Frank Wood by David Welsh and Jan Pollock on 23 June 2011 for Britain at Work Oral History Project
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INTERVIEW WITH FRANK WOOD BY DAVID WELSH AND JAN POLLOCK ON 23 JUNE 2011 FOR BRITAIN AT WORK ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Frank Wood studied for a degree in biochemistry and physiology at North East London Polytechnic in Stratford in the mid-80s. After doing voluntary work at Friends of the Earth on City Road for a year, he began work at Central Middlesex Hospital at Park Royal in west London as a trainee pathology scientist. He became a shop steward and London regional council member of the ASTMS, Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs, which in 1988 became the MSF, Manufacturing, Science and Finance union. He studied for a fellowship in the Institute of Biomedical Scientists and went on to work in the laboratories at Dulwich Hospital and then King’s College Hospital at Denmark Hill in Southwark, where he is now the Chair of the staff committee and on the UNITE executive council. Interview Dave Welsh and Jan Pollock transcription Tom Vague DW: This is an interview with Frank Wood on June 23 2011 at King’s College Hospital as part of the Britain at Work project. Frank, I’d like to ask you first about when you started your working career, what led you towards the NHS? Well, I studied at North East London Polytechnic, Stratford, east London, for a degree in biochemistry and physiology. That was one of the degrees which was specifically aimed towards a career in biomedical science and hospital work. I mean the other career route would have been research anyway and at the time, this being the mid-80s and me being a student, I didn’t want to do animal research especially being a Labour party activist and a leftie. So I was looking to work in the NHS and it took about a year after I left polytechnic to find a job. There was a lot of competition then for positions in the NHS. Even though it was during the Thatcher period I don’t think it was that they weren’t taking them on. There were certainly a lot of adverts, a lot more than now for positions, but there was a lot of competition. I remember there would be 50 or 60 applying. I would go for quite a few interviews. A lot of the sites I went to the majority of the laboratories were quite ramshackle and under-invested. So when I went to Central Middlesex Hospital it was all new and that was quite impressive. In the meantime I went to work as a volunteer at Friends of the Earth on City Road. I worked in the post room for about a year, mostly packing things. I remember about Christmas time we were packing toy badgers and baby seals. We had quite a few. We had quite an extensive catalogue range, yeah, they were quite popular. So I was doing that sort of work, which was to improve my CV when I was applying for these things you know. So I went to Central Middlesex, it was quite far. I lived at East Croydon and it was quite a journey to get there but, as you can imagine, I wasn’t going to be fussy you know. So at the time Central Middlesex Hospital was based in Park Royal industrial estate, which is a huge industrial estate. Even though it said Central Middlesex it was somewhat misleading because it was quite a large industrial estate and there’s about three tube stations near the hospital. There’s Park Royal, which I think is Piccadilly line, and to go to that way you go past the Guinness Brewery, and at the time the women staff would have a little group that would gather together at a particular time and then walk through the alleyway by the brewery. We had the Central line, which was North Acton tube that turned out by the BBC, and we had the Harlesden station, which is the Bakerloo line, that was nearby. The hospital was built in about the 60s, one of the few that were built about that time. So it was quite unique in a way because you see a lot of hospitals that are like either very modern, PFI style you know, or that sort of old 19th century buildings. So it’s unusual to see a hospital of that sort of era, and it’s sort of low level because the area wasn’t expensive so they didn’t build up, and it had this long frontage and a side road. You sort of go down this unpresupposing side road and you encounter the special care baby unit on one side and you carry on and pathology was at the back, sort of low level buildings, two storey, very nice, very modern at the time, and they’d only recently just finished it when I started. And in fact I’d been there about five or six months and Nicholas Ridley came and opened it, you know all the big names. And I think when he left Virginia Bottomley came, but I missed out on Virginia Bottomley. And next door was a separate laboratory for what was called the Public Health Laboratory Service. They had quite a big lab there. I think it was part of an overspill of their labs in North London, and next door to that was a large building which was part of the Secure Mental Unit from Shenley, which is a hospital near there. They had a separate unit for people I suppose who must have needed nearer mental hospital care as well. I can’t recall the building very well but we would occasionally see somebody come hurtling out of there and start running up the road and then they would be pursued by the nurses. It used to be quite entertaining, I was right next door. There was one woman, it used to be quite open you know sort of hospital, it wasn’t like a prison like some mental hospitals, and one woman who was an alcoholic and apparently she was ordering pizza, takeaway pizza and a bottle of wine with it. And they only found out when they found all these pizza boxes. So there was a team of about, I think there was a team of about 30 of us in pathology, because there was histopathology and us and quite a specialist haematology department in the main building. That was because the hospital had quite a large population with sickle cell. There was quite a large, good service that was run by this quite fearsome senior chief Medical laboratory scientific officer. A friend of mine Grant Webb, he was the chief scientist and he was an expert in sickle cell blood transfusion. And next door to us, right at the back was the social club, which actually served alcohol. And if you worked the night you could go there and have a drink with the other night staff. It was quite a large old site and I think behind it is allotments and then there’s the canal. I’m not sure which canal it would be, would it be the Grand Union probably? I went there in 87, and what happened was I joined the union, at that time we were called ASTMS, Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs, which was a merger between Data and the Association of Scientific Workers, that was before my time. DW: That goes back a bit. Yeah, in those days we used acronyms, not names, you know. So I joined the ASTMS and there was about 30 members, because we didn’t have a lot of professionals, we only had like really pathology, and speech and language therapists, and some technicians, there wasn’t a lot of members there. I don’t think it’s a huge hospital now, it wasn’t a huge hospital then. None of the trade unions were that numerous you know. So I joined and it wasn’t really many activists. There was myself, who was quite keen, and a bloke, a gentleman called Jonathan Phil Ebosie. A really nice West Indian chap and he worked for the PHLS. So just us two really, although he was a steward he wasn’t really a hospital employee but he sort of looked after the ASTMS as well. JP: Can you remember what you got paid in those days? Oh yeah, yeah, I can recall that, bearing in mind when I was a student I got, this was when we got a full grant you know, I got about £700 a term. My rent for the polytechnic (there were two buildings that got knocked down as part of the Olympics site, two short towerblocks and a travellers site by the freight terminal, I stayed there the first term) and was £24 a week. There’s a building now at the Elephant and Castle that costs 10 times as much. So even then I mean, and I came out of 3 years education with debts of £150, I did. I talk to some of the management students and they can’t believe it. But I got paid my first month £320, and I thought fantastic, £320, what every month? We were PTB B, Professional and Technical B, but we were not in the pay review body. We were not in the pay review body because way back in the past we’d taken industrial action and they removed our right to be in the pay review body. So we got different pay awards to the nurses and the doctors.