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An oral history interview with Gillian Lewis and Colin Humphries conducted by Anila Ladwa for the In/Visible Labour project, part of the In Living Memory programme.

In/Visible Labour responds to the radical and resilient experiences of collective family making through a programme of artworks and oral histories works by a diverse range of Lewisham communities and their support networks across the borough.

Gillian Lewis and Colin Humphries met when she ran her own touring theatre company. Colin is a professional theatre prop maker. Gillian is an active member of the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign and coordinated many different faith groups in Lewisham to get involved and support the campaign. Gillian came up with ideas for visual props and approached Colin to make these to lead the campaign protest marches including ‘Jeremy the Vulture’ who can be spotted on some of the archived images from the march.

Transcription

Gillian: Well, I am a Lewishamite born and although ironically, I might as well throw this in, I was actually born in Charing Cross Hospital when it was in Charing Cross because my mum was booked into the unmarried mother’s ward, which just sounds absolutely bonkers today. But back in 1956, although in fact she got married before she gave birth, it was too late, she was already booked in. I was born within the sound of Bow Bells in that case. But I was then brought up in Lewisham. I’ve done lots of things in my life and I’ve lived in lots of places but I’m back in Lewisham.

I’ve been in Lewisham in the flat that I’m in at the moment though, I can’t believe it, 39 years in my wonderful flat which was actually special lettings, and had an enormous number of Goldsmith’s students in it in the 1980s. So, that’s how I got it. Everything has changed with housing, so everybody lives there, families live there, and a lot of much, much older Goldsmith’s students live there. So, anyway, I’m just going to continue because it’s sort of links into Colin if I say that at a certain point I set up my own theatre company with another woman.

And we toured all over the country with shows, and we always commissioned writers and we had the music professionally recorded and composed, and all the rest of it. And Colin and Becky became our designers, props makers, costume makers, and our whole blinking design department for our theatre company.

Colin: Becky is mainly the designer, and I was – we both made stuff together.

Gillian: And inputted ideas.

Interviewer (Anila): What was the theatre company called?

Gillian: It was actually Open Wide Theatre, and our first show was called A Wheelie Bin Ate My Sister. Sorry, thinking back, so in 1996, maybe 97, we did the town mouse and the country mouse. So, I can’t believe I’ve known you all these years Colin, 25 years. But that’s how I met Colin, it was all about theatre and art, and we were all very young and probably beautiful too. And now –

Interviewer: You still are.

Gillian: So, when this sort of like bomb dropped and we could not believe that Lewisham Hospital was going to be the victim actually of the very first action under a brand new law when David Cameron got in, in 2010, actually sorry, I just want to say this very quickly, but ironically when he got in, in 2010, a completely independent foundation in America had – it was called the Commonwealth Foundation had done an 11 country, a sort of survey and study of different types of health systems and as always, as with every study that’s virtually ever been done the NHS came up right at the top. And that result was posted in July 2010.

David Cameron had not long been in. Anyway, the point is that they published a white paper saying that they were going to change the way that the NHS functioned and totally reorganise it, and the most crucial thing about it really, or one of them anyway, was that they were going to revoke the legal duty of the Minister of Health to provide healthcare for the population. So, you can see where they’re going.

So, although we’d had this fabulous relationship artistically actually we folded our theatre company in 2009 and after many, many years of successful touring when I was still in touch with Colin, and so this artistic endeavour to support the massive effort to stop this hospital being sacrificed and closed so that a nearby hospital that had a deficit – what that actually means is that the government wouldn’t underwrite – in other words it was underfunded, that’s what it actually means.

Of course, I turned immediately to Colin because I knew that they did all sorts of things for parades and sort of festival type events where people carry very big eye catching marvellous creative works of art, so we continued to have a collaboration –

Colin: We do a thing called Hope Festival and we do a workshop for the kids, and have a procession, and they make costumes, banners and things. That’s in May I think.

Interviewer: Whereabouts is that festival?

Colin: It’s in Biggin Hill on a campsite there. I’ve lived in Lewisham all my life, although I too was born actually in the sound of Bow Bells. Dick Whittington Hospital in High Gate because my parents were city people. They lived and worked there. I was one year when I came to Lewisham, so I’ve lived in Lewisham since the age of one. My mum still lives here, and she’s 92 I think. And so, I’ve lived in this house in Brockley since 1984. Nine flats in it, big garden. Obviously it was one big family house originally in Wickham Road when it was a really gentile road.

And back in those days – we know this because someone actually knocked on our door once, and they actually lived here, and born here I think. And they remember in those days Wickham Road was a private road and it had a barrier, a police barrier at each end, and anyone coming into the road had to have either a letter of introduction to say they were working in the house.

Interviewer: A private road, wow!

Colin: They were known to the police because they lived in the road. It was a very posh road. Community really. I mean the [unintelligible 00:06:38] is separate, self-contained, but we have a WhatsApp group so we all sort of communicate with each other and have regular gatherings in the garden and stuff. We have got some dialogue about various issues as well in the house. And it’s always been an artistic and creative environment. We’ve got a lot of musicians that have lived here, actors, and artists. In fact, currently there’s some girls, art students living here. And there have always been artists. We kind of attracts artists this house, it’s a Bohemian sort of house.

Interviewer: Perhaps we could move on to your time working together, coming together for the campaign. Colin, I don’t know how much you were involved in participating or attending those meetings.

Colin: I’m not really sort of part of the actual organisation, that’s Gillian’s thing. She calls me in now and again to help with projects and stuff.

Gillian: And I always wonder whether you dread it when I send you a text. It’s like oh God, what does she want now.

Colin: Whenever you receive the message you’re thinking what’s she wanting now.

Gillian: What outlandish and incredible thing. Well, shall I just try and sum it up briefly. Sort of dim memory is that it somehow came up online, maybe via 38 Degrees, which is another campaign or change.org, or something, but I remember the very, very first meeting which was when they very first published the white paper. So, then there was a period of time where we’ve tried to find out whether this white paper was going to become law or not, and while that was – there was a lull.

And I know that that first meeting I went to was at the old or rather the 1960s Lady Wells Baths which has subsequently been pulled down and is now prefabricated flats, which is – but they are quite good, because they are council flats thank goodness. But I just remember that at that very first meeting there were well over 150 people and that was in something like March 2011. I know it was 2011, I’m sure it was March.

And to really just sort of try and pinpoint certain important aspects of this, first of all I had absolutely no idea until all of this started to erupt, I had absolutely no idea that there was any difference between what private companies provide health wise, and what an NHS actually means, and actually is. Especially after a lifetime of only ever having heard negative reports in newspapers about, you know, money being wasted in the NHS or people waiting on waiting list, especially in the Margaret Thatcher era.

So, my attitude was one of why does it matter, what does it matter if this company provides this service or not. So, I very, very quickly learnt and understood that they are not the same thing at all. They don’t resemble each other in any way, shape or possible outcomes, anything. Because in a service the determinant for what kind of treatment you get mainly is what your need is, you know, as a patient.

Whereas the determinant for a private company is largely dictated by what they will actually get paid for. And whether it’s profitable, and so, I very quickly learnt, for example, that they past this law that was going to be called The Health and Social Care Act, and I always remember the very first sentence by a GP who tried to explain it to everybody who was at this first meeting. The very first sentence was there’s very little about health or social care in this proposed bill. It’s actually just a financial reworking that will allow private companies to bid for a lot of money.

Whilst at the same time giving private companies the right to refuse treatment, regardless of whether they’ve got the budget for the treatment or not. There’s a very, very good example actually in the hospital at the moment, the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign worked very, very hard last year to not have an outsourced contract for pathology. In other words, the testing of bloods and whatever else, and they were successful in preventing that from happening in the hospital, which is very, very important.

Because when the pathology department does the test the consultant can meet with the pathologist and that’s how they come up with an appropriate diagnosis. And for the patient this crucial, absolutely crucial to their treatment that they have this discussion. So, the hospital, and in fact they were going to do the same thing with the GPs, the hospital was going to carry on testing for the GPs, but the GPs were part of this huge £6bn outsourcing contract.

And so, now what we’ve had inside information from somebody working in a GP’s surgery, that what happens is the tests are all done within the GP practice, they then get whizzed off by a courier, but they never get the same courier twice, so there’s no relationship there. When it gets to the private company it sometimes takes time for it to be done, so a lot of tests come back saying that they’re out of date and that they’ve got to be done again. They don’t get to have the conversation they need to have with the consultant.

And in fact, all the tests get delivered on a Thursday evening which leaves the GPs wading through these tests because they’re so important to start the treatment for the patients over their weekend. So, if you ever wonder why it’s hard to get an appointment with a GP, these are the sorts of things that are adding to their workload. So, I’m just giving you one example of how the minute that you end up with private interests within a so called then National Health Service, you get completely warped and skewed outcomes that do not serve the doctors, the clinicians or the patients, and that’s just one teeny weeny little example.

Colin: I tried phoning the doctor, you’re waiting at least an hour before you get through every time. And we know that because I recently – Becky has been trying to get appointments, every time she phones, there’s been a few times now, it’s at least an hour, there’s a queue, you’re in a queue.

Gillian: That’s right. And my question would be as somebody recently said on the stage of an NHS conference that was held hosted by Keep our NHS Public, the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign is the Lewisham group for Keep our NHS Public which is a national organisation. And they hosted and set up a conference which was also their annual general meeting a couple of Saturday’s ago on the 12th of November. And somebody stood up on the stage and said if we’ve been 10 years now of privatisation how is it for you when you try and see a GP.

If it’s so great why are they doing even more draconian measures now. But anyway, the most important thing is I came to see and understand very, very quickly that private provision is entirely different to a service. A business is not a service. They could not be more different. And I’m not sure if many people understand that. I feel that even now after 10 years most people have no idea whatsoever that our Secretary of State for Health no longer has a legal duty to provide healthcare for the nation. It’s just a guidance.  The guidance is it’s a good idea to do it, but there’s no legal duty.

Colin: It’s still called the National Health Service.

Gillian: It’s still called the National Health Service and that logo, and those words are preserved with great fervour by the current government because hiding behind that logo in many cases, many, many cases are private companies. You could even go to your GP and think that your GP is National Health Service, they might not be. More and more GP surgeries are being taken over by American corporations, and I doubt people know that.

Colin: We don’t have to pay for your GP when you go to your –

Gillian: You don’t have to pay for a GP when you go to one that is owned by, for example, Centene, which is a US health giant, they’re an insurance giant. No, you don’t have to pay. But what you might find is that they’ve got all sorts of cost cutting measures where it’s even harder to get to see your GP, even when it’s an emergency.

Colin: That’s definitely true.

Gillian: Because what they’re doing is not spending the money on patients in order to keep as much of it in their coffers as possible. Anyway, going back to the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign, this is what’s really important, one of the most amazing things about the campaign is that the people who were able to inform the great majority of people, because the meetings were massive. There would be 200 to 300 people at any given meeting. When the government representative, who’s name, I can’t remember what his job title was for the minute.

I think it was TSA, or something, but when he came to hold the first public meeting in Lewisham for this proposal to downgrade the hospital there was enormous anger because they had hired – sorry, the lecture theatre they’d hired at the hospital was full, so they also then had to additionally use a local community centre. That was full. The backup room in the community centre was full. And there was a crowd of about 400 people in the street outside who couldn’t get in. And he was supposed to be answering questions from the concerned members of the public of Lewisham, and we couldn’t even get into the blinking meeting.

So, right from the word go the sort of mobilisation of people was absolutely massive, and that very, very special important thing I was going to say about the campaign was that the understanding of the proposals for downgrading the hospital, in particular the maternity ward, which was a brand new ward by the way, brand new. The hospital had spent £12m upgrading the A&E and having a dedicated children’s and family A&E, and creating this brand new maternity ward which all the people that I ever knew that ever went in there were agog at how amazing it was.

So, they did all of that and the proposal was to close Lewisham because Lewisham had no debt. I mean the debt was miniscule. Of course, no hospitals have debt, it’s actually a gap in funding is what it is. But this new law meant that hospitals became – they had a new sort of legal financial structure in which they all became individual competing businesses. So, they were seen to be having debt, and because the nearby trust, which was the South London Health Trust, they had a bigger debt because they had a government sponsored debt called a public finance initiative.

Which was costing them something like £1m a week, £50m a year, which actually believe me in comparison to the amounts of money this government has been squandering is not even noticeable. However, they were going to keep that open which protected the payments to the banks for the interest on the building of the hospital, that’s what a private financial initiative is. And close the hospital, which was more easy to close because believe me, this was the thing that – I keep not mentioning what the really important magic thing was.

So, the important, in a way the power of this campaign is that the people that were leading it in no other sense than that they had the experience and understood what was going on, and what the significance of all the proposals was, were the ex-head of the children’s department, for example, of the hospital. And it was the best children’s department of the district general hospitals of London. So good that it worked hand in hand with the Everlina Children’s Hospital at St Thomas’.

So, the calibre of the people, the GPs, members of the British Medical Association, nurses that were working in the Lewisham Trust, the calibre of the people that were doing that was such that they were really able to highlight and pinpoint why the proposals were absolutely bonkers, totally bonkers. Honestly. There’s no other description. The medical staff, particularly the GPs of Lewisham, were completely supporting the campaign as was the staff of the hospital.

So, that’s how you get a very formidable opposition to proposals that aren’t based on anything real. That actually matter to the patients, the population etc. And you got us to introduce ourselves and our links to Lewisham. Lewisham Hospital is an example of a district general hospital where the majority of people walk into A&E. I always remember that coming up at the time. It’s embedded in the town centre. It actually does wonders for the economy of Lewisham because it employs loads of people.

But most importantly there are plenty of hospitals which are outside towns, where you’ve got a car, the proposal was to move everything over to – or the A&E and the maternity ward, to the already struggling hospital on Woolwich Common, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. It used to be an army hospital when it was built and guess what, my dad worked there as a telephonist. That hospital would have had to have coped with an extra 275,000 population of Lewisham.

And it’s A&E was already full to bursting. These were proposals that could not work. And the other thing that was explained to us was when the close an A&E and a maternity unit, and you replace them with a clinic for cuts and grazes, there’s a name for that, I can’t remember what it’s called now, but it’s just an ordinary sort of clinic where you can go for injuries and so forth. What you’ve done is you’ve removed the blood transfusion facilities from the hospital.

And very, very quickly what it means is that all the other – like the important wards where they do difficult surgery, not elective surgery like a cataract or a hip replacement, but all those multiple difficult surgeries, if you haven’t got blood transfusion the hospital starts to die. We put a video on the website, the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign website because the government said that it took an extra two minutes. So, in other words, if you were living in the borough of Lewisham and you had to get to Lewisham Hospital you only had to add an extra few minutes to your journey and you could be right in the middle of Woolwich Common when there are no train stations.

Colin: Two minutes.

Gillian: So, we got people from our campaign to do that journey. We got them to do that journey in the evening, not even in the rush hour, and it took them well over an hour, and they had to get three buses. Everything about it was a lie.

Colin: It’s unbelievable, it’s mindboggling how they could possibly –

Gillian: One of the things is, as well, if somebody had a problem in the middle of giving birth transferring to another unit in a hospital three town centres away, you know, every second can count when a person gives birth. Speaking of which I’ve just got to give you one little fact that I’m wondering if the maternity midwives may or may not remember, but one of the things that the government had to do by law was a consultation. And they printed thousands and thousands of these consultations but most of them didn’t get posted actually.

We gave out loads of them and ultimately made a very, very large bonfire outside the hospital with them on the last day because they were useless. But what our extremely well informed experienced, and in the know leaders of the campaign were able to do was explain to everybody how they needed to understand each question in the consultation. And here’s one about maternity that will make your hair stand on end. Because one of the questions was do you want to see improvements to the – sorry, do you want to see improvements to the infant mortality rate.

Now, anybody in their right mind is going to say yes, who’s going to say no to that. Until you know that there – there was no infant mortality at Lewisham Hospital so how can you improve on zero for the last seven years that is. But if you put yes, that would then count as a vote for their plans to close the maternity unit. That’s the kind of thing that you need experienced knowledgeable people to explain to you because you are an innocent when you’re up against these kinds of methods.

And that fact always stuck in my mind because it’s so disingenuous and it really showed up that their motives were just at all costs to close the maternity unit and the A&E.

Colin: It all still there isn’t it, the A&E and the maternity.

Gillian: It certainly is.

Colin: It’s fantastic how it is still there thanks to mainly your campaign.

Gillian: Although being hugely impacted by the deliberate defunding of all of the NHS but –

Colin: Across the board they’re defunding it and have done for years.

Interviewer: I’m going to ask what your exact roles were in the campaign itself. Colin, if you want to kind of just give us a little bit of insight into your creations that you’ve shown me photographs of.

Colin: And I made various things that – visual sort of, striking things on Gillian’s lead. I mean Gillian had the ideas to do – we made a vulture which was called Jeremy, after Jeremy Hunt, who was the Health Secretary at the time. He’s now Home Secretary isn’t he?

Interviewer: He’s the Chancellor I think.

Colin: Yes, sorry. And it was basically kind of like a big sort of thing you carry, and it was actually – it was a vulture on top of the National Health Service sign, and the vulture is pecking the sign to represent the health service being basically being slashed and pecked away at by vultures. Another thing we did was we did some banners detailing the various deaths that occurred during patient’s being kept waiting in the corridors on trolleys. And detailing all the figures and everything that had just been published.

And the other one, well we made a big birthday cake for the 70th birthday of the National Health and a big march for that. A great bit birthday cake.

Gillian: That must have been 2018 mustn’t it then, because it was formed in 1948.

Colin: I suppose so, yes. We also did a border control post because there was a big sort of issue about people not being allowed – they had to prove their status as – to get treatment, and they had to give all their details for the data, and there was a risk that they would be deported if they weren’t legalised, citizens, refugees, you name it.

Gillian: Or people who are just waiting for a decision. They may not have been told that they’re not entitled to health care, that’s what that border control booth was for, wasn’t it.

Interviewer: So, I’m sitting with the mastermind and the making of –

Colin: Gillian is the mastermind, for sure.

Gillian: I’m not honestly. I might have a few ideas but believe me –

Colin: We just made your ideas basically.

Gillian: I mean there’s always a lot of you in it, isn’t there, the design of it, I mean the vulture – it reminds me of, because by the time you’re holding it on a pole it’s got to be at least 3 to 4m in height.

Colin: Yes, it stands up above the head and shoulders of the crowd, so it’s seen.

Gillian: And it has featured on ITN News at 10 a few times, and all sorts of other programmes. I mean it’s got the wow factor Colin.

Colin: It’s been on several demos.

Gillian: It’s worthy of the National Theatre where you worked at the time.

Colin: Yes.

Gillian: When the Romans used to carry, what was it called, not a banner, it was something else, a –

Colin: SPQR.

Gillian: Yes, and maybe an eagle or something for their regiment, and we used to carry that with –

Colin: Legion.

Gillian: And it certainly is eye catching and it gets an awful lot of attention which is what these – the fact is what you’re making is – you’re bringing to life ideas that are going to enable people to understand at a glance what’s really going on. And also, to get their attention in the first place.

Colin: Our little marching band plays a lot of demonstrations, it’s called Les Wang, Zoings. The Zoings. We do quite a lot of demos.

Interviewer: How many in the band?

Colin: Mainly about five but there are other additions as well. Can be up to 10 sometimes depending on who’s available. Quite often we do the TUC march and the anti-war march as well, that was the Iraq War. Mainly brass. There’s a couple of saxophones, baritone saxophone, tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, trombone, sometimes trumpet. And percussion. It’s like a little marching band.

Gillian: Does Becky play the accordion still?

Colin: She does play accordion but in Les Wang she plays drum, she plays snare. We have other percussion as well. It’s quite a rousing joyful noise.

Gillian: And also, just to interject and say that the TUC march, which is where we suddenly came upon you, were you standing on the cenotaph?

Colin: That’s a good place that we go, we stand in the middle of the road in Whitehall. The procession just rushes past you, you’re in the middle and you’re playing basically.

Gillian: And also, just to add that TUC march had an absolutely massive health contingent, so all the campaigns like the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign, we were there, we were carrying out banners. I was marching next to – honestly, I’m not making this up, the Royal College of Midwives. I’ve still got one of the Royal College – I just had to pick it up, Royal College of Nursing placards which says, “Understaffing costs lives”. And also, this was really relevant, I was desperate to get hold of one of these people because the Association of Physiotherapists was next to us as well. So, there we were embedded in this fantastic huge representation of – so it’s all linked back to the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign as well.

Colin: I mean I think Lewisham Campaign was one of the first demos we did. I think that was the first time we got together actually.

Gillian: Wow, I didn’t know that.

Interviewer: That’s like 10 years ago then.

Gillian: I don’t know where the time has gone but one thing to note is that however negative any of the things I’ve said are, in particular, the NHS wasn’t supposed to still be here. It was supposed to be gone by now, and it’s an absolute tribute to giving – nobody knew we were going to go through COVID and all of that, but it’s an absolute triumph that yes it is still there. And the most recent question that is coming up can we really afford an NHS. And it’s the exact opposite question, can we afford not to have an NHS. Because when the NHS was formed the biggest worry of GPs in 1948, and in fact they objected to there being a universal healthcare system, because they were terrified that it would be too expensive.

That it couldn’t possibly ever treat the population and it ended up being just over 4% of GDP. This is another one of the great myths that universal healthcare is more expensive. It absolutely isn’t. If you have somebody, I can’t begin to tell you how many people I know who have been in Lewisham Hospital, I mean it’s nothing to do with me honestly, I’m not guilty, it’s just because it’s local, it’s in our community, and if you need to have a blood test or whatever don’t forget pathology and the consultants, they’re still in the hospital, in the trust.

Being able to give those diagnoses on the spot on the ground, but one of the statistics quite possibly from the World Health Organization is, and this was one of the really big objections to the A&E and maternity unit being dumped in Greenwich in the middle of Woolwich Common where there is no public transport virtually, is that when people are rushed into hospital it doesn’t matter what you’ve got, there’s a statistic which says that people who are visited by their families are more likely to recover more quickly.

But how difficult is it going to be if you’ve got to get two or three buses depending on what part of the borough you come from to actually even be able to visit a member of your family. And what if you’re working. I mean I’m still working even at my age. I could have retired this year, but I love my job, and that’s – I’m a guide, but that’s so easy in Lewisham Hospital. There’s about 15 buses aren’t there Colin that stop outside the hospital. It doesn’t matter where you come from in the borough.

Interviewer: You’ve just reminded me Gillian that your role was kind of – were you involved in getting all the faith groups together?

Gillian: Yes. So, what happened was we were in one of our massive meetings with about 300 people one night, attending, and it just happened to come up that the lady who had formed a group, she’d been reaching out to churches, I think she probably was a church goer, and she had a very, very good response from all these different churches. But this lady, how ironic when I tell you, had to actually go into Lewisham Hospital with some condition or whatever. So, she hadn’t been able to carry on this work that she’d been doing.

So, I put my hand up and I volunteered, and I took over. And we had an amazing group of different faiths in our interfaith group. At the time there was an interfaith minister in the hospital. He was part of it. He’s moved on subsequently. We had the Catholic churches. We had the Church of England of course, but I’m talking about the whole South Eastern Dioceses of many, many churches, they donned their cassocks to march to be visible. We had the most marvellous Hindu Temple, and two thirds of the people on the board of that temple were either retired consultants or still were medical people.

And fully understood the significance. We had Captain Nigel who was the Salvation Army person that was running the very big Lewisham, you couldn’t call it an office, it’s like a hub, Salvation Army Hub, he was an ex nurse. How about that. And he understood very, very clearly what detriment that would be to the people that he looked after, because one of the jobs of the Salvage Army is in supporting people who have fallen on very hard times, and that can be people who are abusing substances.

And he gave one very good example that on many occasions when people were very, very badly ill because they’d been homeless or whatever their situation was, he would have the bus fare. He put them on a bus with strict instructions to get off at the A&E of Lewisham Hospital, and he wondering how on earth he was ever going to manage to do that with a hospital that was three bus journeys away on Woolwich Common. And he said so many lives that he personally knew about, people who managed to get into A&E, people who managed – we only ever hear the bad stories don’t we.

Because whatever happens to you, if you’ve got to get there quickly, this is what the World Health Organization says, it can’t be three town centres and four miles away. Not if you want to live. We had the Seikh Temple in Woolwich which covered Lewisham and Greenwich. We had the Baptist Church, now the lady who ran that wasn’t very well. She used to pray for us though. I’m probably leaving out – oh, how could I leave out the mosque, because the mosque is practically opposite the hospital.

And what you’ve got to remember is that quite a few of these churches, especially with their work around the world, churches, faith communities, really understood what the detrimental effects of private medicine are which most English or British Citizens simply don’t get because they’ve never – it’s been there all their lives and they think somehow it’s going to survive. It really isn’t. There was the interfaith group, and they came out, particularly on the day of the judgement, and very cleverly we had produced many – something like 150 placards that said the fight goes on.

If we’d lost that court case. And another 150 placards that said victory for Lewisham, so whatever way that judgement went we had it covered. And outside the Royal Courts of Justice shoulder to shoulder there were representatives of the Synagogue who I didn’t mention a minute ago, the mosque, Captain Nigel in his full Salvation Army uniform. The Seikh Temple, which was run by a woman, Church of England. It was an absolute shoulder to shoulder event.

Our hospital, Lewisham, and most people think of it as our hospital, cannot be closed in a kind of honest open way by the government they can’t do it full frontally, let’s say, because it has that judgement. And when the government appealed in full knowledge that they were going to lose it was the fastest judgement in history that appeal, two minutes, nobody even managed to get their coats off. We couldn’t get out of the court in time. The judges came straight back in and upheld the original judgement. And they wasted nearly £100,000 doing that.

But there are many, many other ways to close a hospital or bring it to its knees. Don’t give it the money. I’ve been to Lewisham Hospital board meetings where they’ve been discussing the fact that that month’s money simply hasn’t arrived. And they’re down to only a few bandages or something like that, people don’t realise how close to the bone it is. And you’re absolutely right, so we have never stopped campaigning. And just to talk about babies, mothers and babies.

One of the things that Colin made was the border control kiosk because doctors and nurses, and hospitals, the trust as a whole are being asked, as Colin pointed out, to be border guards because – and what’s happened, what we discovered in Lewisham anecdotally was that there were parents who were afraid to bring their children in and that children had died as a result. There were mothers who were afraid to come, and one mother came in way too late, she didn’t go to any antenatal classes etc. and lost her baby.

And we set up a working group with the maternity unit because the hospital wasn’t exactly clear about – some of these people had every right to be treated. Every right to be treated, legally every right, but if you’re not a border guard how do you know. But if doctors and nurses, and the trust, but particularly doctors, if they are discovered to have treated somebody that then subsequently didn’t have the right to be treated their entire career, forget losing their job, that is the end of their career.

So, this is what’s hanging over people’s heads and this is the work that the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign is still doing with midwives, the trust, and the hospital, to save the lives of innocent children. So, if you’re paying huge rents how are you going to pay the bill that you’ve got to pay because your child needed to see a doctor. It’s really evil when you start to look at the hundreds and thousands of millions that have been given away to private companies, that money was there for the NHS, but it doesn’t go to the NHS. That’s why we’re still here and we still will be here.

And you probably know this Aneela, but we’re changing our name. We’ll be having new banners made and all the rest of it because we’ve just had our AGM, so believe me, we are going into 2023 with our sleeves rolled up determined never to give up, ever, ever to give up.

Colin: Yes, because the NHS is the whole country, it’s not just Lewisham. Obviously, the Lewisham Hospital Campaign is the local big focus but –

Gillian: It’s part of the bigger story. Definitely. Because you specifically referred to the war, since World War II, well I just wanted to say one last thing which is I was listening to a programme a while ago, and it was about the lost sort of practice speeches that Winston Churchill did, and they were in a cupboard. It’s called His Cabinet, and he used to practice them out loud and record them, and listen to them, because he knew how important communication really was. And we’re still very, very familiar with his speeches about the war. And fighting the war and never giving up.

He made speeches about universal healthcare because he believed that people should have it. He believed that was something that in a civilised country you should have universal healthcare.

Colin: And he was a Tory.

Gillian: I know. But the reason why I want to just mention him is because when he was asked about the war he said, they said to him did you know that Britain was going to sort of survive and not be defeated, and he said, “No, but I knew it was better to fight.” Better to fight than to just lie down and give in, and that’s the attitude that all around the country, not just the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign, but certainly that is the attitude of the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign. Win or lose, and we’ve done a lot of winning, but win or lose we’re never going to stop. We’re never going to give up. Never. Ever.

Colin: Just like Winston.

[End of recorded material at 00:49:44]

(I9)

If for any reason you wish to withdraw your name or memory, contact us at engage@gold.ac.uk

An interview with local GP, Brian Fisher conducted by Anila Ladwa for the In/Visible Labour project, part of the In Living Memory programme.

In/Visible Labour responds to the radical and resilient experiences of collective family making through a programme of artworks and oral histories works by a diverse range of Lewisham communities and their support networks across the borough.

Brian Fisher is a Lewisham GP and was the Chair of the initial Public Meeting of the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign. He is a committed campaigner and a long-term campaign member, now focusing in particular on adult social care.

Transcription

Brian: I’m Brian Fischer. I’m a GP. I’ve been a GP in Southeast London since 1976 and I was a full time GP based in Sydenham, and then I retired and now I do much less general practice over the last 13 years or so, but still in Southeast London and New Cross. I grew up in West London and I’d always wanted – well, I wanted to be a deep sea diver, then an astronaut, and then when I was about seven I always wanted to be a doctor, so it kind of happened that way. I was very lucky. I headed into medical school and moved to Southeast London when I got a – to train to be a GP you need a year in a general practice to learn the ropes and to understand consultation and understanding people.

So, I had that – I was fortunate to have that in a fantastic practice in the Elephant and Castle, and then I kind of stayed in Southeast London. The other link was that when I started in my first practice which was in Peckham I found that there was a strange thing called a Community Development Hub, a little way from the health centre where I was, so that sparked off a whole set of interests in community development which has never left me. So, I’ve been interested in that for a long time. One of the things I’ve been trying to do for a long time, ever since then really, is to persuade the government that community development is something that ought to be available across the NHS and linked up with local authority.

I haven’t got very far with that. It’s not a very successful campaign but that’s something I’ve been very interested in. So, I think it’s a long ago now, I’m not sure that I’ve got all the details right, but my recollection is that I and a few other people had been very concerned about the threat to the NHS. And the cuts and the increasing privatisation of the NHS. So, I and another couple of people set up an organisation called SOS NHS I think. And that probably was a little while before the threat to Lewisham Hospital. We were just beginning to get operational and then the threat to Lewisham, the very clear physical threat to Lewisham Hospital became obvious.

And so, we kind of merged into the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign. It was obviously the same kind of thing, the same – and we were local people, so it made absolute sense to kind of – for us to be absorbed in this bigger and more precise campaign which was about Lewisham. So, I guess I was involved right from the start. The SOS NHS campaign was probably half a dozen people I suppose, and I think the first beginnings of the Lewisham campaign – because there was an organisation, I don’t know if it’s still around, I haven’t heard about it for ages called 36 Degrees.

And that was a big national sort of campaigning organisation and that helped to gather, to help us organise the initial meetings, so the initial meetings had quite a few people in it, 30 people, 40 people I guess. They met in the Waldron Health Centre in New Cross which has a nice meeting room, one of the doctors, Dr Irvine, was a GP there so it was relatively easy for her to get this space. There was a great deal of enthusiasm and my involvement, I can’t remember really what I did particularly early on, but when it became obvious that one of the things that we were going to do was to ask for a judicial review I began to write a document that sort of summarised why we needed a judicial review, and what the basis of that might be.

And my recollection is that I brought various people together. We put the stuff that I had written on the screen and people commented on it, and one of the things that I thought was – would be very helpful for us was that the – Jeremy Hunt had set out, or somebody had set out, there was a set of criteria really across the NHS which made it clear that changes did need local agreement. It was sort of three or four key things, and I can’t remember what they all were.

But anyway, they all played into our hands that the CCG had to agree, local people had to agree. As I recall. And it seemed to me that those would be a good basis for a good judicial review and when the lawyers got involved that is the kind of basis on which we fought the judicial review. What was pretty amazing really about the early stages was the way everybody pulled together and the way – there was some pretty imaginative, like the buggy army, there were lots of other – we held hands around Lewisham Hospital.

The whole thing was a very clever – I mean none of those were my ideas, they were a very exciting process really where people accumulated ideas and they were just very nicely put together, and everybody was very committed to making a difference, so there was huge voluntary activity. And it really pulled hundreds of people eventually in the March, thousands of people together all with a very strong ethos about preserving the NHS as  whole, and preserving Lewisham Hospital specifically.

And it managed to bring in the staff members, MPs, it was a very comprehensive and coherent campaign which I think Keep our NHS Public was a key intellectual and sort of ideological support really, it was very helpful indeed. So, I did bits and pieces. I remember I appeared at – there was a sort of people’s enquiry. There was organised – which was sort of officially run by Michael Mansfield QC, and there were lots of people giving evidence, so I gave evidence to that from a GP perspective.

So, it was a very supportive and encouraging process. And my interest in community development was sort of encouraged by all of this because one of the things that I think is most important is that we support and encourage the development of a participatory democracy, so there’s formal democracy where you vote, you have councillors and you vote for MPs, and all of that is very formal but there is also another layer which is a participatory democracy and I’ve always been interested that community development could support that.

And I think the campaign was one fantastic example of ways in which people got together, took control over their own area and made a huge difference to the outcome. It was an honour to be a part of it, a privilege and an honour to be part of the process. And my recollection of the actual judicial review sessions, and I’m not a lawyer, I know nothing about it, but the first session the Judge kind of set out the scene really and he – one of the issues was whether – to what extent the Secretary of State had the power to do this, and as I said we were arguing that he couldn’t do it unless there was local involvement.

And that the phraseology of these three or four specific criteria that local change had to meet, the Judge said, “I think this revolves around the word with” or something. The meaning of this particular word, if we can get to the bottom of that, that kind of – we will be able to unravel the legality of this process. It was very – I would never have thought of it that way, but that is indeed I think how the argument transpired. Whether they had the power over or the power with, or what the word with meant, something like that. I may have got the details wrong.

So, from a legal point of view it centred in a very odd way around the meaning of a single word. Anyway, we won and that was great. And it made a huge difference. I found it quite frightening the idea of setting up a judicial review because we had to pay the lawyers if we failed and I was – I think I was the most of anybody concerned about how we would raise the money, but actually we raised the money really easily. I was worried that if we went ahead with this judicial review that if we lost then we’d be landed with this – I remember being much more frightened about it than other people.

You have to be fairly up with the documents and what the local managerial people were deciding about it, so I think a large number of people were clinicians or professionals, NHS people, employed by the NHS so I think there was a large proportion of those, but that shifted. There were lots and lots of people who got involved who had to learn really a lot about the way the NHS functioned. What’s happening to privatisation and what’s happening in the legal changes around the 2012 Act. And so on. That was – I can’t remember quite timing.

One of the things the SOS NHS group was trying to do was to challenge this act which – I think I’ve got the timing right, which was a big step in privatising the NHS. So, I think the main issue that we were concerned about was that every single time the NHS commissioned a service, so they said the contact for Orthopaedics is running out, we need to re-contract for Orthopaedics, every time something like that happened they would have to go to the private sector to look for somebody who would – it wouldn’t necessarily go to the private sector, but it had to be – it could go across Europe as a contracting option.

And somebody from anywhere could come in and offer this service from the private sector as well as the NHS competing for it. And we were very, very – everyone was very, very concerned about that so I think we spent quite a lot of time talking to Lords and MPs about this, and that was the kind of background I think to how this all happened at Lewisham. It was a different issue because Lewisham wasn’t particularly about privatisation, it was about cutting, but the sort of privatisation process was in the background. And of course, all our critiques of that Act were played out very quickly and we were completely right. It really did mess up the way the NHS worked.

Many years later the NHS went out of its way to kind of unravel all of that because it was so time wasting, and money wasting. So, that wasn’t directly to do with Lewisham, but it was part of the political background that this happened in.

Interviewer (Anila): The irony of like conducting these interviews while there are strikes at the moment today is foremost, yes.

Brian: Yes, I was on the nurse’s picket line this morning and various people, there were almost more press than there were nurses on the picket line actually for a while. They wanted to interview anybody they could find so one of them asked me has the NHS ever been as bad as it is now and I said, “Yes, sort of, at the end of the last Tory administration before Labour got in, before Blair got in.”

It was absolutely appalling so there were routinely two year waits for cardiology and people would die on the waiting list. A lot of deaths waiting for operations. So, it has been like this before and of course the picture is that that’s what happens under a Tory administration and you can see that if you do put money in and respect, and consideration, and thought for how you make this all work it’s possible to turn it around. And obviously, I hope that Labour will be in a position to do that after the next election.

So, you know, there is a solution. It doesn’t have to be like this. I think the march was the most fantastic, it was organised like a military operation. All were given their tasks; it was pretty amazing really. The weather was good, and people were out there in their thousands, and it was tremendously inspiring. I think that was the highlight. The current campaign we continue to be, you know, a local group who has lots to say about local services and national things, national services, national issues, so we’re supporting the strikes and doing all sorts of things.

But I’ve no idea really whether that has an impact on Lewisham as a whole, I don’t really know. People will certainly remember and feel proud that we managed between us, between all of us, between the 20,000 people or whatever it was that between us we managed to make such a significant difference. That was one of the clever interventions was that we showed that it wasn’t possible to get to the A&E, if the Lewisham A&E closed that it was actually very difficult to get to the one that would be open in time. We actually took public transport and videoed the process.

It was very clear. So, it was – there were some very intriguing ideas that people put together, very effective.

Interviewer: And as a GP, I mean did you feel in terms of Lewisham’s families and their ongoing struggle with services, I mean does a lot of that come through to you as a GP?

Brian: Yes, it does, and there was also some selfish elements. If A&E disappeared I would have to send people a long way away and that would impact my patients very dramatically. So, I was concerned about my clinical practice if that had shut, and then obviously the concern was that that would have a knock on effect and Lewisham as a whole would shut, so that would really make life difficult for me personally and the patients that I served in Sydenham. It was a big, absolutely essential part of the clinical structure around. It would have been very difficult.

And of course, the same is happening now. I was speaking to somebody, a mother with a six year old on Tuesday who had the – the child was ill, temperature, took the child to Lewisham Paediatric A&E and was so full that there – hours and hours of wait, and kids were sleeping on the floor, it was an absolute chaos there apparently, so she left and went to an urgent care centre. And I spoke to her on the phone when she was waiting outside this urgent care centre in the cold, so that’s Tuesday, minus temperatures.

And they wouldn’t let her in, and they couldn’t guarantee that they would see her either. In the end it turns out, because I phoned her to find out how things had gone the next day, and anyway they did let her in. She waited for nine hours before she was seen. You can’t run a service like this anymore. The Tories have just run this thing down. So, I don’t know whether they’re running it down deliberately and they will then say you can’t fund the NHS like this. It obviously doesn’t work so we have to go for a private arrangement, like the US or like Europe.

And I said this to a reporter today who was a health reporter and he said, “I don’t think that this is deliberate, they’re not clever enough to do this long term project of running down the NHS and then transferring it to some other payment process.” So, they’re too incompetent to do that, so I don’t know whether it’s a deliberate process. Anyway, they have threated millions of people’s lives and it is a very serious desperate state of affairs, and my patients are suffering.

[End of recorded material at 00:20:36]

(I7)

If for any reason you wish to withdraw your name or memory, contact us at engage@gold.ac.uk

An oral history interview with Iain Wilson conducted by Anila Ladwa for the In/Visible Labour project, part of the In Living Memory programme.

In/Visible Labour responds to the radical and resilient experiences of collective family making through a programme of artworks and oral histories works by a diverse range of Lewisham communities and their support networks across the borough.

Iain Wilson is a nurse at University Hospital Lewisham and a committed health campaigner in the community. He is a founding member of the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign, where he was initially Secretary to the campaign. Iain describes his role during the successful campaign at a time when his wife Mel was herself pregnant with their first child.

Transcription

Iain: My name is Iain. I am a nurse in – currently at Lewisham Hospital, I’m the team leader for substance misuse, so that’s the office we’re sitting in now is the office for that and safeguarding. I have been a nurse for 14 years, so at the time of the campaign, in 2012, I must have been a nurse for four years then. And I was doing substance misuse nursing at Queen Elizabeth Hospital which is the hospital the administrator was sent into. I grew up in Worthing on the south coast, moved up to London to do a sociology degree in 2000.

Sort of had jobs and didn’t have jobs for a few years, and then trained to be a nurse. And there was this moment where I suddenly thought why not. I was sort of thinking I’d go work abroad or do something slightly worthy, and then I didn’t know what useful skills I had, and then suddenly I thought I’m not squeamish, I quite like being nice to people, I could do nursing. And they paid for it. The government would pay £8,000 a year bursary. So, I did that two year training.

And then I found myself at Queen Elizabeth Hospital via jobs at Guy’s Hospital, and at a detox unit, and at a prison. And then pretty much the day after – very soon after I accepted the job at QE I think I might have even just given in my notice, I got home, put the radio on, and there was an announcement on the radio that the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, has appointed an administrator at the South London Healthcare Trust and this was a first, and only time I think. That’s me mainly. And I have a wife and two children.

That was 2012 one of my first days at work there was the summer Olympics happening, the London 2023 Olympics. I must have moved to Deptford in 2008 and the Tory Lib Dem coalition got elected 2010, and the Health and Social Care Act was brought in by them. So, I’m sort of starting at the beginning here. And in order a group got set up in Lewisham called Lewisham Keep our NHS Public. It was set up by [Helmoot Hive? 00:03:01] and Louise Irving so at some point – that Act I think got passed in 2012 so it would probably have been about 2010/2011.

The Lewisham Pensioner’s Forum down the road, they put on a public meeting for people to explain what is the Health and Social Care Act and what can we do about it. Back when the Health and Social Care Act was being introduced there was – Lewisham had an anti-cuts alliance and it was sort of resisting cuts to the libraries, there was disability benefit cuts, there was all sorts of activism going on in and around Deptford, but nothing health specific except for the Lewisham Pensioner’s Forum had put this on with Louise.

So, me and my girlfriend at the time, we all went to that talk. And then I don’t know – did we wait and chat to Louise after, or at some point in among all the anti-cuts stuff we saw Louise once or twice. There was an anti-cuts carnival and, there was quite a few hundred people sort of paraded up Lewisham high street banging on saucepans and stuff. A bloke, Ray, borrowed our saucepan and it must have been bucketing down because what I remember is this wooden spatula here is banging our saucepan with, he was doing it so vigorously he just smashed it to pieces and hadn’t noticed.

So, there have been things like that. The Labour council and Labour mayor, there was a feeling that they were implementing rather than resisting cuts. It’s a tricky one isn’t it. I suppose they’re budgets are being set by central government and how much power do they have, and how much are they coerced with this threat of administrators and things coming in. So, anyway, they – so Lewisham Keep our NHS Public became a group. At the same time the Labour Party had a group I believe called SOS NHS, maybe.

And that was one of those – because it was mainly me, Mel my other half, Louise, Helmoot, there was like four or five of us, so we’d have times of being very active, protesting, Simon Hughes was the Lib Dem councillor, so part of the – he had more influence to maybe stop the law, so we would leaflet and demonstrate around Bermondsey. Just again the four or five of us, and at the tube stations at Canada Water and places. And put on street theatre.

Interviewer (Anila): Who did the street theatre?

Iain: I think a bloke called John Hamilton might have written it. Louise would know. At one point I wrote a thing, oh what was it, it might have been Bullshit Bingo or something, this is like a thing I always come up and think is a great idea, but I couldn’t make it. I was working or had a shift. And so, everyone else had this script which apparently made literally no sense and I think they were just like what the hell has Iain done here, we’ve got to put this on in Market Square in Bermondsey. We were trying to exert pressure on Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem MP, and get his constituents to know what he’s doing.

And I think educate people about the Health and Social Care Act. I started work at QE. The administrator came in. Ostensibly they said the administrator was going in because Queen Elizabeth Hospital was losing a million pounds a week, I think, or the South London Healthcare Trust, so that was Queen Mary, Princess Royal, and QE, so Bexley, Bromley and Greenwich hospitals. Queen Mary had already been shut effectively. They’d shut that hospital down. Told QE they would open 80 beds, never opened the 80 beds. QE A&E was already out of control, 100 people in a department early in the day.

Ambulances queuing around the corner. People in corridors waiting 12 or 24 hours, so QE was bursting at the seams because they didn’t have enough beds, but they – my understanding is, Louise knows more about this stuff, they were OK at MRSA which was the big thing at the time. There wasn’t especially high MRSA rates, there wasn’t especially high mortality, it was a hospital performing OK but losing money. And it had a massive PFI debt on the building. So, the building cost £200m to make, it was going to cost the government £1.3bn.

Interviewer: Can you explain what PFI is?

Iain: A private finance initiative, so over the weeks after the administrator going there the Labour party and Tory party each blamed each other for this. Labour said this had been almost signed and sealed before they took power in 97. Labour party signed on the dotted line early like May 97, Tony Blair had his photo taken outside on the building site, we’re building hospitals. They way they were buildings hospitals was by giving astronomical amounts of money to private venture capitalists, offshore tax avoiding companies, and then we’d rent the building back for like 25 years.

And they had a monopoly. The owners of the building would have a monopoly on any work that happened in the building. So, any time you need to adjust it because people’s healthcare needs change, something needs to happen, this company would say you owe us another few million. So, like our office, they once needed to replace the blind or something and the quotes and stuff were like hundreds and hundreds of pounds. This is just insane. And they own the car park next to the hospital. They charge astronomical sums.

This building, we’re sat in the Riverside Building, this building is a PFI. So, the estates in the hospital can sort of patch up and repair anything else, this building the company who own it call the shots. It’s the reason the hospital was losing a million quid a week, nothing else. Everything else paled in comparison to the contract that was signed to just handover way, way above and beyond what a hospital costs. And yes, and this was a totally standalone independent trust. And that was spoiler alert, that was why the High Court reversed the decision, said it’s illegal.

Matthew Kershaw, the Administrator, his jurisdiction was to South London Healthcare Trust so the idea that he would close next door’s hospital, bonkers isn’t it. On the one hand they’ve marketized and split up the NHS, and said there’s all these little things, and then even within that they can’t help themselves and say let’s pretend this standalone entity owes a lot of rent and in order to pay their rent they’re turfing out their neighbour. And selling their house.

So, that some of the background of why they wanted to close it, and Lewisham Hospital. And it was only at the point at which Louise sent an email to those of us in Lewisham Keep our NHS Public, and some other people she knew, that said the Administrator is going to try and close Lewisham Hospital. Like it did, it seemed totally out of the blue that that would in any way help anything, particularly like I said QE needed beds, it needed investment. What it didn’t need was the next door hospital closing.

But you get paid a tariff, each person who comes into A&E you get a tariff. And they wanted to cut their building costs so they would sell stuff here, more people would go through the doors at QE, that’s more money to service the debt at QE. So, yes, I’ve got Louise’s email here if you want me to read it. Or not.

Interviewer: Go on then.

Iain: Here you go. Urgent meeting of Lewisham KONP, that’s Keep our NHS Public, and then Louise just said, “Dear colleagues, I’ve heard it’s very likely a proposal will be made by the Special Administrator to close Lewisham A&E as that will provide increased patient flow to struggling PFI hospitals. If A&E goes then other acute services will go too, and Lewisham will be downgraded.” And she said, “Let’s meet up” so then a bunch of us met. That was 17 September 2012. And the meeting was then pretty soon after that.

Brian was there, who you spoke to, Louise was there, I was there. Helmoot, this is at the health centre where Louise works, and she told us that she had a very reliable source that this was going to happen. And it was one of those meetings where everyone just sort of says things and not much is happening, and I remember just sort of near the end saying I think we need a Twitter account, and a website, and posters, and leaflets. And Louise had said we need a public meeting, and a demo. Was there a demo, at that point she might well have said a demo.

But that then basically became the outcome, and I went out after the meeting and said, so I said I can set up the Twitter and website if no-one else wants to. And then that was it. Went home. Learned how to do WordPress on a YouTube tutorial. Looked up some other things and decided on savelewishamhospital.com. Got going on that. It was such a high I think, those few months where we suddenly got up to 3,000 followers, and I was getting relentlessly tweeted and retweeted.

I sat down, put on BBC London news literally never do it, one Friday evening and there was a health correspondent, and he said, “I have just been told that on Monday that Matthew Kershaw is going to announce the closure of Lewisham Hospital and obviously there will be some local opposition to this” and it just was like, for whatever reason they press released it on a Friday, and I was like – that bit – I think smarter people realised that that would all happen because once you sort of pull and A&E –

A lot of acute services in a hospital, my understanding is because they’re anaesthetists who can urgently highly heavily sedate people, so that normally brings with it the maternity, the A&E, the ICU, emergency theatres and stuff, and if you pull of the A&E part normally means that whole core rapid response type things goes, and all those other bits go. And I didn’t understand that was happening until the actual thing came out on the Monday. So, it was quite brief I think. It’s probably – I guess the BBC have it somewhere.

Interviewer: Do you remember how you felt in particular?

Iain: I was sort of buzzing. I really felt like right, game on, because we’d sort of talked about it and – because I sort of knew because of the good source that it was going to happen, and then had the website up and running, I’d already tweeted and drawn the attention to the website. I tweeted at Lewisham Council and said are you going to support us if the A&E comes under threat. I’d tweeted at the Mayor I think. I tweeted all the local blogs, back then 2012, blogs were like a thing weren’t they.

And I said pay attention to our website. Rumour has it this, but nothing like – probably still only had 10 followers or something, but it was just sort of putting it on people’s radar, and the website looked – the front page looked like a website. And I think it just had one big like take action button or get in touch button, or something like that. So, it just very quickly – I guess I must have called Louise, I was like they’ve just said it on the BBC, and so that gave us a few days.

I feel like that gave us a real few days to actually set the agenda, and I’d been reading up all this stuff about search engine optimisation, have you heard about this, it’s so dull, it’s awful. And so, had Mel my other half to be fair, and we were oh jeez, it’s too boring to talk about. But it meant we felt like we can fill this space. We can set the tone of the debate and position ourselves as the people here, because what the hell were they doing over the weekend. I couldn’t quite believe they’d done it.

And so, started doing things like that. So, then we were all set and waiting for the trust Administrator report. Funnily enough Mel, she was six months pregnant with our first child, so like I shouldn’t have been spending all this time doing this. But I couldn’t – at the same time you sort of have to, do you know what I mean, it’s quite – it was very – I was very conflicted, and it was –

Interviewer: Does that mean Mel didn’t get to go on the buggy march then?

Iain: No, she would have. Definitely came on one or two so it was perfectly timed for that.

Interviewer: And did you have your baby here at –

Iain: Yes, we did, in the birth centre. Every time I walk past it at work, I like it. And so, it feels so real. When you’re having your maternity stuff here and you’re antenatal classes, and all of this, and you think bloody hell, what if that goes. And we had moved from Deptford to Ladywell so sort of in the shadow of the hospital, and it is the biggest employer in the borough. Lewisham doesn’t have, it’s not Southwark or other boroughs where they’ve got all these big things on the Thames, and lots of things. Lewisham has less stuff. It felt like – it’s slap bang on the high street.

Interviewer: Essentially it’s probably shaped, the current population, the infrastructures around it, they’re all –

Iain: Undoubtedly. So many people born here every year, and the Registry Office is next door. There’s been hospitals here, like you were saying earlier, for hundreds of years. Like the idea that somebody one day could just say when it is busy and functioning, and there clearly is a self-evident need for it, and then they turn around and say no, you’re wrong, we know best. With the maternity stuff as well, what was funny we were having our antenatal classes down in the green zone there and we met some people who are still friends, and this would have been our second or third weekly class.

And that must have been on a Monday, or the following Monday or Tuesday, and they said, “Have you heard that Lewisham Hospital might close? It’s gone viral.” And I was like yes. I know, I can’t believe it’s gone viral, and it never – I was like that’s me. I did that tweet, I got all that going, but obviously everything else is everybody else isn’t it. There’s in no way shape or – like what happens then is everyone then is in on it, and is retweeting it, and owning it, and sharing it. And having that shock when they see it. And having that reaction of like shit, what are we going to do about.

So, then it was off and running. And then, the report came out and I was generally speaking at work in – at QE, my job was based in A&E so I could see how busy things were all the time. And trying to keep on top of all the tweets, media outlets, can we talk to someone about this and this, and trying to write articles on my Samsung Galaxy S2. Just trying to quickly write why are they closing Lewisham Hospital. And so, I’d be writing, I was generally at work, seeing patients, going on the phone, doing stuff. Probably fielding calls from Louise, or Tamsin, or people about all the things which very quickly needed doing.

Because I guess we must have straightaway put on the website about the public meeting and they would have – I think I always, or we probably had a what are we trying to get people to do, what is our thing. And every one of those things involves a tonne of work, and very quickly it felt like you don’t really want to direct people too much because the offers of help and other people, what they do is brilliant. So, we’d get offers from lots of people, like someone from Millwall Football Club, I think this was after I went – said I work in office at Millwall, you can have whatever you need, it’s yours.

So, when it came to the Riverly Ballroom stuff they printed off all these tickets, at the semi-final of the FA Cup they had all these Save Lewisham Hospital t-shirts on. Just provided admin support. Unions getting in touch saying we will help with printing and things. A lot of things, and not everything happens just as you want, but a lot of people saying what can I do, I’ve got this skill or time. I put just the bank details up on the website at one point, I thought people keep offering, let’s put the bank details up.

And Rosie said, we’d get significant donations from people saying I was born in Lewisham, or I trained in Lewisham, and now I’m living elsewhere in the world, I can’t be there, here’s some money and stuff. So, the way the website, there’s such a resource for all of that now isn’t there. There’s tonnes of stuff. I’m trying to think. A lot of people then took it, people then wanted to go to the – the Administrator was having meetings all over the place to explain what was happening, independently of us. And also, Helmoot was quite a fan of this. He went right what do I ask him, what I do I do.

So, we sort of printed out Bullshit Bingo and when he says certain things you tick it off. Some of it became quite angry, police were needed to get him in and out, but people – various organisations would get in touch and put stuff on, and do things. And it was a bit of a case of go for it. But then once the campaign was out, once the word was out then people just did stuff, and I guess we just tried to keep involved on Twitter really and on the website. And then the public meeting happened.

Interviewer: Were you able to be there?

Iain: I was there, yes. Jeez, that was like nuts as well, that was a thing. Do you know the Less Off Auditorium, so it’s in the hospital grounds here. I can’t remember how many people it holds, a couple of hundred, it’s big, and Louise has been doing health campaigning for a long time, and your crowds you’re normally talking about 20 or 30, and then she called one day and again I was at QE and got this phone call from Louise saying the police are saying that hundreds of people are coming, and we’re not allowed to do it because it’s not safe on the hospital grounds.

I don’t believe, you know, I think we were a bit like, no, hundreds of people don’t turn up, that’s just bollocks. That’s just the police being police, it won’t be that many people. And I think it did get quite real and I think Louise was personally, as the chair, this responsibility was on her, and so I then – shit what do we do, so I called up Tamsin from the Pensioner’s Forum, Tamsin Bacchus and she said, “Hang on, I’ve got an idea, have you heard of a three ring circus?” and no I’d not heard of a three ring circus.

But it is, there will be like three big tops and the performers go from one to the other to the other, so then you’ve got three crowds on. Tamsin said, “So, we can do that – the Saville Centre was booked, the Calabash Club down the road on George Lane, she got that booked, that’s like a Caribbean day centre, so that’s a good few hundred yards away. And then we had maybe the Saville Centre was also a place, and then also the hospital AV team. So, the hospital obviously were apolitical in this but said have our room, have this really big room, we’ll put it on the big screen, the projector and we’ll find a way to do it.

And then the logistics of that was just totally nuts because it was – having, at the last minute, hundreds of people did turn up, and I remember at the Calabash people on crutches who were older, and again turning up with family, and they had travelled up from sort out into Downham and Bromley, and saying we have to stop this. I was like born here, they’re with their family, and there’s not room for everyone in the Calabash, so a lot of people spilled out on to the street once it was full up. People are walking around with buckets. Again, we weren’t short on volunteers. People were like how can I help. And people were just chucking money in the buckets and saying I’ll collect the money.

And people were mostly forgiving and understanding, some were a bit pissed off that they’d made this journey only some of them were in the overspill room with it on a projector, and I was running up and down trying to make sure it works. I would take questions from people and then I’d run down to the lesser – I vaguely remember it mustn’t have worked because people were pretty pissed off with me, one or two. I’ve come here, you’ve advertised this, and now they had some sympathy, but it started late.

I think – who was talking, Louise must have talked, Brian, I think the MP, the mayor, and they weren’t expecting just to be shuffling around Lewisham, but it looked – and afterwards in the Lewis Club, the social club here, I remember Brian saying, “That was a disaster wasn’t it?” and I was like, “But it’s like Woodstock, everyone says Woodstock was actually crap if you were there but I’m sure it looks good.” And then, of course it did, it was on BBC London that night and they’re filming the Calabash Club and it is just teaming with people, and their backed up. People are really angry about this.

And those meetings were quite – same sort of time then suddenly – a lot of our stuff had said Save Lewisham A&E and it was on the day that the thing came out, it was suddenly like oh my God, maternity, children’s, all the paediatric stuff, so then we were sort of trying to insert that into the posters as well.  And obviously we’re leafleting every night at Lewisham Station. And the leaflet was going like hot cakes. So, then it was on demo next, which going to be hands around the hospital I think was the theme. I don’t know how well that went.

But everyone again had ideas, some people were like I want to organise hands around a hospital, and someone was like I want to have a choir on at this point. And today at the nurses picket I saw someone who had just come to support the picket, and then had mentioned – so I went along in solidarity with St Thomas’ and people mentioned that I work at Lewisham, she was like I was born in Lewisham. I was like oh right, do you remember the hospital campaign, she was like yes, it was brilliant. And she was a teenager at the time.

It’s good to think that they’re still supporting pickets. It probably would have happened anyway wouldn’t it, but I think it just was an issue that made people realise, I think particularly people in Lewisham that you have to resist these things. People were suspicious of each other. Some people did not like the Labour party one little bit, and didn’t want the Labour party to be even talking at the demo. Those of us, me included, felt like you have to have the MP and the mayor because they are the elected representatives locally, and they have political power, that’s what they’ve been elected to have.

And we need them on our side. And they wanted to be on our side. There was nothing suspicious about the way the Labour party were in our meetings either, there was never a feeling that they were high jacking stuff. There was always a sense of what do you want, and people from were every day chatting with us. It was very collaborative. And that ended up happening. So, that came down there, and that was where my abiding memory of that – because we needed to get some money somehow, and I said let’s try and get some t-shirts printed.

Do you know Martin Rowson? He’s like a Guardian cartoonist who lives – you’d be able to see his house out that window, and we knew he was a lefty because his next door neighbour who – he helped us, actually he went on to help us loads and loads of design, and the next door neighbour Richard Procter he did later on fall out with the campaign. So, we asked Martin Rowson if he would do a picture and we’d put it on a t-shire and he said it would be a pleasure because he once got rushed to Lewisham A&E because he had had wasp sting while drinking some red wine, in his mouth, and gone into anaphylaxis. It was the most bourgeois emergency imaginable.

So, he did this picture, God it was a real effort getting these t-shirts made. Someone in Greenwich offered us a bit of a discount but this was all really last minute, so I only picked them up that morning. Louise drives down and sets up a gazebo and Mel is now like seven or eight months pregnant, and just has a tonne of these t-shirts. I was meant to help her. The idea was that we would both do this stall together and sell all the t-shirts, but various people blocked other people from comparing. So, it ended up, I don’t know, but I was like the inoffensive choice.

Interviewer: It was a lot of pressure for you then.

Iain: All of this would just be like – because everyone is busy, and this is all happening quickly and we’re working. So, I remember Louise would say it felt like plate spinning and like all the plates were crashing, and people would make a lot of demands because it wasn’t a constituted organisation. It had just suddenly become very big, and Louise mainly was holding responsibility for who gets on the – who speaks at this. That was how decisions were made, there would be meetings, 50 or 60 people in a planning meeting.

Everyone piles in. The funny thing is as well the unions who we’d approached right at the start of the campaign who wanted – we quite vocally saying they want nothing to do with us, that they would submit their own stuff, actually there is more to the proposals than this. They have to think about their members who might transfer – at this time as well, and we felt like Lewisham Hospital was being asset stripped. Or the local health economy was being asset stripped and made more lucrative to private investors to come in and do this.

That was in the background anyway of people’s thoughts about what was going on, and a lot of that – and the PFI stuff was another thing that would – difference of opinion on this between Labour party and other activists, or Labour party policy was quite big, so people didn’t really want – some people didn’t want the Labour party involved. So, then at the last minute, at the demonstration, I’ve now got to compare this thing. The stage is tiny. It’s raining. I was 10 years younger than I am now, so I was 31, and nobody knew me really at all.

Compared to Helmoot or John, or the people who had been left activists in Lewisham for a while, and I was very nervous. But I did it. Poor old Mel had to do this t-shirt stall and I could just see across like this wet field, you know, just this sign up and all she had was like a biscuit tin, or a celebrations box to put money in. And I think we just did tenner a t-shirt. People just kept giving 20s and things, and these sold out. I think we had 3,000, we made like £3,000 in a day anyway. Suddenly we had money as a campaign but Mel just like afterwards, this biscuit tin full of notes in the middle of Lewisham.

She’s like oh my God, what do we do. Get home. Quick. It must have been so exhausting, like unbelievably so. Again, nobody knew me but Louise just after she’d been appointed chair said, “I know Iain is good, I’ve done stuff with him, can he be secretary” and the people voted for me, and then someone else said, “Can Helmoot be secretary as well? And also, Iain’s wife is very heavily pregnant, and this does not seem sensible.” Anyway –

Interviewer: Did you take the role then?

Iain: I did take the role, yes. So, as secretary in the meetings, and I was less involved after my son was born. Then we had money, we had t-shirts. And we didn’t have t-shirts anymore. My other highlights were doing a Thanks Lewisham hashtag on Twitter one day and just thought why don’t people say what they want. And it was one of those where you sort of think this is going to backfire, people are going to take the piss, but it was so moving, to me anyway, to just read all these people. It’s probably still out there and saying all the things that the hospital had done for them.

And it kind of focuses the attention. You’re just like oh my God, this is actually much more to people than I probably appreciate. We did – the Trust administrator had a consultation, and someone had come to one of our meetings, so they were closing hospitals in West London. At their consultation there were only 401 responses to the official consultation, and they said McKinzie and these companies, consultancy firms, they have hundreds of workers, so their consultation, they lost by 230 to 190 or something.

With positive and negatives, and they were like these consultancy firms instruct their employees, go in here and say these things. So, I went away and was like right we’ve just got to nail this consultation so we set up – and again, Barbara and I think other people, you know, we would make up proformas for people. I just had quite an explicit guide on the website, tick no question 4, yes to question 5, say this in this. And Cheryl I think, I think a lot of people just really – that then became a real focus, let’s swamp the consultation.

So, it was good – we had people’s attention and then there was always something else to do, so then it was – after the demo I think it was that. And in among that some people on Twitter, including the Lewisham Hospital choir, do you remember them, they had just been on telly at this time and so they sang at the demo. Gareth Malone had set that up, that was all good, it was all extra attention and Chiddy [Edgemofoe? 00:40:16] who is an A&E Consultant here and was in the choir, we must have tweeted him, but he knew Tony O’Sullivan and people anyway.

But he – I think it was him, someone sent me a letter and said this is our response to the consultation and I think it was the A&E – I feel like it was the A&E consultants went first. It could have been the gastro bloke called John O’Donoghue. So, they sent their letter and they’re so amazingly written, they’re so articulate, they’re so precise. They’re evidence based arguments about the harm that was going to happen if the hospital closed. It’s like can I put this on the website, and they were like yes.

And so, then I ended up sort of – that sort of snowballed into us maybe on Twitter encouraging – if your department has done a response send us your thing. We will do the consultation on the website, we’ll put it up there, and it was big. It felt huge and it felt like that was important because it felt like we weren’t just going to win the argument by force, we were going to win it by reason, and that we had all those reasons there. So, that was another highlight.

We’re sort of getting to a point where I probably stepped back a bit not long after some of those things. Just before Christmas, I think 23 or 24 December, I just handed over all the passwords to Olivia and said like – and went –

Interviewer: At this point you were a new dad.

Iain: I was a few days away, yes. Luckily, the due date was the 28th and God I should have stopped sooner but it was just difficult. After the first, one of the very first meetings Tony O’Sullivan came up in quite a modest way and was like my name is Tony, I’m a Paediatric Consultant, my daughter Layla can do social media, do you want a hand with that. And I was like yes, because I haven’t got enough hours in the day, that would be great and then I totally forgot about it. And then he came up again in a subsequent meeting at the end.

And then he was like – I was like yes, OK, let me take your name. And this was similar, Vicky would come up to me and be like I’ve got this – whatever, do it, I know – I can’t – my time is full. And then I mentioned it to Louise and she’s like oh God he’s like the Director of Children’s Services, I know the family, they’re great. Get in touch. Reply to him. And then that was it. For a month, and there was a month of a newborn and on that first – the second demo, the big one, was like late January. So, Finn was a month old, and I brought him out, and I think Mel was quite poorly.

I think we’d all been poorly, when just everyone gets sick and I sort of limped out, I was like in and out of that demo. It was wet as well. I think I joined it as it went quite near the house, went to the end, said high to various people, off again. And yes, I sort of then was in and out of everyone arguing with each other. Louise or people would be like we need the “secretary” to do something, or can you – more things, there was always another email, there was always something else to do.

And then the Rivoli Ballroom Party I think was about the only other thing I really got involved in, and that was because the Rivoli Ballroom is great. Have you been there?

Interviewer: Yes, I have.

Iain: It’s like an excuse to go there and for that, that was a real effort, we must have got a babysitter, that must have been – the kids must have been months old, and we spent it sitting in the cloakroom with Lucy Pepper from Millwall, most of it. You’re just tired. You’re happy to be out and you wander on to the dancefloor for a bit and then – but that sold out and before it had sold out at some point again I can’t go into a meeting and not end up taking something on. We sort of like said the prices, and then I went and looked at Eventbrite, and Eventbrite take money for everything don’t they.

If you do an event through Eventbrite they take a quid or two, and I said I’ll do the admin for that, that’s just silly. That’s like if we sell 700 stuff that’s like a grand to people, we could have that money, leave it to me. They can do it to my PayPal, and jeez, that was again, you know, sitting in the twilight with like a baby lying there just exhausted for hours. Because you’d have to tally up your PayPal to your thing, and a lot of people would do things on trust with us.

The fact that they’re just paying it to me, and there was always I think – it felt very – lots of things felt like they were very personal between people and the campaign. I can’t remember what the lineup was. I sorted out the Tombola and the Tombola – that was another fun one. You sort of send a tweet out and say has anyone got any good stuff for us to give away on a tombola, so Martin Rowson, who’s like – his cartoon’s go for £1,000 a piece, he’s like you can have my NHS Jeremy Hunt original, Cheryl won that. Have you heard a Banned Public Service Broadcasting?

Interviewer: Yes.

Iain: Someone will go – Wilberforce, he had kids born, anyway he had a connection to the hospital, lived down the road. So, Mel again on her maternity leave, had quite fun knocking on the house of public service broadcasting, oh great are you from the campaign, brilliant, there you go. Great, thanks. A fella who does the Tour de France presenting knocked on our door with things at the same time our baby was choking, and Mel was like can you help, he’s like – there’s was lots – and I think there’s probably millions more stories, thousands more stories of people.

[End of recorded material at 00:46:57]

(I6)

If for any reason you wish to withdraw your name or memory, contact us at engage@gold.ac.uk

An oral history interview with Sheila Wharton conducted by Anila Ladwa for the project In/Visible Labour, part of the In Living Memory programme.

In/Visible Labour responds to the radical and resilient experiences of collective family making through a programme of artworks and oral histories works by a diverse range of Lewisham communities and their support networks across the borough.

Sheila Wharton came to work as a midwife at Lewisham Hospital after seeing the 1977 Battle of Lewisham on the news. She later traveled to Bolivia where she volunteered in maternity care and returned to Lewisham when she was about to start a family of her own. Sheila continued a role in family services while living in Lewisham and although retired, continues a role at Lewisham Hospital as a buddist nun through the Chapel Service, offering weekly meditation sessions in the Healing Garden.

Transcription

Sheila: How I came to be in Lewisham, goodness me, and it’s also bound up with being a midwife. So, in the 70s I’d actually spent a couple of years working as a nurse in Bangladesh, and when I came back from Bangladesh I had at that point, I was a general nurse and a paediatric nurse, but I thought I will want to go away again in the future, and I will need to be a midwife next time. So, after Bangladesh I found myself living in the countryside in Oxfordshire, near my sister, and really it was so difficult, and I got to the point if I see another cow I’ll go mad.

And then I heard about what was happening in Lewisham. There were the Lewisham riots and people standing up to racism, and I thought yes, that’s where I need to be. I was part of the anti-Nazi league but in my very Conservative area in Oxfordshire I think there was three of us, I remember, so I was probably the chair and the treasurer, and anything else. Lewisham seemed like a really good place and having a look, and certainly not Googling it in those days, but I did realise that there was a hospital in Lewisham and that they trained midwives.

So, it seemed pretty obvious. So, I came to Lewisham, let me think, I think it was 1980, or it could have been 79. And I came and joined I think there was six of us in my midwifery group, and what I really liked about the hospital as well as Lewisham was it’s cultural diversity. So, I felt really at home. That this was a place where you could be whoever and even though I’m a White woman, I feel much more comfortable in a place that welcomes everybody.

And certainly, there was that feel in the hospital. However, I mean because of where we are in time and the place, I saw as much racism in the hospital as anywhere else, it would have been very strange if that hadn’t have been. I never doubted that I was supposed to be here. So, my memories of training in the hospital, I mean it was very exciting. I had the idea that midwifery was going to be a celebration of life and I thought it would be – I just spent a year in Oxfordshire’s Pain Unit, working with a lot of people with terminal cancer and so I thought midwifery would be very different.

And it was a bit of a shock to find that it wasn’t always so. But getting into it, meeting the sort of people, there were people who inspired me, and I loved being with mothers and babies, and dads. And while I was training I got to be part of a very new organisation called Radical Midwives which was, I think probably still is a marmite organisation, some people welcomed it with open arms, other people felt rather threatened by it. And certainly, that was my experience. And also, I was a student, so it was very much as a student challenging people that had been qualified for many, many years was an interesting experience.

I have memories of resisting doing episiotomies, resisting doing shaves, and enemas, and talking to women about their rights, and that wasn’t really encouraged. That took a little bit of courage and it led to some funny things. But also, it was good, and I do remember people – some people who had been qualified for a long time, they were really interested to hear that actually this could be done another way. And so, it wasn’t all confrontational. Some things were quite funny in the confrontation.

At that time the Active Birth Movement and the work of Leboyer was really at the forefront, and this thing about babies being in bed with their mums for bonding. And I remember on the post-natal ward at night I’d go round sort of tucking babies in with their mums, and then the next midwife would come and take all the babies out. Then I’d come and put them back in again. So, there was this sort of pantomime during the night. I really felt for the babies being in a nursery with the lights on. I found that quite painful.

But anyway, and the other thing that sort of I have to smile about now, when I was working in the antenatal clinic women coming in blood tests, and they’re actually very important blood tests to see if there is any abnormality or potential abnormality of the baby, and the women weren’t being told what the blood tests were for. And there would be long queues of women waiting to be processed before having their blood taken. And I would be taking my time explaining what all these tests were going to be for. And it might have repercussions, dah, dah.

But it meant that the queue went on and on, and that was a bit of trouble, but it was good, and it was an important phase. I mean the very thing about being a midwife and bringing those babies into the world, and empowering women. I mean when I started midwifery it was just delivering babies, and I remember the first delivery I ever saw, I thought I cannot believe women have been doing this all this time. How come. We don’t know.

I remember my jaw just dropping watching. And I was very lucky because I saw a very normal delivery. It was my very first one. But I thought oh my God, this is immense. And the privilege of being there. I mean as I just remember it I’m moved with the memory and seeing women holding their babies for the first time, and seeing the fathers being with their babies. I think because of what I was doing and with encouragement of radical midwives really coming to see how childbirth – I mean I came to regard it as almost a political act.

And it was an opportunity for empowering women in a way that they might not have been empowered before, and how important it was through that experience to give them a voice for who they were, and it became very important not just the bonding of baby and mother, but I became really aware of the importance of bonding between baby and father. And also, bonding between mother and father. I would then really be very mindful of this incredibly important time that could make or break a relationship as well.

So, it became incredibly important and how the midwife is in that, that the midwife is not the most important person, but a facilitator of this miracle.

Interviewer (Anila): Did it inspire you in terms of having your own family?

Sheila: No. First of all, I thought oh God, this looks very painful. And I think the work itself was nourishing me, and I was giving as much as I could emotionally. I was a very committed and once again this got me into trouble because if I went through a labour with a mother and it looked as though the birth was coming in the next few hours, and people would be saying time for you to go home, I was saying no way. I have always believed in continuity of care.

You stay, it doesn’t matter if you don’t go home until the middle of the night, and that wasn’t very popular either. It was quite popular with the mothers and the fathers, I didn’t ask the babies, but it didn’t inspire me. I still felt nurtured enough by my work. I very committed in the work that I did. It’s really funny because just talking about it out loud does bring so much back.

I did my stint at Lewisham Hospital, and it didn’t feel like the best place to have a baby, I’ll be perfectly honest. And there was some definite misogynistic views around and sometimes it was quite painful. And at that time there was a book put out by Sheila Kitzinger called The Good Birth Guide and so Lewisham didn’t do very well in it. But there was a hospital that came out top and it’s called The West London Hospital, which is no more. So, I thought well having been at one end I’ll go to the West London.

And to be honest, there was hardly any difference. There was hardly any difference at all which was a bit of a shock. So, you know, I left Lewisham, so that was up in Hammersmith, although I still kept my little bedsit in Lewisham. I was living in Deptford at the back of The Albany, that is really known for its midwifery service which I think isn’t there anymore, but it was an absolutely brilliant service. And I lived at the back in some – a cooperative housing. I mean I didn’t work there.

And I think it all sprang up while I was away because having left Lewisham and then did a few months at The West London, and thinking oh crumbs it’s all the same, I decided that I would leave the country. I’ve always been one for big statements. I went and worked in South America as a midwife for three years. And found still the same terrible attitudes. Then while I was in Bolivia I became pregnant, thought about it, and I think I would have been OK having the baby there. I had a really good obstetrician, but their knowledge of sick babies wasn’t good, and I thought if my baby wasn’t very well I think I’d want to be back.

I looked at where in England am I going to go to. And I thought actually I want to go back to Lewisham because I know that Lewisham has got good services. So, this was 1984. I thought this would be a good place to bring a baby into the world, and I’m afraid I still didn’t want to have my baby at Lewisham Hospital, and I had decided I would have a home birth. I felt that was going to be the safest way in the even I didn’t – but the day before he was born we found he was breech so I actually – all my politics went to the wall. And I had a private delivery in a centre where I had him naturally. Actually, he had a very nice birth.

Interviewer: I remember you saying that you used all your savings for that.

Sheila: Yes, and we didn’t have much, and it certainly didn’t cover – but when we told the obstetrician that I’d been working as a volunteer in South America as a midwife he just said, “Well, give what you want” so yes, we gave it. And it wasn’t lost on me that politically having a private delivery wasn’t what I’d ever thought of, but I wanted my baby to have the best, and I think he did have the best. And the obstetrician was lovely, and I was very grateful. We were also homeless at that time.

We were living in a room in somebody’s house, and it wasn’t good. It was luxury going to this place for one night. I could have stayed there. But anyway, we came back to Lewisham and enjoyed what Lewisham had to offer. I mean in those days they had something called a baby gym which – because my partner at that time, we got married very quickly, while I was pregnant. In Lewisham, next door to Lewisham Hospital, we got married in the Registry Office. All of these connections weren’t lost on me.

But I quickly became a single parent and there were lots of things that were available for me. He would go off to the baby gym. We also had free swimming. We had a wonderful – it was called friendly gardens playgroup, so I went there, and we had all this free care and a thriving library which isn’t – not working now. We had so much that really contributed to my son having such a good start even though for a long time I was on benefits, he really benefited from what Lewisham gave.

And even when he was small we went to lots of free activities. In the summer I remember when he was six going to circus workshops in Ladywell Fields where he decided he would be an actor. And actually, that reminds me going for a discount to, when he was eight, at Lewisham Theatre, there was an amateur production of Oliver! And that’s when Toby came out and said, “This is what I’m going to be doing.”

I stopped being a midwife when I was pregnant, and it was tough being a midwife in Bolivia. It was tough being a midwife anywhere I think. There’s always been this tension between midwives and obstetricians, not all, but a lot. And so, when I came back from Bolivia it was like well what on earth am I going to do now. I’m a single parent, on benefits, realising that as a single parent I couldn’t go back to nursing or midwifery because I didn’t have family support. I didn’t – so what was I going to do with a baby.

So, I was a childminder for five years, registered with Lewisham, so I was a proper paid up childminder. And benefited from training and courses from Lewisham, and I really enjoyed being a childminder for local families. I had a lot of children that came through my hands and I’m still tracing some of them down. I did that for five years. Then I retrained to be a social worker, and then worked mainly in Greenwich. I did work for a little while at an assessment centre in Lewisham just for six months looking at some of the tougher cases that were going through court.

And then about nine years ago I retired. I had to retire early because I was ill and not getting any better. And couldn’t just continue which was a real sadness for me. I was then a social worker and a play therapist working with children in care. Some of them were placed in Lewisham. I got better and my own spiritual journey really developed. I decided to become a nun, I’m a Buddhist. Soon after that, getting over my illness thinking what do I want to do, feeling this love for Lewisham, and thinking I want to give something back.

And because of my background once in the NHS you’re always in the NHS, my admiration and love for the NHS, yes, I know that people who work for the NHS will feel it even if they despair of it. And I thought the only thing I’ve really got to offer anymore is about who I am and what I am now, so I teach meditation. I thought maybe I have some skills that I can offer to my local hospital. And so, back to Lewisham, I was interviewed and joined the chaplaincy department at Lewisham Hospital, and that was nearly seven years ago.

So, some of that time on the wards. I found it quite interesting that as a chaplain I became more and more drawn to wanting to support staff even more than patients. Really feeling the struggle that staff are having. I just wanted to make myself available under the guise of teaching meditation, but it expands and actually developed during the pandemic. Because of my age and everything, first of all we weren’t allowed to go back into the hospital.

So, what I did was I put myself forward on the wellbeing thing to have online work, and in actual fact I’ve done far more work by not going into the hospital than I did there. By being online I’ve been able to offer support to staff at a time that was OK for them, instead of it just being for two or three hours once a week. I see somebody online at half past seven in the morning before she goes to work. And then somebody at the end. So, that’s been all through the pandemic.

And now I’m going back into the hospital because of the healing garden, and so that’s yet another phase. And being able to bring all my experiences of knowing what it’s like to be a staff member, and how hard it is. So, what I love is being able to support Lewisham Hospital employees, that really brings me a lot of pleasure. It’s been a wonderful opportunity because it’s led me into lots of memories.

[End of recorded material at 00:21:54]

(I5)

If for any reason you wish to withdraw your name or memory, contact us at engage@gold.ac.uk

An oral history interview with three retired midwives conducted by Anila Ladwa for the In/Visible Labour project, part of the In Living Memory programme.

In/Visible Labour responds to the radical and resilient experiences of collective family making through a programme of artworks and oral histories works by a diverse range of Lewisham communities and their support networks across the borough.

Fay Smith came from Jamaica when she was eighteen to become a nurse and then trained as a midwife. After a short time working abroad she returned and did a refresher course at Lewisham Hospital where she remained and met lifelong friends Kathy Johnson and Catherine Ngoigwe. She retired as midwife but still works part-time as a community midwife for the service at University Hospital Lewisham.

Kathy Johnson came to the UK as a young girl and grew up in the Windrush generation. She went to school in Dulwich, where she was one of the only black children. She had wanted to be a scientist but eventually became a Community Midwife at Lewisham Hospital where she made lifelong friends with Fay Smith and Catherine Ngoigwe. Catherine Ngozi Ezeigwe originally came from South Nigeria to join her fiancee and followed her dream to become a midwife. She worked at Lewisham Hospital where she met lifelong friends

Fay Lewis and Kathy Johnson. A retired midwife, she still lives in Lewisham and remains friends with Fay Smith and Kathy Johnson. She is a grandmother and full time carer for her own mother.

Transcription

Fay: I’m Fay Smith and I grew up in Jamaica. I went to school in Jamaica and then I came here when I was 18 to come and do nursing. Wasn’t my choice but my parents decided that this is what they wanted me to do, so I came. I did a four year course which was two years psychiatry, two years general and then at the end of that I had both qualifications. Registered Mental Nurse and General Nurse. And then after that I did my midwifery.

Interviewer (Anila): What made you decide to take up midwifery?

Fay: Well, I mean in those days you weren’t considered a complete nurse if you didn’t have midwifery. You’d do your general and then you’d go and do your midwifery to complete it. But for me, it turned out to be the best for me because once I started doing midwifery I didn’t want to know about general, just too much hard work.
Interviewer: And at what point did you then come to Lewisham?

Fay: I came to Lewisham, I had been in Bromley, then I’d been abroad for two and a half years. Came back and then I started doing agency at Lewisham. And they sent me to the maternity department. And once I’d been there I didn’t want to go back because before that I’d worked at King’s in the medical ward, and it was horrendous. I just remember it being very horrendous, there were two nurses and the HCA, and a ward of 30 odd patients, and I just kept running around all day. Not finding where I was, because there was just so much to do.
So, when I went into the post-natal ward at Lewisham I thought oh, this is much better. And the fact that I’d worked abroad, over there we never had that many patients in a ward in a day, the wards were much smaller. So, you had about maybe 15 patients and there would be five or six nurses. When I came back to that I thought no, that’s not for me, and that’s how I ended up in midwifery. And because I hadn’t practiced midwifery after my training I went to Lewisham to do a refresher course, and then after that I just stayed there.

Kathy: I’m Kathy Johnson. I originally came to the UK as a child, I went to school in Dulwich were my parents lived. I went to an all-girls school in the Windrush generation I might add, so life was a lot different. I felt an outsider because in the school of over a thousand girls in the last school where I was there was only two of us, and then the other school was three where my other sister was. And it was not the best time of my life I wouldn’t say, however, with strong people, so you made it through those turbulent times. You couldn’t complain to your parents that you didn’t feel comfortable because we’re lucky we’ve come to the mother country.

And you’re supposed to take what you can from the mother. However, it wasn’t always like that. After I left school I went to work, in fact I wanted to be a lab technician, so in general I wanted to be in a hospital environment, however, in the girls schools in those days you didn’t have the sciences in the same way. I had biology but not chemistry and physics, and things. So, that was a bit difficult to take. But I had a job in the laboratories in [unintelligible 00:04:58] the biscuit factory, it was quite exciting.

I was the only person of colour there and the head chemist was very good to me I must say that I felt at home with those people more than I’d felt at school. And while I was there they allowed me to go to day release to increase my science abilities, so that was good. And what I decided at that moment that I didn’t want to remain in an environment like that doing lab tech work, I wanted to be a haematologist.
So, therefore if I’m not going to get to the point of being a haematologist I’m going to go train as a nurse. And that’s when I decided to apply to be a nurse. In those times a lot of people of my nationality were sort of syphoned to do the lower grade nursing but I took my test and with flying colours, they couldn’t tell you hadn’t done well, so therefore I was able to do the registered nurse’s course. And we were a mix there because there were lots of foreign people who had come specifically to train, and it was quite a lively bunch of people.
And when I completed my general training I decided to do my midwifery training, I spent six months in surgical surgery and then went on to midwifery. And having completed midwifery at that time I decided I’d seen so many children who had had birth injuries, which I never knew about, and to see where they started and how they came, so I went to Great Ormond Street Hospital and did children’s nursing. After that I got married and was living in North London, and on the birth of my first children, of course I’m from South London, I had no family over there, so I moved back to the Southeast in 1976.
And at that juncture I worked at the Sydenham’s Children’s Hospital which was part of Lewisham community, and I thought no, this is not like Great Ormond Street so I’m going back to midwifery. So, in 1977 I applied to be at Lewisham midwifery unit, got the job. In 2011 then I continued to do a day for them until 2018 and worked in all spheres of the midwifery group, and the community. So, Lewisham I only knew since 1976 when I started to live in the area.

Catherine: My name is Catherine Ngozi Ezeigwe. I originally come from Nigeria in the Bibo section, South East Nigeria. I came here to join my fiancé then in 1973, May actually to be precise, and I arrived here. Within three months of my arrival, we had our wedding, a church wedding, and we lived in Fulham then. Working, I was just working, but what I really wanted to do was to be a midwife. All my life.
Because when I was a child in Nigeria where we lived my uncle, I spent most of my life with, was in the government and wherever the government premises are there is always a maternity unit, and I just admired the midwives so much. And the work they did, and the babies, that’s all I wanted to be. When I first came here my husband so much wanted me to teach actually, wanted me – I could never see myself as a teacher, so I didn’t go along with it. I even just to please him came to an interview in Goldsmith’s here and got admission and everything, and then in the end I said that’s where it’s going to end.

They kept the admission open for me for years, but I didn’t – meanwhile I was searching for somewhere to do my midwifery. Then you couldn’t do midwifery without first being a nurse. So, I had to go through nursing training, and then it’s finding a hospital. I lived here in Deptford but all the local hospitals that were doing training were so difficult to get nursing training, one big palaver until I got a place in Ladbroke Grove, St Charles’ Hospital.

And did my general nursing training there. Towards the end of my training, I think St Charles amalgamated with St Maries’ in Paddington, and that’s where I finished. And I still had the burning to get on with this business then you have to do your general nursing, and then practice for a minimum of six months before you can go on and do midwifery, there was no integrated courses. During your nursing training you had to do what they call specialists options, like the psychiatry or children’s nursing. But I chose midwifery, and I did it in St Mary’s.

And while I was in it was just – it was so much what I wanted to do, I enjoyed it so much, but there was something I saw there that I did not like from the outset, and it made me even more determined to become a midwife. Because the midwives, for some people who are working in a place such happy events that happen the majority of the time, they were all so miserable. So, I was so determined that I would be a midwife and I would be a different midwife.

So, at the end of my training in St Mary’s I had to then work in St Mary’s Hospital. As I was working my six months I was searching for where to do my midwifery and exactly six months after my training, general nursing course, I enjoyed it, but it was not what I wanted, I got an admission into St Mary’s Hospital in Isleworth to do my midwifery, and then some of the midwives that you interview will tell you this, part 1 and 2, but by the time I did midwifery it was integrated so you had to do one year of absolutely solid work.

Whereas your one year is measured in minutes, you had to do all those things, but it was enjoyable. It was quite energetic. In the meantime, during my general nursing training, I had two kids, which was quite something, and towards the end of my midwifery I was expecting my third child. As soon as I finished my training I went on leave and came back to the unit to work, I think we had to work back your maternity leave or something, you couldn’t just up and go. So, I worked that time.
And in the meantime, then I got a job simultaneously both at Guy’s and at Lewisham to work in the maternity unit, so I didn’t quite – it was quite a thing to choose. They were both equidistant from where I lived but in the end I think the reason I chose Lewisham was I could do my shopping on my way home because there was nothing like [unintelligible 00:13:33] when I finished work I went to Lewisham to do my shopping. And I was very glad I did. I started my general training on 31 December 1973 and left the service on 4 January 2014.

Interviewer: So, just a year after the campaign. That historic moment.

Catherine: Only six months of that period did I not work full time.

Kathy: When I joined Lewisham Hospital it was quite different because the places I’d worked in previously was a greater mix of staff but for me when I went to Lewisham it was predominantly people like me, and I thought that would be even nicer, but it wasn’t always nicer, but you learn to accommodate having faced all the challenges all the years from school days, to even nurse training. You were seen in a different light. You never got all that you really should have.

And as people together we could test and see that we were not really given as much as we required, however, we were fighters, and we stood our ground, and we made our ways through the systems even though they were stuck against us. So, coming to Lewisham was an eye opener to say well yes, there’s a lot of people like me here. But it didn’t sort of make me feel that it was all that I required. So, yes, but you learnt to get on with everything and be the person you want to be.

Fay: Because I started Bexley of course most of the population down there were mainly White but the nurses, there were quite a few, there were a lot of Africans, there were quite a few West Indians, and then I mean in my year there were I think probably half and half. We all got on very well. But when I came to Lewisham because at Lewisham there were a lot of Black people there I thought oh this must be nice working with others, but it wasn’t. Because some of them just thought, as Kathy said, you just coming here. And they weren’t always very nice to each other, which is what I found.

Kathy: One of those things that I thought that made them feel different I believe, I didn’t know it at the time, that in those days a lot of those midwives were just registered midwives, where a lot of us like myself, I was a registered midwife, I had done paediatrics, and I had done general nursing, and in those days some people were what they called SENs which is sort of a – in the present day way they are just a helper, auxiliary nurses, people that help the nurses.

So, they thought that you – because you have all this you might be thinking that you’re better than them, but it wasn’t that at all. You were just there as a midwife, and you did the job that you were called to do. But people did look down on you if you had more qualifications than themselves. And I think that was probably what it was, but you didn’t know it at the time, it’s only as time evolved and things were changing, people were needed to go and do their registered nursing, or upgrade themselves, then you realised that that probably was one of their bugbears.

There were some very strong characters who perhaps we would say own their territory. They’d been there a long time, yes, so they probably saw themselves as this is our territory, you’re now coming to upset the apple cart, and particularly if you had different views of how things should be.

Kathy: Quite different from where I worked before and of course where I worked before I was a student, so the role is now different. You come in, you’re a midwife, and hey ho, not like this, hand holding that is happening here, but mind you West Mead trained you. When you came out you were a midwife. They really did train you in everything. So, yes, I came in and everybody knew how experienced or inexperienced you were, you were just chucked in at the deep end.
And the systems were as they were. Nobody wanted to know whether you had children or not. You did not mention children at work, that’s how it was then. You just don’t talk about kids. So, we got on with the work, I’m quite a worker. And that’s it. I worked, first of all I said to them because I had a small child I opted to do night duty which was what I did until my kid was – my husband looked after them during the night, and that was it.

It was predominantly Black, we were like Caribbean, Asians, Chinese, and who else now, I think that was the mix. Of course, people had their clicks but on the whole it was fun, it was really fun. I can’t say I went off duty any day crying, I didn’t have the time or the energy. I just came, did the work, and went home. And then outside of work if you were sort of – if you had a child, we all got on so well. She would come from her house in Sidcup to Deptford to take my child for me so I can go and do whatever, because it’s not like today where you have to be mentored and all this.

And given orientation. There was no such thing in those days, it’s just these are what became new, very, very new later on. Not to talk like I was somebody who has just qualified basically, you enter the room and then you’re given students as well, and you say – but I think at that point as well you’re sort of firing with all the things you learnt still quite fresh in your head. You’re just doing them. There’s one woman that is Blacker than me, she came from the Congo or something, and I went to her, and she said, “Oh no, they will not touch her, she cannot come all the way from there to here to be looked after by a Black person.”
And nothing you do is right. And you don’t understand that it’s not what you’re doing – that same lady that didn’t want me, I said OK, and I went, and yet when it was another day when she was actually in labour at night, and then I was on call as the supervisor on call, and the midwife that was with her was in trouble. And guess who she called. And when I said to, you know, I said to her, “I’m sorry I had to come because it’s an emergency but remember” she said, “I don’t care, please, please help me” so I said, “Are you sure because I don’t end up” – it was travellers, they cleared them, built all these things in Lewisham. That used to be them.

And you get used to the fact that in community you might come one day and see them. That’s again what you have to teach the people that you’re teaching. When these people turn up at clinics if you catch them you do as much as everything you can for them at that point because you might not see them again. And then you make sure that they’re all off today. Even people who will say they don’t want this, or they don’t want the other. Some people even when the scans became prevalent they said they don’t want them.

Those are the kind of people who realise that, yes, those carers, at least somebody has needed to be with me. To give support as you’re carrying the family. And then afterwards somebody might need to say to you how do you feel or whatever, it didn’t happen. You just went to the next one if the shift continued. I’ve travelled to different parts of the world, where was it we were the last time, and one woman came to me and said, “You are Kathy aren’t you?” I said, “Yes”. She got her phone, got this picture and I was weighing her baby.

Interviewer: That’s so sweet.

Kathy: Things like that, even when I retired I was doing one day in the antenatal clinic and one of the women came into the antenatal and was asking them “Would you know if Kathy still works here?” and she saying that to the reception, of course the reception didn’t know me, and they were saying – and as they were saying that I ran out of the room, she was just one big – it was in the reception area, the waiting area. I just ran out of the room to pick something from the reception “There she is” she screamed out, and she came and she – I don’t remember her from anywhere. The parents do remember their midwives.

Catherine: We had hospital base and community base, but the midwives would go north, south, east, west, where it was in the borough. You wouldn’t be just allocated to surgeries say in Forest Hill, surgeries on the borders with Greenwich. You could be going from one to the other but then it was more channelled to the people who go to those surgeries, people that were evolving all the time. You would see them of the time, maybe not all of the time because you have life events, we’ve got holidays, and you have to share across the borders.
But for most of the time you would see the same midwives and that’s what really mattered, and as Fay has said we recognise that it’s not so much seeing the same face all the time, but seeing people that really cared and really would sort of make you feel special.

Fay: Once we started this we sort of – each midwife was based at a certain surgery. So, all the women who came to that surgery would see her, except of course when she is holiday, so therefore they built up some trust.

Catherine: I suppose we’ve always seen people come and go, you know, if you’re on a shift there’s people you get to know, and then as I branched out into community – I think you were already in community, before me, so therefore the community group they were more together. They supported one another in a much wider way than those that when you were working in the hospital. You felt more belonging there. The hospital side of things could have been a little bit segregated in their little clicks, and so forth.

It wasn’t quite always the same as it was in the community. I might add. And of course, it meant that people tend to want to work with those people more because you know while you were on duty with them you would feel it’s worthwhile being here. The reason why I went to community was one of the person’s selected to do this regional health authority project which was to look at childbirth and how they could make it more inclusive for the parents.

And we had teams. You had caseloads that you had to look after. And it was very demanding. We know at the end of the research the researcher in her write up said the people enjoyed it, however, it was not sustainable because we would be burnt out.

Fay: When we first started in the community we had 18 of us, and then you lot came in and added to it. And then we would meet first thing in the morning in the office to sort out the work and if your team is a bit light then I would help, or vice versa. Things like that, but of course –

Kathy: I think one of the things that has evolved over time is that they’ve now separated out certain groups into a team of people that will take care of them. Like teenagers, teenage pregnancy, we know that they said that it was still on the up and they had a specific midwife who were going to look after them. They weren’t amongst all the other mix. Likewise, those with mental health issues, they also were creamed off to a certain proportion of people who could sort of give them that closer one to one for the process of their whole pregnancy.
And of course, there were those who had complex pregnancy but wanted to have normality because they have to go and see the obstetrician, but they wanted to feel normal, and so there were a group of midwives again who were able to come alongside those so they could help them to enjoy even though they’re not totally normal, or going to be normal, but they knew they had a midwife and not just an obstetrician. So, yes, those were positive things.

How well it all works is the bit that you don’t hear about because midwives have life events, they have families. They have to take holidays etc. and therefore when those times come if they’re not seeing those people it could put a spanner in the works for them, albeit the person they are going to see will be able to give them as good care as anyone else without the extra little niceties that the team may have done for them previously because they’re not focusing on those. They’re focusing on giving them the quality of care that is going to make them, and their baby have the best outcome.

Well, for me I’ve always had good neighbours. We got on very well. The children got on with their children well in Lewisham, so that’s a plus because you never know when you move into a new area what your neighbours are going to be like. So, for me, I have no problems with Lewisham. The main reason why I was there I was working in the area, I wanted to be somewhere local that I could get home if I get a call to say your child is not well. If I can’t get on the bus I might be able to run it there, and that’s really why I stayed in the community.

I was not sort of wanting to go out to Bromley, to wherever else, so – and I had no problems with Lewisham. Of course, over time certain parts of the place will have got a bit run down. Again, for all the wrong reasons but I presume that’s the way communities evolve. The women who want that water birth, whether they’re second baby, third baby, or first baby we had to ensure that providing all the parameters were normal they could have this.

And having done one a few in the hospital you started getting the feel for knowing the – how to handle those people. The fact that they don’t go into the pool too early. If they go in at a certain point you know that this makes them feel so relaxed, it does speed up labour, and once you do a few you really felt the joy of this baby coming, and putting it on the mother. And she’s there in the pool with her baby. It made you feel that you’ve achieved what they wanted, and you were there to help them to accomplish what they also desire.

They had their beautiful music in the background. Yes, there has been some lovely ones, and one of the women had this video done. She did share it with me, but I couldn’t tell you where it is now, because it’s so long ago. And of course, they always give rave reviews and are grateful for what the midwifery team has done for them.

Pauline was a good worker, as I said she was part of the team that I led and likewise when she then went to the senior midwife’s post, she was then my manager, wonderful isn’t it, and the relationship remains the same. They know that you’re standard of working, they know that you work well, and therefore – we had a good relationship in many ways. There were times we would visit her home and things like that in the early days, but we never felt that you’ve lost that person because they were still that person regardless of where they’ve been.

Whether it’s a community post, where she is now, or whatever and I’m sure had we not had that relationship she wouldn’t have been able to signpost you to people for this project that she knew would deliver what will reflect Lewisham.

Catherine: I came to Lewisham in 1980 with a six month old baby. I worked with Kathy on the ward and then I went out in the community before her, and Fay came out as well. And then we all started again, the three of us led teams in the community, and we worked so close together. Again, I was saying there were days that we finished, everybody has gone home and we’re sitting trying to thrash what happens the next day and making sure it was running. It did – it was incredibly hard work. I even remember when the first HIV patient came to Lewisham.

HIV was such a big thing, a lot of people ran, it was one of those things that once you catch it the only thing is death, that’s how it was. I think it was Kathy that did the first delivery of an HIV patient.

Kathy: Well, I was involved in a project where the change in childbirth came about for the Regional Health Authority as it was then, where we had teams of midwives who looked after caseloads, and we saw them through beginning to end. And the whole project was excellent, but you gave a lot of time to it, and at the end of it all we recognised that it was not sustainable in that form because you were out day and night. You really gave time that we would think it would even have allowed you not to give enough time to your family, particularly if you had a young family at the time.

But it was very rewarding. The people who we served really were overwhelmed with the way you were involved in them. And they felt that they got the best and they would have liked all that to have continued but, as I said, it would not have been sustainable for us as a group of people. I don’t think it had all that we wanted it to have at the beginning, but other things had evolved after that to make it good for them. Being special. But on a smaller scale. I think it was about two years.

Fay: Can I just say that from that we did a project after they had finished and we interviewed women who had had their care, who had had just the normal community care, and from that it came out that they didn’t let – the women didn’t really mind who looked after them but the main thing that came out of it was they needed somebody that they knew, that they trusted. And that seemed to care for them. When they rearranged the community then we sort of looked at that rather than what they had done.

We did a little bit of what they had done, but as you say, it wasn’t sustainable. So, we had the community divided into our areas and we had one part of each team who would do traditional care, and another part would do as close as we could get to what they had done.

Kathy: Special memories of my time in midwifery, I was the one that did the first water birth at Lewisham. In fact, we were higher up on home births in the whole community, in England, at a point until many others were doing more home births. So, we felt good even though that our percentage was the [unintelligible 00:40:00] students had put me forward for a national award. So, I was given an NHS Heroes Award in 2010, I received that on behalf of all of us really.

Catherine: After my training the head of midwifery called me and she said, “Catherine, there is a paper made pattern for you to choose what you want to do” I thought that was so nice. And I told her what I wanted, how I wanted to work, because if I did it that way, and you know what, that thing she did I took it with me all through my midwifery because when I managed people that’s what I did. It’s no boasting that when I was in charge of people I got the best results from most people than most of my colleagues.

Interviewer: So, giving people a choice –

Catherine: To make sure they have – you take on board with whatever and just pick up things and throw at them, and they will accept it because they wanted – and then they will deliver. So, I worked there happily. My time and then they were so sorry to see me go, and to some extent – because the journey was quite a lot, and I stayed in Lewisham. The management did their best but this kind of care that existed almost was the end when I was finishing my career, it was not there. There was nothing to care for staff, you just came, and you worked.

So, what that did is the workforce, we kind of got together and supported each other, and we made lifelong friends. As you can see some of those people who you are interviewing are part of that team. One of our night superintendents passed away and we all went to her memorial, it was such a reunion, everyone one of us. If I like had childcare arrangements, we just supported each other because nobody else did.

Interviewer: Outside the service you became a family.
Catherine: Within the service and outside of it. Some extent the workforce were scared of us, but we were not militant or anything like that, we would work, and the work would show.

Kathy: For me the [unintelligible 00:42:36] is fine, I’ll support anything that is happening in Lewisham. I go to the local meetings when I can and of course when Lewisham Hospital had their trials with the Health Secretary I made sure that I was on those marches to ensure that a place that has so much promise, good bus connections, everything, why do we want to close it for something that’s in a corner somewhere where people can’t even find which bus to go there. So, yes, I made sure that I identified myself on those as well.

To me it was just that maybe people didn’t think so many people would have come out to say look we need our hospital. We need our services to be with us not take it somewhere else where we can’t even get there by our local buses. That might have surprised people a lot, that people were so committed to ensure that this does not happen.

Catherine: Lewisham is very central, it’s on the high street, you couldn’t be anymore central than that. The thing that sticks out to me most of all is the fact that he said that doesn’t know what the problem is because it’s just five minutes from Lewisham to Queen Elizabeth. I don’t know where – how did he measure that? Because it takes at least half an hour or more whichever direction you’re coming from to get to Queen Elizabeth. There’s not that many buses from Lewisham to Queen Elizabeth. There’s all the buses going up and down towards the hospital, the trains. So, I don’t know how he managed to work that out.

Kathy: At the protest wherever they called them to be there because numbers is power. And we want to be there to ensure that they know we are standing together with those who are able to be at the forefront to say this must not happen to the services that we have in this area. And even when structures are changed the other hospital appeared to think that they were better than us, when in fact we were never in debt, but they were. Shaking. So, that was quite a moment I would say. And also, in those early times when you were having HIV positive patients.
When many people didn’t want to take care of them I was roped in to go and look after a person without knowing what I was going into, but that was a person that needed care and I would give care no matter what. So, yes, those were daunting times but nevertheless I gave the service that I would have given to any other individual. And of course, in the community we’ve done lots of memorable water births. So, that was great.

Catherine: Where do these women – we had 4,000 births a year, when I was there we had over 4,000 some years. So, where would they just – do they just disappear, I don’t know. I really didn’t understand it. Because when people want to – that’s the government, when they want to save money they just close their eyes and do things that are silly sometimes. A&E is the same. It’s not even like you go in the A&E, you walk in, you still have to wait forever, and in all of them. So, it’s not like there’s no demand for it here. I didn’t know where it was all based, I didn’t understand it at all. It just makes you wonder how do they come to those decisions. Where’s the evidence to show, because they always say everything has to be evidence based, OK, where do you want to – how did they get to these places.

[End of recorded material at 00:48:11]

 

(I4)

If for any reason you wish to withdraw your name or memory, contact us at engage@gold.ac.uk

An oral history interview with Barbara Veale conducted by Anila Ladwa for the In/Visible Labour project, part of the In Living Memory programme.

In/Visible Labour responds to the radical and resilient experiences of collective family making through a programme of artworks and oral histories works by a diverse range of Lewisham communities and their support networks across the borough.

Barbara Veale, is one of earliest Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign members and continues to be an active member within the community. She was the organiser of street meetings and for leafleting for the campaign and had a key fundraising role for the two fundraising events at the Rivoli Ballroom. Barbara describes her role and ends the interview describing fond memories of growing up in Lewisham. Interviewed by Anila Ladwa.

Transcription

Barbara: I’m Barbara Veale. I’ve lived virtually all my life in Lewisham apart from a six year trip across the borough to Greenwich and then I came back. I’ve lived where I’m living at the moment here in Hither Green for over 40 years. Was married, my husband died nearly 14 years ago now, and I’ve got two lovely girls. Was my first sort of experience of doing any campaigning because when I was 39 years of age I was pregnant with my older daughter, and my husband and found to our horror that at that time if you had an amniocentesis test which involved drawing placental fluid from the uterus to do various checks and examinations on it.

You, as the patient, were then expected to travel to Guy’s Hospital with your sample to make sure that it got to the right lab. And we were both horrified because the procedure is a nerve racking one, and also you’re told to sort of take it a bit easy afterwards because there is an inherent risk of a miscarriage just by having the test. And we just said no way should this be happening. So, I wrote to the hospital afterwards and said this really is not on. And in fact, they realised that it wasn’t a good thing for people to be on trains, buses, doing this kind of thing.

So, they changed the system so that the hospital then collected any such samples they had and arranged to get them to Guy’s for the appropriate test, so that was my sort of first taste of direct campaigning on a health issue. And then, my husband had been unwell for a number of years with a liver problem, and he was in and out of both Lewisham Hospital and then ultimately was in King’s which is where he died early in 2009.

And I rejoined the Labour party at that time, one of those weird things that you sometimes do when I was – I phoned the Labour party to cancel his membership, having resigned myself over Blair’s insistence on going to war in Iraq, and they said to me, “Thank you for letting us know. Sorry about your husband. Is there anything else we can help you with?” and I’d always thought that once Blair had gone I would rejoin the party, so I just made the instant decision, I did that. Got back involved in the local Labour party itself, and found that there was a very small health campaign running at the time which I joined.

But I have to say we weren’t anywhere near as effective as the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign became. And then around the summer of 2012 when people – campaigners were first picking up that there was going to be this big report and recommendation from Matthew Kershaw, I think he was the head administrator guy, about making massive changes to the services at Lewisham Hospital. Louise Irving called the first meeting of anybody, any groupings that might be interested in campaigning against this and I was part of the inaugural meeting.

And then became a very sort of active member of this sort of campaign that really picked up over the October and November 2012, and got very involved in all the organising that we did as part of big general meetings of interested people, but I was very keen to get involved in the leafleting side of things. And getting people – mainly shoppers in Lewisham Market, it wasn’t obviously just me doing this on my own, but we were there pretty much every Saturday morning and sometimes it would be longer in the day.

Getting people to sign a petition against the rejigging of the services at Lewisham Hospital, and then when we decided to have the first big march on the 24th of November 2012 we were putting posters up, handing out leaflets and I was a steward on that march. And then throughout 2013 there was just a whole rolling programme of all different types of activities to keep things in the public eye. But always backed up with lots of leafleting, lots of approaching people, lots of discussions with people on the street. Going on demonstrations, and just making the Lewisham community aware of what they were in danger of losing.

And I think we had – it was 10,000 at least people marching in November 2012, and when we realised that Jeremy Hunt, who by then was the Secretary of State for Health, was not taking a blind bit of notice, we had to – as we put it, we need to march again and we campaigned for a second march on the 26th of January 2013 where 25,000 people came out on the streets, and that was a time of year where we’d had in the week running up to that very heavy snow and ice. So, not brilliant conditions except that on that day, although the snow and ice was still around, it was beautiful sunshine and blue skies. That worked well.

Interviewer (Anila): I was just wondering what people’s reaction was, getting them on board.

Barbara: Initially virtually everybody was on board. You had obviously a number of people who just got their shopping to do, or whatever, and they don’t want to take a leaflet, they just want to walk on through, do their business and so on. And of course, you’ve got some people who were Tory supporters, not that many I have to say but some who would stop and argue with you that this was all really necessary, this rationalisation of services and so on. But lots and lots of people in Lewisham were thinking what, you know, we can’t have our A&E downgraded.

And our maternity services downgraded, especially as the hospital had spent a lot of money on upgrading the maternity facilities. Which all would have been a complete waste of money had the Kershaw plans, and I suppose we must call them the Hunt plans as well, actually come to fruition, and I think those of us who know a little bit about the way that if hospital services start being chipped away quite substantially, if you downgrade an A&E and then you get to the point where the A&E is closed that very rapidly can have a knock on effect that major surgery doesn’t get undertaken at the hospital either.

And so, then that really is putting the skids on to something and could lead to the whole hospital closing. And we had ludicrous things in the reports that the government put out whereby they employed at vast expense people like Deloitte’s, the management consultants, who reckoned that it would only take about nine minutes to be able to travel from the area around Lewisham Hospital to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich. And everybody said this is mad. They did have a little caveat because where they put this in the appendix to one of the reports it had in brackets assuming no traffic.

So, really they might have done that at 2 o’clock in the morning on a good weather night, and putting their foot down and hoping there weren’t any speed cameras around. But in fact, one of the stunts, if you like, that the campaign did was to have somebody videoed travelling on a bus from the Lewisham area to QE, and they had a mock bandage around their head and a bit of sort of blood coming out of the bandage. But again, it was, if I’m right, at least an hour, might have been closer to an hour and a half.

So, just the whole premise of what the government was trying to do was just full of holes from the off. And the other thing that we’d found is that Lewisham people were also incredibly generous in terms of donations that they would give when we sort of moved up a little bit from just doing leafleting. We were allowed to have a temporary stall and we had mugs commissioned, like the one you’re drinking out of at the moment, and so we had badges. We had wristbands. We had mugs. And bags, we moved on to producing all different types of bags.

And the number of times people – they’d say how much was the mug, now I can’t exactly remember whether it was £2.50 or £3 or something like that, they would give a £20 note and say keep the change, that was their way of doing a donation because when this campaign first got going we didn’t have any cash from anywhere. So, it was our own fundraising activities initially, and certainly when we got into the – what was the fight to fund a judicial review in the High Court alongside the separate judicial review that Lewisham Council were doing.

That’s when we got bigger community groups involved. The leading one being Millwall Football Club who offered to match the fund up to a certain level. What we raised for the High Court they would match, and that made a hell of a difference because it’s pretty hard in this country to take something through the High Court if you haven’t got a bit of money behind you.

I suppose the first memory would be the first public meeting that the campaign organised in early November 2012 where we’d got the date booked for what would be the – what we hoped would be a big demonstration later that month. And it was seeing people, it was a packed meeting at Lewisham Hospital in the Less Off Theatre, there was an overspill in the Calabash Centre in George Lane. And there was just a sense of excitement that people were coming together to actually fight this proposal.

I suppose the next big thing for me was actually on the first Saturday, the first march, the weather was foul. It was absolutely peeing with rain. It was windy. It was cold. And I suppose a little part of me thought oh, will people turn out for this. And then when we just saw people coming and coming, and we marched from Reynolds Street, as it was then, in Lewisham Centre, and through the High Street, and up to Lady Well Fields it was just fantastic to see the level of support. And the number of families that were there.

It wasn’t something that was just what you might call the old politicos turning out and sort of – yes, another chance to sort of stuff it to the Tories. Yes, there was an element, but there also was the families, the older people who rely so much on hospital services who are wanting to say their piece, so that was great. We had the disappointment in a way that Hunt wouldn’t accept that they’d got this wrong on what they were trying to do, so very early in 2013 we knew we were heading for trying to do these judicial reviews in the courts.

And then as I say we knew that we had to march again. So, 26th of January 2013 and – I mean to have been delighted at 10,000 turning out two months earlier to then – counted and was verified by the police who do their own checks on these things at 25,000 people was just amazing. And of course, it made you feel that all the hard work that you were putting in on building for this was really worthwhile doing. And again, we ended up actually on that march up in my local park, Mountsfield Park. It was like a mud pit up there at one point.

But we had people writing messages on a huge roll of paper that just kept being unwound more and more as people wrote their messages. People were signing the petition. And it was a really good community feel that the community really was behind what we were trying to do. And then throughout the months of – from February to July here were lots of different things that people organised that I was involved in on the fringes, or I attended some of them, but not all of them. And so, for example, a very good friend of mine Vicky organised the buggy army demonstration which was outside the then offices of the Department of Health up in London.

She got loads of parents with young children in their buggies and went up, and they were singing various sort of songs that people had composed in support of the hospital and so on. And I mean I went along with that and that was really terrific, but that wasn’t my work, although I would give out a leaflet about it the previous couple of Saturdays but the actual organisation and pulling that together was done by others.

As was the thing that was called The Hunt for Jeremy Hunt in his own constituency in Farnham, in Surrey. He didn’t really want to answer for what he was trying to do in Lewisham, so a group of people travelled down on Saturdays and campaigned in his own area, outside his constituency office, wanting to talk to him. Of course, he just hid all the time, but I mean people went off and did that. But I tended to stay on my patch as I called it in Lewisham shopping centre, or just outside, doing the usual Saturday morning selling merchandise and giving out the latest leaflets.

And I mean we just had so many different leaflets, giving up dates, different slants on things. And that was why we needed to keep the fundraising going because obviously it’s expensive to get posters up, leaflets put out. We had another thing where Boris Johnson was Mayor of London and periodically he would go out in the different boroughs and have the – it’s a bit like the question time thing that you have on BBC TV, he would do a question time.

Well, of course the time when he came to Lewisham, which must have been in about the April or May of 2013, he got a real roasting from the audience, and I mean he was as hopeless and helpless then as he was recently when Prime Minister. All full of bluff and bluster. Hadn’t got a real grip on the detail of anything. He also promised to have meetings with the campaign, and he would have representations with Hunt, and he did bugger all, but that’s Boris Johnson for you.

The other big thing that I wasn’t directly involved in but on the day this happened I was at the Broadway Theatre at Catford, it was the people’s commission, very much sort of led by Tony and Olivia, this was the event that was chaired by Michael Mansfield. We have to say KC now don’t we, he wasn’t then obviously, which was a fantastic piece of work that just took evidence from some experts but an awful lot of community people who were giving their views on what Lewisham Hospital had done for them, and why the service was so vital.

And that was a piece of work that was so very well received that the lawyers from the campaign side and from Lewisham Council made reference to this in their representations at the High Court. And I suppose if I had to pick out one thing that was the absolute highlight for me on the 31st of July 2013 was the day we got the judgement on the – the two judicial reviews to try and get this proposal stopped in its tracks. And we had people inside the court to listen, but I was part of the group that was waiting outside.

And we had a huge demonstration of us there in the morning, as everybody was going in, but I was the person who had – was the link that as soon as what was announced in the High Court, I got a text saying what it was, and then I was the one who had the privilege of being able to shout out to everybody we’ve won, we’ve won, because even at that point there was still, not me, but I do know that some people in the campaign were thinking no, the establishment will always win on these things. There’ll be a way that they – they won’t allow this. We won’t win this. And of course, we did.

We’d also sort of tempted providence to some extent but we had already got made up our – some victory – I’m just showing you one now, on the old wooden sticks, but they were wrapped up in black plastic bags, but of course once we knew that we had won we could open up those bags and then everybody could brandish Hunt Defeated, and then we very rapidly got some A3 size, the bigger size, and got them plastered up all around Lewisham and Catford, sticking them on railings and things so that people could see.

And there was such a big gathering outside Lewisham Hospital that night. The community came out. The staff came out. I mean that’s the other thing I probably should have said right at the beginning on all this, it was Lewisham staff as well as – who were so important in the campaign and how it was run at the big meetings we had.

Interviewer: So, the poster says Victory for Lewisham, Hunt Defeated, and it’s a red background with white typeface which Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign weblink, and it’s done in the style of the Keep Calm poster, that’s very famous. And actually, just to say my mock says Don’t Keep Calm, Get Angry and Save Lewisham Hospital which became the sort of motto I think I’ve seen the most really.

Barbara: It was our brand. I mean once we’d got that first poster done that then appeared in small versions on all of our literature. Also, the time of year when – of the first demonstration, it was the run up to Christmas, and part of the thought was if we can get these posters into so many windows the bright red would stand out and it would be that sort of splash of colour. I mean I am useless on designing stuff, and in many instances wording of leaflets. I mean I have a background in local government for most of my life before I became a teaching assistant, before I retired. I’d be too wordy on things. You need this eye catching but punchy set of words.

Interviewer: I guess it’s the colour of danger as well isn’t it.

Barbara: I think that’s right. And then of course, Hunt tried to sort of prick our bubble shall we say because he decided to appeal and again, you know, some people thought no, this is really when the establishment will come together and they will find a way, but then a lot of us said no, we’re going to fight on with this. So, there was the further leafleting, the galvanising and the demonstration outside the High Court. And I can’t now remember exactly when it was, I think it was some time in the October of that year that the High Court met to hear the appeal.

And I was actually inside the court listening to all the deliberations, it was over two possibly three days, but it was very short anyway. And then, the lead judge just said to everybody OK, we’re going off now, we will consider what’s been presented to us. But the words, I can’t remember his exact words, but it was – what it meant was don’t go too far away because we’re going to be back fairly soon I think. And so, the three appeal court judges went out, and literally they were back 10 minutes later to effectively say to Jeremy Hunt bog off, you know, this is unlawful. It stands. Off you go.

So, that was another sort of big, exciting thing. And again, once the word got round the community everybody was so delighted. But then at that point we realised that it wasn’t over, the campaign wasn’t over, because we’d already by that point had inadequate financial settlements for the NHS, let’s be kind. Cuts really. And the writing was on the wall that the NHS was not going to get the level of money that it needed, and as we now realise now the forward planning on the staffing levels that would be needed to deal with an ageing population. And where so many people, because they live a lot longer, have got more chronic conditions to live with. And that is a big burden on not only the hospitals but also on the community support, the primary care.

The community care, and that side of things, is just abysmal the way that’s been neglected. And don’t get me started on social care. I’ve got an aunt who is 101 who will be 102 in January, fingers crossed, who’s in a care home. A good one. But I know the struggle that there is to staff them properly, staff them well. And the level of pay is abysmal. Absolutely abysmal.

The first big fundraiser we had, yes, 27th of September 2013. The campaign had these – what we called working parties, so those that were interested in literally working on a particular aspect of the campaign would have regular meetings and discussions, and then having worked out proposals and ideas would then take them back to the bigger campaign meetings. And a guy called Pat was the one who was the leading light behind the first fundraiser. All manner of brilliant local bands were happy to come along and perform for free.

Bill from the Rivoli provided the premises for free. And I have to confess I can’t remember how much money we raised from this first fundraiser, but it ran into many, many thousands of pounds. I think you’d probably have to ask Olivia because that would be on the website somewhere what this raised. And it was an absolutely brilliant evening. We ran a raffle, one of those where you give out the tickets on the night, and loads of people bought raffle tickets and we had various prizes and so on. And I got my girls, and their friends came along, and a great time was had by all.

In Hither Green there was this fantastic group, they must have set up 15 or more years ago called Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet, and they’re still going and have got bigger and bigger, but they do all this great 80s disco music and a couple of those came along to sort of lead a section of the evening. But it literally was a couple of very small speeches, you couldn’t even call it a speech, it would be like why we’re here, what it’s for, and then the rest of it was given over to having a good dance, a good time, and a good drink.

Then we still carried on doing our weekly stalls and leafleting at Lewisham because I know that I was at least for 18 months, maybe 20 months, more or less every Saturday, apart from being on holiday or ill, was spending time at Lewisham doing stuff, and it was continuing to sell mugs, it was continuing to sell bags. All of which was to bring in money so that we could carry on with the campaigning. And then, where are we, the October of 2014 we had a second fundraiser which I led on that, but I mean again there was a working party, there was a group of us behind all the arrangements.

One of the things that I’m quite proud of is that – I used to volunteer in a local primary school, Sandhirst, and they had a great summer fayre in, it must have been in 2013 where it’s one of those where they did a raffle, but it wasn’t just sold tickets on the day and then drawn. If you get agreement from the council, and it’s part of the Gambling and Lotteries Act whatever, you have to get permission and pay for it to run a raffle than can last over a period of time.

So, you have a chance to sell lots of tickets and then as long as you print on it when it’s going to be held, the draw is going to be held and when, so it’s all above board and you have to do a return to the council afterwards in terms of what you’ve raised, what the purpose is, and the key prizes you’ve got. I saw this being done as I say at the primary school, and I thought I’m going to pinch that idea.

So, earlier on in 2014 when we were talking about what we wanted to do by way of another fundraiser I said do people feel that they could go out in their own workplaces or around their own local communities and actually sell raffle tickets, but you couldn’t sell them on the street. It wasn’t like we could sell them from the market, it had to be that people – you’d go door to door, so some people did that. Other people as I say went to workplaces, held parties at their own home, people came, they bought raffle tickets.

And so, that was all going on. We had a top cash prize, I think it was £250 was it, then somebody – Brian in the campaign has got a cottage in Suffolk, and so one of the prizes was that somebody could win a weekend in the cottage. And we then had this wonderful woman, Tina Turner, tea lady who did this disco bingo evening and then the usual music, and stuff. But I remember a bit more, I suppose because I was sort of like the lead on the working party for this.

The upshot was that the ticket prices and donations on the night raised about £5,000.  The raffle alone raised £2,400 and it was sort of like – it was gobsmacking, whoever has held a raffle when it’s a – if it’s like a big organisation that does a national raffle, like some of the big charities or political parties with a huge sort of admin machine behind them, raise more than that, but this was our local campaign and everybody mucking in, and everybody working so hard to raise the money. Nearly two and a half grand on the raffle.

Interviewer: That’s amazing. I would love to meet the Tina Turner tea lady, that’s fantastic, she sounds great.

Barbara: Yes, she did a very good passable impression of Tina Turner.

Interviewer: You were so involved with being in the market, at the market every Saturday, I was wondering about your childhood memories of growing up in Lewisham.

Barbara: I grew up in New Cross Gate and the market that I would regularly go to with my mum was Deptford Market, and so I have lots of memories as a – well I’d had to be a bit beyond a toddler, so from the age of 5 upwards I remember being walked very briskly by mum from home in Jerningham Road down to Douglas Way in Deptford to get whatever shopping she got from there that she could manage to carry all the bags back, or we’d come back on the bus in fact. But I mean do you want some fascinating sort of images that will never leave me really.

Interviewer: That would be great.

Barbara: Mum, as a lot of people did, used to buy broken biscuits because they were so much cheaper. There would be these great big white paper bags, quite thing paper and you’d get that choc-a-bloc full, Lord knows how much it was. That would have passed me by, but next to the broken biscuit stall was where they sold eels for people to make jellied eels, which is a delicacy for some. I’ve never been able to take to it, but I can remember as a child – and I mean this memory will probably appal some animal lovers and people who are vegan and wouldn’t eat anything like this.

But there was a huge tank of live eels with black skins and the guys who ran the stall when somebody said however much weight they wanted they would grab the eels, chop off their heads, chop off the tails, rip down the body with a knife, and with the back of a knife they would slide out the innards into another tank. Some of the eels were also kept in deep sinks, now these are the old fashioned big white sinks and I just stood there as a young kid. I can remember just watching this happening because the innards that went into this big sink bucket arrangement would writhe about.

And I just couldn’t understand what was going on, that something wasn’t instantly dead with its head cut off, but part of it would still carry on moving, and then when they’d got however many eels prepared in that sort of way then with a separate big knife they’d just go chop, chop, chop. Cutting it up into chunks of three or four inches, scooped into – I don’t know what, it might have been a plastic bag, I don’t know what people would have brought along. It probably wasn’t – it certainly wasn’t Tupperware type stuff that you would have these days of bring your own container.

And off they’d go, and they would cook that and make their jellied eels, but it was this sort of regular weekly thing, the broken biscuits, I would go and gawp at this mess next door. And then not every week but occasionally I had an uncle, he was mum’s sister’s husband, and he ran a – he was a barrow boy, but he had – for fruit and veg. And his barrow was very close to what is now Deptford Station, it had as done us as it is now, but that was his pitch.

And he sold his fruit and veg there, and certainly sometimes we’d go along, and mum didn’t get a lot of stuff from him, but it would be just to sort of say, “Hello Alfie, how you doing?” and check up on her sister and all that. But he would give me in the summer a peach and I can remember now eating that peach, beautifully juicy, beautiful flavour, and just – I suppose my childhood memory is that things like that tasted different.

And we used to get so many things like shoes for me, we wouldn’t go to a shoe shop, it would be somewhere that had got a couple of barrows with all these different kids shoes in some different sizes, and you’d stand trying them on, you know, on the pavement or just off and standing on a bit of cardboard so you didn’t mark the soles of the shoes. But I was not a great user of the market at Lewisham, probably until I got involved in the campaign because when I grew up and ended up living here, and I was working, there was the occasional local shop that I would use.

But of course, by then supermarkets had come in and it was more the tradition of I’d go to the supermarket to buy stuff. And again, I suppose that’s also a reflection on what you’re earning because a lot of people go to markets because it’s tremendous value for money. And when money is tight you get a great big scoop of something for a pound, although I think it’s gone up now, it’s more than a pound a scoop. But then of course, when you’re on your own, which I was for a lot of my time before I met my husband and had the girls, and now, I can’t deal with a scoop full of whatever –

Alright, you could freeze it all I suppose but then you run out of freezer space. So, it is more convenient to go to a different shop where you could buy one onion if you wanted it, or just two carrots, that sort of thing. But yes, that – just coming back to the weekly trip to Deptford Market, the other highlight of the Saturday morning, when we got back home with all this stuff my dad would have cooked lunch which was always mashed potato, sausages, fried onions and peas, which I loved. That was a favourite lunch for me.

Interviewer: OK, well that sounds like a really good note to end on. And happy memories of the market. I don’t think they do the eels anymore but there is a good fish stall there, my mum goes and gets fish from Deptford Market, so yes. It’s survived in some form.

[End of recorded material at 00:49:35]

(I8)

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