Nurses' view 'I am fed up with being insulted'

I am fed up of being called names.

- Chris Osuh Geneva Abdul

I know I am Black. I was born Black. And I love being Black. So tell me something I don’t know”.Those words, uttered 50 years ago as a young nurse facing racial abuse in a London hospital, were a turning point for Allyson Williams.

Williams had come to the UK in 1969 from the anglophile culture of the postwar Caribbean - where children of all ethnicities learned English literature, grammar and history by heart - only to be attacked in “the mother country”. She is now among those who fear the UK still does not properly appreciate the outsize contribution made to the NHS by Black, minority ethnic and overseas-born or trained staff.

Those professionals included Deloris James, who was born a British citizen in St Kitts and Nevis and moved to Cardiff aged 10 in 1964. She was “pushed” into a career in the NHS, following in the footsteps of her mother, who was a midwife. Twelve other relatives also worked in the health service.