Nurses Day - Thora Silverthorne

Thora Silverthorne - Progressive Nursing Leader - 100th Anniversary

Thora Silverthorne 25th November 2010 will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thora Silverthorne. To celebrate this event a wreath will be laid at Reading Town Hall and a remembrance event will be held in the Thora Silverthorne rooms at UNISON Offices in Reading.

Thora Silverthorne

Nurses’ leader and International Brigader,

Thora Silverthorne was born in Abertillery on the 25th November 1910. She was the daughter of George Richard Silverthorne, a miner at the Vivian & Six Bells Pit and Sarah Boyt of Bargoed. Her early years were spent at 170 Alma Street, Abertillery, she secured a scholarship to Nataglo County School (Hafod) and attended the local Baptist church run by Pastor Rev Ivor Evans. She joined the Young Communist League at 16 and, when she was old enough, the Abertillery Communist Party. Her father was a founder member of the local Communist Party and active in the miners union. Thora chaired meetings with prominent speakers such as Arthur Horner, the miners’ leader. "Everyone in Abertillery talked politics," she was to say of these times.

With her mother’s early death, as one of seven children, she was forced to leave Abertillery for England. Initially she worked as a nanny for the local Labour MP, but also fitted in selling the Daily Worker to the local railwaymen.

She then followed her sister into nursing at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford and was involved in Communist Party activities in the city. She participated with her close friend Christopher Hill in the October Club. The health needs of the hunger marchers that passed through Oxford on their way to London were tended to by her “helping her self to bandages and dressings on the wards”. She recalled that “Their feet were often in particularly bad state.”In 1935 Thora secured a Sister’s post at Hammersmith hospital and worked closely with Dr Charles Wortham Brook and his wife, also a nurse, Iris. In 1935 Thora secured a Sister’s post at Hammersmith hospital and worked closely with Dr Charles Wortham Brook and his wife, also a nurse, Iris.and joined NUCO Guild of Nurses

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War she volunteered to nurse, and was "elected" Matron at Granen hospital, caring for many anti-fascist German soldiers in the Thaelmann Centuria. The International Brigader, Michael Livesey, died in her - arms a memory she never forgot. Later, she was herself drafted into the International Brigade.

On her return she married Dr Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit, who she had met in Spain, where he was the medical unit's administrator They lived at 12 Great Ormond Street. Loutit was elected as a “unity front” Councillor prior to the War for Holborn, London. Her involvement as sub editor of Nursing Illustrated led her to establish a nurses union (The National Nurses Association). This was a consciously progressive union for nurses in direct competition with the reactionary (Royal) College of Nursing. The RCN and hospital managers attacked her as “not being a registered nurse” or “paid by Moscow”, during the late 1930s. With the help of Communist Party nurses such as Nancy Blackburn (Zinkin), the Association ran a very high profile campaign to highlight the poor pay and conditions of nurses. The Association latter amalgamated with NUPE. Bryn Roberts, the General Secretary of that union was a native of Abertillery and a man whom Thora admired.

After the war she became a union official in the Civil Service Association. As Secretary of the Socialist Medical Association, she met Attlee and other Ministers to discuss the establishment of the NHS in 1948. She married Nares Craig (a relative of Lord Craigavon)  a member of the CP’s architect group (also Cambridge night climber) and retired to Llanfyllin, Powys, North Wales for 25 years. Clive Jenkins and Frank Cousins were regular visitors there. Thora returned to London, to be close to her daughter Lucy Craig/Best (a Haringey Labour Councillor), a few years before her death on 17th January 1999.

The funeral service at Marylebone cemetery on 25th January heard `the Valley of Jarama’, `The Internationale’, Cwm Rhondda and a recording of the Welsh hymn “Land of my fathers” by Paul Robeson

Socialist Medical Association estb:1930

The Socialist Medical Association (now Socialist Health Association) can trace its roots back to 1912 when the State Medical Services Association was established by a Dr Benjamin Moore of Liverpool.

The origins of the Socialist Medical Association (SMA) lay in the meeting in the summer 1930 between Dr Charles Brook and Dr Ewald Fabian, Secretary of a German organisation of socialist doctors, who commented on the lack of a similar organisation in Britain, following the demise of the State Medical Service Association.

In response Brook convened a meeting in London on 21 September 1930 at the National Labour Club which resulted in the formation of the SMA, with Brook as Secretary and Dr Somerville Hastings, Labour MP for Reading, as the first President.

A constitution was agreed in November 1930, incorporating the basic aims of a socialised medical service,

To work for a Socialised Medical Service both preventive and curative, free and open to all

To secure for the people the highest possible standard of health

To disseminate the principles of socialism within the medical and allied service

The Socialist Medical Association also committed itself to the dissemination of socialism within the medical profession and the support of `medical Members of Parliament'. The SMA was open to all doctors and members of allied professions, such as dentists, nurses and pharmacists, who were socialists and subscribed to its aims

NOTE
COHSE had close links with the Socialist Medical Association and Dr Charles Brook (and his wife Iris Brook a nurse) was a NUCO and COHSE member and activist

Thora Silverthorne NUCO & Spain 1937

NUCO NURSING NOTE

Miss Thora Silverthorne now matron of the International Brigade Hospital on the Madrid front, continues in her good work. The Spanish officials pay the highest tribute to the English nurses in Spain and we arc proud that Miss Silverthorne is a member of N.U.C.O

NUCO Jounal 1937

Rushcliffe - Thora Silverthorne view

By THORA SILVERTHORNE, S.R.N.

1943

NURSES who tried 'vainly In the years of peace to secure reasonable conditions of service, will soon receive a new charter at the hands of a committee presided over by Lord Rushcliffe.

Nurses are now so important a factor in Britain's war economy that I anticipate many of them will be surprised at the far-reaching reforms (which the committee will propose.

Since war broke out the nation has been paying for its failure to provide conditions for nurses, consistent with their contribution to the community. In peace there was a grave shortage of girls willing to accept the hard conditions of a nurse's life. In war, with the greater demands in the hospitals, the shortage has been more acute.

Perhaps, the most damning fact of all has been that. Owing to the absence of agreed conditions of service, Mr. Ernest Bevin, (Minister) who is able to conscript girls for other forms of war work, has been unable to issue regulations to deal with the nurses.

Ten Years Delay

No one can say that the danger of a serious nursing shortage was not known. Ten years ago .a committee set up by The Lancet made a series of proposals tor making nursing more attractive. But nothing was done.

In 1938, an inter-departmental committee set up from the various Government Departments concerned made similar proposals, designed to provide reasonable standards of salary, and to abolish some of the Victorian, restrictions still imposed by many hospitals.

Again, nothing was done

I returned from service with the Spanish Republican Army (Matron in the international Brigade), I tried to organise A Nurses Trade union (National Association of Nurses)- I believed then, as I believe now, that the problem will not finally be solved until nurses organise on a trade union basis in the same way journalists, architects and other professional workers. We considerable progress, and in a number of hospitals where we secured strong membership important concessions were quickly secured.

Shortly afterwards the trades Union Congress issued its Nurses Charter and since we had no intention or desire to compete with existing Trade Union organi-

sations (NUPE) , we merged our association in one of the Unions which sought to organise the nurses.

But the Trade Union Movement has still failed to solve the problem. There are six Trade Unions Inside the T.U.C. and one out- side, all competing for nurses. If they would only get together and agree on a single organisation, appealing to the professional pride as well as the economic needs of the nurses, I believe the problem could be solved.

The Rushcliffe Committee will do a great deal for the nurses, but no section of the workers can afford to rely only on State action. The nurses need their own organisation which can represent them in negotiations and can

guard their interests at all times.

I should like to see the Rushcliffe recommendations as the starting point, to be followed by a country-wide Trade Union campaign to convince the nurses that they must act themselves if they are to secure and retain decent conditions. Such a campaign would also seek to show them that in this way they could make an even greater contribution to the war effort. .

The action of two London hospitals in establishing Joint Consultative Committees in which nurses as well as other sections of the staff are represented could be followed nationally it the nurses were organised.,

Cheap Labour

I hope the Rushcliffe Committee will realise that nurses, in the year 1943, cannot be treated like the young Victorian-women of Florence Nightingale's day. Some of the restrictions on nurses are just too silly for words, particularly when one realises that girls in war Industry and the Services are bearing a very consider able part of the war effort

It is to be wondered at that girls fight shy of nursing when they are not allowed to be out after eleven o'clock, when fully trained nurses, are not allowed to live out, when all sorts of restrictions are imposed on their private lives' Which no employer in any other profession would dare to suggest?

The nurses also have a right to demand proper facilities for training. It is absurd that girls should be expected to attend lectures after long hours' on the wards. Girls who have worked all night cannot absorb highly technical instruction at lectures at eleven in the morning. Yet that is the practice in a number of hospitals.

The training of doctors is strictly supervised. That of nurses is completely haphazard. The General Nursing Council, which Is" responsible for the nurses' training schools, should also have the duty of seeing that the schools give-adequate instruction. At present, the blunt truth is that the hospitals are securing cheap labour from the probationer nurses and giving instruction as, an after thought.

Can be Done

The immediate reforms for the nurses should Include a 96-hour fortnight, with payment for overtime option for all girls to live out arrangements for the nurses' homes to be run on hostel lines; recognition of the right to organise and to hold Trade Union meetings; and abolition of unnecessary restrictions on personal liberty.

To those who say it cannot be done, I would say that for one section of the nursing profession it has been done. Mr. George Gibson (General Secretary of the Mental Health & Institutional Workers Union) has built up an organisation for the workers in the mental hospitals, which has secured conditions That superior to those of the nurses in the general hospitals. What is more important to the nation at the" present time, the members of his Union have been able to play a more effective part in the war effort.

NOTE

Chair of the Association of Nurses was Nancy Zinkin

article from probably News Chronicle 1943

Thora Silverthorne - Nurse & Internationa Brigade

Thora Silverthorne

Nurses’ leader and International Brigadier,

Thora Silverthorne was born in Abertillery on the 25th November 1910. She was the daughter of George Richard Silverthorne, a miner at the Vivian & Six Bells Pit and Sarah Boyt of Bargoed. Her early years were spent at 170 Alma Street, Abertillery, she secured a scholarship to Nataglo County School (Hafod) and attended the local Baptist church run by Pastor Rev Ivor Evans.

She joined the Young Communist League at 16 and, when she was old enough, the Abertillery Communist Party. Her father was a founder member of the local Communist Party and active in the miners union. Thora chaired meetings with prominent speakers such as Arthur Horner, the miners’ leader. "Everyone in Abertillery talked politics," she was to say of these times.

With her mother’s early death, as one of seven children, she was forced to leave Abertillery for England. Initially she worked as a nanny for Sutcliffe-Bartlett, the Reading Labour MP, but also fitted in selling the Daily Worker to the local railwaymen.

She then followed her sister into nursing at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford and was involved in Communist Party activities in the city. She participated with her close friend Christopher Hill in the October Club. The health needs of the hunger marchers that passed through Oxford on their way to London were tended to by her “helping her self to bandages and dressings on the wards”. She recalled that “Their feet were often in particularly bad state.”In 1935 Thora secured a Sister’s post at Hammersmith hospital and worked closely with Dr Charles Wortham Brook and his wife, also a nurse, Iris.

In 1935 Thora secured a Sister’s post at Hammersmith hospital and worked closely with Dr Charles Wortham Brook and his wife, also a nurse, Iris.

Joined NUCO Guild of Nurses

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War she volunteered to nurse, and was "elected" Matron at Granen hospital, caring for many anti-fascist German soldiers in the Thaelmann Centuria. The International Brigadier, Michael Livesey, died in her - arms a memory she never forgot. Later, she was herself drafted into the International Brigade.

On her return she married Dr Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit, who she had met in Spain, where he was the medical unit's administrator They lived at 12 Great Ormond Street. Loutit was elected as a “unity front” Councillor prior to the War for Holborn, London.

Her involvement as sub editor of Nursing Illustrated led her to establish a nurses union (The National Nurses Association). This was a consciously progressive union for nurses in direct competition with the reactionary (Royal) College of Nursing. The RCN and hospital managers attacked her as “not being a registered nurse” or “paid by Moscow”, during the late 1930s. With the help of Communist Party nurses such as Nancy Blackburn (Zinkin), the Association ran a very high profile campaign to highlight the poor pay and conditions of nurses. The Association latter amalgamated with NUPE. Bryn Roberts, the General Secretary of that union was a native of Abertillery and a man whom Thora admired.

After the war she became a union official in the Civil Service Association. As Secretary of the Socialist Medical Association, she met Attlee and other Ministers to discuss the establishment of the NHS in 1948.

She married Nares Craig (a relative of Lord Craigavon) from Clitheroe, Lancashire a member of the CP’s architect group and retired to Llanfyllin, Powys, North Wales for 25 years. Clive Jenkins and Frank Cousins were regular visitors there. Thora returned to London, to be close to her daughter Lucy Craig/Best (a Haringey Labour Councillor), a few years before her death on 17th January 1999. The funeral service at Marylebone cemetery on 25th January heard `the Valley of Jarama’, `The Internationale’, Cwm Rhondda and a recording of the Welsh hymn “Land of my fathers” by Paul Robeson