Originally published as part of our 2018 Black History Month Hidden Stories campaign
Did you know that the midwife who delivered both Prince George and Princess Charlotte is a black woman? Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent OBE was responsible for two of this century’s royal births; she is the Head of Maternity, Children and Young People at NHS England, and her academic research into healthcare has been nationally and internationally influential. She exemplifies the integral contributions that black nurses have made to the NHS ever since its inception.
The NHS launched in 1948, but only a few years into its existence, the system was severely struggling to cope with demand, and suffering from vast staff shortages generated by the Second World War. However by 1955, the arrival of tens of thousands of black women from Africa and the Caribbean had rescued our health system from the brink of ruin. This generation of ambitious women faced prejudice from patients refusing to be treated by them in the hospital, and on the street, from white supremacists determined to ‘keep Britain white’.
In the BBC’s Black Nurses – The Women Who Saved the NHS, one woman born in Barbados describes how she was attacked by white men in a chip shop after finishing her shift at a hospital, the cruel impact of which has not left her even so many years later. At the same time, these black women were being shuffled into the State Enrolled Nurse programme, a course not internationally recognised and considered inferior to the programme being undertaken their white female counterparts. Even though they were coming to form the backbone of the health service, they were being systematically undermined and their career progression stunted.
In 2018, both the NHS and the arrival of the Empire Windrush have turned 70. Despite being a lifeline to the longevity of the NHS, black women’s career advancement over the decades has been stagnant, something which Professor Elizabeth Anionwu CBE says would be unheard of and even scandalous if these were white women.
According to a 2014 report on diversity in the NHS, black staff fill a disproportionately number of junior roles, while just 1% of NHS chief executives came from a BAME background. This brings us back to Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent OBE, whose rare achievement of rising to the top of her profession as a black nurse is a testament to the tireless efforts of black women in the face of adversity.
As nurses of the NHS, they are the unsung heroines who have sustained it from the very beginning, forming part of the vital black workforce that would bring Britain back to its feet in the twentieth century.
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Banner photo credit: Retired Caribbean Nurses