2 (34) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY X.

WHAT A WASTE.

The eighties. In 1981 there was race rioting around England and hunger strikes by Republican prisoners at the Maze prison in Northern Ireland. The Conservative government was having a rough ride and blaming it on the last Labour government because that's what politicians of all parties automatically do. 

I was wryly amused when, in 1982 (and as quickly as they had been formed), Area Health Authorities were abolished. On the Island there was a muttering departure of top egos (most of them carrying fat redundancy cheques) and that was that: work procedures changed but little, the remaining top jobbers - many of them prize examples of confidence over competence - cultivated new ways to justify their existence and most patients either did not notice the changes or were stricken with apathy. 

A couple of weeks after it was all over I ran across the departing AHA Chairperson in a local department store. I had first known her when she was a quiet little member of the NHS Executive Council. 
Promotion to Chair of the AHA had magically transformed her into a provincial Margaret Thatcher, complete with the patronizing voice and dutiful, sycophantic retinue. Demotion had clearly upset her and she bemoaned the removal of her favourite high-flyers with the words: “What a waste.” 

I tried to look sympathetic as I responded: “Well, we all have to accept change don't we, my dear.” 

It was one of her own 1974 pearls of wisdom. We never spoke again. 

Those still working were the lucky ones. The country was in a state of recession with 3 million out of work. Things were looking increasingly grim for the Thatcher regime when along came the invasion of the Falklands by Argentina. 

Prime Minister Thatcher sent a task force to liberate the islands and its success carried her back to power in 1983 by a landslide 379 seats (a 144 majority) There followed a massive programme of privatisation and deregulation (just about every nationalised concern except the NHS) and the eradication of the entire coal mining industry. 

This appeal to the self-serving profiteer in many a worthy citizen, together with sympathy for those Tory MPs and their families who had suffered in 1984 from the IRA bombing of their conference hotel in Brighton, led to a third Conservative re-election in 1987. 

Did I say somewhere that the eighties had to be an improvement on the seventies? 
I was joking. 

Job-wise I plodded along giving the best I could to whatever I did and gradually becoming more and more disenchanted. 

Finally, late in 1988, with another gigantic reshuffle of the NHS pending, I got to the office one morning to be told that a colleague in the hospital finance department had been given early retirement. The member of staff who met me with the news was one I trusted implicitly. 
“Good for him,” I said. “I wish I could.” 
I then went into my office and waited for the summons to the Administrator's room: it took about half an hour. 

“Ah, Dennis,” he said, “I am told you want to retire...” 

So, at the end of March, 1989, I took early retirement. The following month my last Barnden's Beat was published in Link, the Wessex health staff newspaper. It was headed No regrets... and summed up - past, present and foreseeable future - why I was not unhappy to leave the NHS. By the time it was published Maureen (pictured below with our young buddy Hannah) and I had taken off on a driving holiday that took us up as far as Inverness in Scotland. 

  No. I had no regrets.