When the NHS (National Health Service) was created in 1948 by Aneurin Bevan, the Minister of Health under PM Clement Attlee, it was a visionary and revolutionary system. However, Britain was still very much feeling the effects and aftershocks of World War II and had a shortage of qualified healthcare staff to answer the increasing demands of this new service. To solve this, Britain turned to the Commonwealth, and its peoples.
In the years following the NHS’ founding, 40 000 Commonwealth nurses and midwives answered Britain’s call, as part of the Windrush generation. Our NHS has always relied on migrant healthcare workers, but the Windrush generation were especially vital in getting the system on its feet and holding it together in an otherwise devastated, war-torn economy. The Ministries of Health and Labour worked actively with the Colonial Office, Royal College of Nursing and General Nursing Council to encourage immigration from the Commonwealth to fill the urgent need for nurses. A lot of these nurses came from the Caribbean: by 1977, 12% of all student nurses and midwives in Britain were recruited overseas, and 66% of those came from the Caribbean. Doctors were also recruited en masse from the former colonies – primarily from Asia. In 1971, 31% of all NHS doctors in England were born and educated abroad. Even today, the NHS is the biggest employer of POC in Europe, with 20.7% of the NHS workforce coming from BAME backgrounds. And, Black staff make up 6.5% of the workforce, a disproportionately high figure considering that 3-4% of the British population identify as Black.
That said, the Windrush generation were not the first Black healthcare workers in the UK. You may well have heard of the more famous figures, such as Mary Seacole, but along with her there were countless other Black nurses in the 19th and early 20th centuries, who we either have limited information about or no knowledge of at all (I would urge you to research the following: Annie Brewster, Tryphena Anderson, Daphne Steel, Erena Kydd and Eva Lowe). The same goes for doctors; the first Black person to graduate from university with a degree in medicine was James McCune Smith in 1837, from the University of Glasgow.
Despite the great service done by Black healthcare workers in answering the NHS’ call, they faced (and still do) significant prejudice and racism. Instead of finding the welcoming workplaces and communities they had been told to expect, these workers often found themselves in hostile and isolating working environments. Additionally, many found that their medical qualifications were not even recognised in the UK, and had to fight hard to regain recognition, or else re-qualify from scratch.
Despite this adversity, Black healthcare workers continue to do vital, lifesaving work for the people this country, and thanks to their service, we still have the NHS and all that it does for us.
