...

you know, I can still visualise it.

It's quite horrible.

MUSIC PLAYS

Not all memories are so unhappy.

Many black nurses and midwives were welcomed with open arms.

Beverley and Linda remain friends to this day.

Oh, goodness me.

This is me with my Afro.

I had an Afro perm for quite a few years

around about the time that the boys were born.

And this is Bev and I at our best.

On the dance floor, having a laugh.

I think if Bev and I were up and looking like that, dancing,

they had obviously put one of our songs on for us.

In 1970, Linda was a trainee nurse at St James's Hospital, Leeds.

It's where she would first meet a young girl from Jamaica.

So I'm walking down with my suitcase and my bag, the very first moment,

and there's this girl that came up to me and said, "Excuse me,

"where are you from?"

And I said, "I'm from Jamaica." And I'm thinking, "What is this?"

And she said, 'Well, my name is Linda Rushworth

"and I'm going to be your friend

"and I'm going to look after you."

On the first day of the course, Bev looked so nervous

and not sure where she was or what to do,

and I just, sort of, saw her and thought,

"Oh, do you know? I need to speak to this girl.

"I need to tell her that I'll be her friend."

I looked at her and I said, "You're going to look after me?"

She said, "Yeah."

And we've just been friends ever since.

As trainee nurses,

their shifts would see them spend little time together on the ward,

but outside of work, their lives

would revolve around each other for the next 40 years.

Linda is like my sister.

Linda knows Montego Bay, Jamaica like I do.

There are not many people you can say are true friends.

She's supported me for 40-odd years.

Many black nurse and midwives found life easier

when they gravitated toward the big cities.

I didn't see a black patient while I was in Somerset.

Not one. It wasn't until I actually went to Birmingham,

that is when... Ah!

I actually see my own people, you know?

It was so different.

The first big surprise when I came here

was that there were so many black people at the Whittington.

It was famous for its Caribbean nurses and they just seemed to come,

you know, all the time.

And so it was really nice.

You felt like home from home.

We have a lot of togetherness.

So as black nurses, we always try

and do things together, like

cook our native food together, so whoever comes - I was in Kent -

so whoever comes to London and brought something back,

we'd share it.

For me, that comradeship was what it meant to be...to us nursing.

It wasn't the studying. It wasn't the books.

It was the comradeship you had.

You know, we learnt to enjoy ourselves in our own environment.

And the more we did that, the less the external things bothered us.

We started to really have fun.

We started to have some, some fun,

some real togetherness with our own kind.

Like any young person living away from home,

having fun was just as high on the agenda as working hard.

Oh, my, having a good time.

Having a BETTER time!

It was a good time, the dancing, the fun...

SHE LAUGHS

The blue beat. # Da, da, da, da, da, da, dum. #

SHE LAUGHS

In those days, you went from house party to house party and you tried

to get at least two a month.

If you could.

It was black people's way of harmonising their lives and talking

and being together, knowing that work hard, play hard...

and get on with life.

You sort of... You go in the cellar and when you come out,

you might go in at eight o'clock,

when you come out it's five o'clock in the morning,

or six o'clock in the morning. Daylight.

Because you're down there, you don't realise it's daylight.

And others say, "You rent a spot,"

like, you stand on one place, rub off all the wallpaper.

You enjoy it. You go out,

you look forward to going out on a Saturday night

and the cellar party, that was the best thing, man.

Very often, you would go out, you'd be... How can you say?

You might be sidetracked.

You might meet an interesting person

that you didn't want to leave and so on.

And very often maybe, you got back, you know, the doors would be,

would be locked. If we knew we were going to be back late,

then we would leave the windows open.

Come back and climb through the window in your bed,

and I never got caught.

SHE CHUCKLES

It was good fun

and nurses were always up for fun.

Nurses had a lot of fun

and then they'd go back on duty and go serious

and get on with it.

But they didn't say no to a party.

Ever.

That didn't mean they weren't set on getting ahead, though.

This is a picture of me as a nurse.

It must be before I qualified,

because I haven't got my blue uniform.

My blue belt on.

This is my belt!

Now, when you've qualified, you get a silver buckle.

So somebody like your husband, or your parents,

would buy you a solid silver buckle and this is what this is.

Just look how ornate mine is.

Those days, people, when you put on this uniform

and your hat and your apron and your belt,

the people respected you for that.

Oh, I couldn't part with this.

This is history.

When I put it on, I transcended into something.

I...I was so proud of the scholarship,

I was so proud of my training.

I was so proud of my patients and how they loved me

and the way that I nursed

that when I finished at St James', I had to keep this one uniform

and so I've kept it all these years.

Beverley was one of the lucky ones,

a State Registered Nurse who went on to qualify as a midwife.

My wish was to deliver a lady without her having a tear.

So I wanted to do what I was taught,

but with a bit more of me,

because that's how I nurse.

I nurse with a bit more of me.

I never saw myself as, like, a black midwife.

I saw myself as a midwife

with a job to do, to look after these ladies

that has had to go through nine months of a pregnancy,

not knowing whether that baby's OK,

and everybody said, "I've taken a picture. It's this. X-ray it." No.

It's at the back of your brain, "I hope that everything is all right."

-Hello.

-Hello.

-How are you?

-All right, thank you.

-I've just come to examine you.

-OK.

-When did you come in?

-This morning.

For black women battling to get ahead,

midwifery offered independence

and a well-defined career path.

That's the foot sticking out again.

He doesn't like this.

Professionally, it made the nurse a clinician in her own right

and it could lead to senior roles in the profession.

I'm just going to listen to the baby's heart.

Many, many black nurses went on to do midwifery,

and they were good at it.

Seriously skilled.

Remain so.

It was a big deal. To get your midwifery under your belt

was a really, really good thing to do

and to be able to deliver babies or, you know,

be in the postnatal ward,

or antenatal ward and so on and so forth.

But, yes, it was a stepping stone.

It opened the door to you becoming a health visitor

and, at the time, you had your own caseload,

you were able to make decisions about the patients

that you were seeing and so on.

So it was something that people aspired to.

BABY CRIES

You are considered a practitioner in your own right.

So that you could, as long as you identify that a woman is normal

and is likely to continue with a normal pregnancy,

then you can, in effect, and by law,

look after her entirely by yourself.

I'd like to say that I had a passion for women's health,

I wanted to be a women's advocate,

but it was a natural progression from nursing to midwifery.

Nobody told me what to do.

I just felt that I would like...

I considered it to be a career progression.

It certainly worked for midwife Lynette.

She went on to become a director of nursing,

one of the first black woman in the UK to reach that rank.

This is a register of cases. For any district midwife,

she has to make a record of all the cases that she's delivered.

We delivered a baby at 9.15pm.

This baby was 8lb 12oz

and she had a normal delivery, normal labour, third stage complete,

blood loss minimal and both were satisfactory.

So when we discharged them, everything was all right.

Sometimes, on average, you had one delivery every other day,

sometimes, and in one night, I was called three times.

As soon as I got in, another call came.

The operator would say, "There's a case here for you."

And I would say, "Am I the only one on duty?"

He said, "Well, you know, you're the one who answers first."

So I said, "Well, you should check the others.

"I mean, I need to have some sleep."

Others simply saw caring for expectant mothers

and delivering children as their vocation.

I went into nursing as a means of bettering myself

and when I had the opportunity of being a midwife, I saw it and went,

"Yes, this is my calling."

-When that baby pops up and...

-IMITATES BABY CRYING

And you see what you've got, you feel...

even more joy within you than you did when you get that pay packet.

It was an amazing experience

of being a midwife and the different types of women you met

and the different types of labours.

And what they did when they were in labour, sing, hit their husbands,

squeeze their hands to death, or swear at them

and say, you know, "Never again. You got me into this!"

I delivered this baby and I was travelling on the bus,

like, 38 years afterwards,

and this lady tapped me on the shoulder and says, "Excuse me,

"are you Carmen?" And I said, "Yes, but sorry,

"I don't recognise your face."

And she said, "You delivered my son."

And then I said, "You remember me from then?"

And she said, "Oh, yes, I'll never forget you."

I am proud to be a midwife.

It is one thing I know that I have done well.

That I know women have appreciated what I've done.

This commitment to the care of mothers was second to none,

but it came at much personal cost to the midwives and their families.

Working as a midwife, some things had to be sacrificed.

If I'm called out to someone who is...

perhaps, not in labour,

but she's uncomfortable, or needs advice, or whatever,

I couldn't turn around and say, "No, I'm not going."

I had to be there.

My children were always complaining that they never saw me.

They never... You know, "What is happening, Mum?

"Are these women going to stop having babies?

"You're never here."

But that was only because I had to do what I had to do at work

and I would stay behind and I would...

make sure that everything was OK with these women.

And I always, too, believed that if you did have a family,

you have to have them on board.

They have to understand what your job is about.

If you're going to be...

If you really enjoy it and you really love it,

they have to understand why.

And I remember once,

after years of arguing and upset with my husband and the kids,

he came to me one day and he said, "Ally, I just had an aha moment."

And I said, "Why? What about? What for?"

He said, "I just realised

"that you're actually married to the job and then me."

He said, "I can live with that.

"I could live with that."

Yes, my husband actually said that to me.

For many black nurses, practically maintaining a better life

for their children meant working long hours to earn enough money,

but also covering the shifts that other nurses didn't want to do.

Any person that migrates, that comes thousands of miles,

leaves from their home,

to come to a different country comes for two reasons.

One is for work and usually for their kids,

because they want a better life for their kids.

This is why you'll find immigrants generally work very, very hard.

They generally do jobs that nobody else wants to do,

because it's very much...

You don't just go thousands of miles for no reason

and so nurses are no different in that regard.

Particularly if you look at their shifts, the amount of work,

the labour that's involved in nursing.

These people are working very, very hard,

in major part to make better lives for their children.

We did have to do...

the night shift.

But some of us used that to our advantage,

because some of us had children and childcare at the time

was non-existent.

So it suited us.

Once the authorities knew that's how we lived, how we coped, erm...

there was this, sort of, unpleasant, erm...

..situation where people who had children then,

they were forcing them to work days.

I hadn't negotiated a contract where I worked nights

and then I could look after my little ones during the day.

You'd work these things out for yourself

and then you'd find the sand shifting from under your feet.

So it is true, one way or another, we were always being challenged.

-Glasses?

-Yeah. Do you think we should get them

from the box underneath or...

-No, there's glasses here.

-One, two, three... Yeah.

This is going to be a nice wine. 2004.

-Is that a good year?

-I think it's the right time to be drinking it

more than it's a good year.

Jean and her husband were not unusual

in having to ask their oldest child

to look after younger siblings.

-CORK POPS

-Perfect.

Most times Joseph would be at home.

Sometimes we were in a tight place where we had to cross...

where the shifts crossed

and we had to leave Rachel in charge.

And, fortunately for us, she was very disciplined.

Being the child of a nurse,

it could be a bit difficult, because they were times when I did think

it wasn't fair, that I might have liked to do

what might be classed as a little bit naughty,

or a little bit reckless, or a little bit, you know,

but I wasn't able to, because I had

accepted the mantle of eldest child.

How did you feel having the responsibility

when both of us are out?

I don't think I really resented it, but they were times,

there were times when I did think it really wasn't fair.

-Yeah.

-So you recognised it as a responsibility?

I did. I really did.

Push down if you want to.

At work, black midwives were unwittingly paving the way for their community.

-That's it.

-And again.

The intimate nature of the care they delivered took black nurses

into white lives in an unprecedented way.

Even though they had escaped some of the hard slog of nursing

and found a degree of independence,

they were still forced to put up

with appalling prejudice from patients.

One lady, she wasn't my patient and the midwife was off.

When I turned up on the doorstep, they didn't want me,

herself and her husband.

"I don't want a black nurse coming into my house,

"I want my own midwife."

I do recall a woman who came into the unit I was working in

and I went to her room and as I walked in the room, she said to me,

"You're not putting your black hands on me."

No, "Your dirty black hands on me."

I said, "Let me wash them and see what difference it makes."

That's my first... "Let me wash them and see what difference it makes."

And she just looked at me.

And then she says, "I don't want your dirty black hands on me."

I said, "When I came into the room, did I treat you with disrespect?

"That's all I wish to know."

And she says, "No, but you black bitches are all the same."

It's very, very, you know,

upsetting when,

as a human being, you're trying to help someone

and she doesn't want you there because of your colour.

Feeling abandoned by society and with little faith in the system,

some black families were compelled to take drastic action

to ensure their children's wellbeing.

One young nurse would make a brave, but not uncommon decision.

I went into the nurses' home one day after work

and there was this Bajan girl

sitting at the bottom of the stairs crying.

And I said to her, "What's the matter?"

And she said, she had gone... She'd got off work early,

she'd gone to pick up her son from the childminder's

only to find he was still sitting in the pushchair that she'd left him in

in the morning, and still wearing the same nappy

that he had been wearing when she left him.

And this thing hurt and upset her so much,

it left a lasting impression on me

and I think it was that reason that when I had my daughter,

I decided there is no way I am giving her

to anybody here to look after.

She will be much better off with my parents and my family in Barbados.

It wasn't difficult for me to send my daughter back to Barbados,

because I knew she would be well looked after.

I knew she would have friends, she'd have family

and I knew that my parents would care for her the way that I probably

would not have been able to care for her if she'd stayed with me.

I discussed it with her dad

and he didn't seem to think that it was going to be a problem.

It affected my relationship with my daughter in a terrible way.

Because when she did... When my mum did bring her back here to England,

we had no relationship.

She didn't know, really know who I was.

When my mum went back to Barbados,

she couldn't understand why her mother,

as she thought, had left her here with me, this horrible woman.

My husband and I thought, at the time,

that because we wrote to her regularly, we spoke on the phone,

we sent photographs of ourselves, we got photographs of her...

and my parents explained that her mother was in England,

that it was enough, but it wasn't.

It wasn't enough and it took her a long time

to really understand why I took her to Barbados.

Has he just woken up? He looks very sleepy.

No, he hasn't, actually.

Beatrice Norman is retiring as head nurse of children and young people

at North Middlesex Hospital.

Are you being good?

You are, aren't you?

Aww!

After coming to England from Uganda in 1968 aged six,

she would go on to forge an impressive career

in paediatric nursing,

championing the needs of her young patients,

guiding the careers of her staff

and raising the standards of the departments she has worked in.

I love coming here,

because this is where we don't do anything painful.

It's so nice. Play, have fun.

So the teenagers can hide in there and escape,

and the little ones come in here and play.

We have two fantastic play leaders.

However, Beatrice is still rare

in rising to the top of her profession as a black woman.

There was a report that came out, The Snowy White Peaks,

Roger Kline, 2014,

and he says that the actual advancement -

so you've got lots of black staff in the NHS -

but the advancement is terrible.

I mean, it's like 1% of chief executives,

about 5% of senior managers

if you look at where people are still located

in very particular roles within the NHS, even now, 70 years later.

I feel very angry that 70 years have gone and it tells me that...

..if there was some other issues that had gone on for 70 years,

they would not be tolerated.

I mean, if, for example,

you had white nurses who had stuck at their position

for all these years...

I think MPs would be shouting about it,

you know? I just think it wouldn't be tolerated.

It would be obviously so...

unjust.

I think we need to have that belief

that actually we're just as good as the person next to you.

You have to shine.

You have to really show that people don't have a choice,

but to give you that job. You've got to be very determined

and you have to try and ignore those people that put blocks in the way.

I'm passionate about caring for children.

I'm passionate about them getting the right care.

Other black women have found it extremely difficult

to advance to more senior roles.

When I started applying

for sisters posts, I was told...

I thought I did well and then when I said, "Why did I not get the job?"

"Oh, you was only beaten by one point, two points."

Never more than one or two points.

So, therefore, in the end, I stopped applying.

I said, "I've been passed over so many times,"

and I said, "I'm not going to make a fool of myself any more."

It's a sad and painful story, common to many black women.

That, you know, made me demotivated.

So, there was a time I just didn't want to do any further course

or anything, because I said,

"Nobody's going to, you know,

"give me the grade I deserve, so why bother?"

Gradually, it dawned on us that it's not because I can't do a job

that I'm not getting a promotion.

It is because you don't like me.

I went off sick for a good three months,

because I was so stressed, going in there, it's like...

you're fighting against people

and you don't want to be the one to say they are prejudiced.

But you know, in the back of your mind,

you know they are prejudiced and they're working against you.

It makes you so angry sometimes that you don't feel like going into work.

A lot of nurses gave up their career

rather than endure it.

A lot left the NHS.

There is a feeling about what good looks like.

The lighter your skin and, you know,

the less melanin you have in your skin,

the better your life chances will be, generally, across the board

and my suspicion is that that thinking was exactly

what was going on for a lot of people who were in positions

who could actually appoint people.

"Good looks like me."

So me, being white, middle-class male, white, middle-class female.

"So I feel safe, I feel comfortable.

"I know how they're going to perform.

"I know their background, so I'm going to choose them."

I think the issue lies within the system

and the system has been developed in a way

that makes black and ethnic minority people in the system struggle.

The reaction from staff, as Beatrice's retirement looms,

is evidence of what the NHS will lose

if it fails to value its black nurses and midwives.

I'm going to be very sad to leave my nurses.

A lot of them have grown up with me.

I'm quite passionate about them.

-Magda, are you going to eat something?

-Yeah.

It's been a long, long journey.

It's time for someone else to take over.

I'm leaving people I really care for, so I've been very lucky.

I've been blessed to work with such a group of people

that I really, truly love. So that doesn't happen very often.

You know how I feel about you leaving, so...

-Cross.

-Yeah, I'm very cross and mad.

But, you know, it's time for you to go and we all have to respect that.

There is always a place for you. If you need anything, just come back!

-Call!

-Thank you.

This is always going to be my family.

I've worked very hard to do that service.

It's a fantastic service, it's very well-known.

A lot of the paediatricians have come back as consultants,

because of what the service is.

So I'm very proud to have been part of that.

The contribution of black health workers, men as well as women,

is a story of achievement over adversity.

Two years after her first royal birth

and part of a legacy of black women who braved the hostility

to care for a nation, Jacqui Dunkley-Bent

was once again the top choice to lead the team

who would safely deliver Princess Charlotte into the world.

I'm a great believer in, you know, putting your head down,

working hard, being wise,

knowing the system and knowing how to place yourself within that.

I, personally, don't think that my success

is down to the era that I was born.

I think that, you know,

there were people that were successful decades before me

and I think that there is something innate in people that enables them

to either not see the barriers and the challenges,

or even if they see them,

that they go right through them or go around them.

I think, without us black people, they would have fallen so short

that I don't think they would have survived.

Without those nurses,

we would not have the National Health Service we have now.

There's no doubt in my mind

that those of us who migrated into England,

to the National Health Service, saved it.

In the summer of 2016, some of those whose stories we have heard gathered

for an event to mark the life of the earliest known black woman

to nurse British patients -

a pioneer whose achievements have only recently appeared

in school history books.

This statue will stand as a living testament

to the life work of Mary Seacole

and as an ongoing tribute to the thousands of health care workers

from the Caribbean and from Africa

who underpin the modern NHS.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805,

Mary Seacole was the first black nurse

to come to the aid of the mother country

as she cared for wounded British soldiers during the Crimean War.

I think it's a very wonderful day, isn't it?

To see one of us is being recognised through Mary Seacole.

She nearly gave her life for this

and for us to now receive her legacy,

I think it's a wonderful day.

It's really good to be alive.

I know we've all made a contribution, but for her,

it must have been even harder and we're very proud.

Mary Seacole represents determination,

dignity, persistence.

Her determination, in some ways,

reflect some of what we as nurses in the NHS had to go through.

We wanted to help people,

whether it was one person or a thousand people

and her professionalism was the platform on which we did it.

We love nursing and we save lives.

And the legacy lives on.

Zena, who left Jamaica to work here in 1956, is proud and undaunted

after 50 years blazing a trail for black health workers.

India and Asia are my great-grandchildren.

I brought them along with me

so that they can learn what it is to be good,

to be kind, to be helpful.

Mary Seacole set an example for people like me

and bringing them here is setting an example for them as well.

I always say to my colleagues that you'll be able to cope,

and I try my utmost not to get too depressed of things,

and try to be happy and cheerful,

and show my colleagues,

black colleagues, that we can make it, we're here for a purpose.

We can make it and we will make it.