Nurses Solidarity - South Wales Steel Workers

Nurses show solidarity with South Wales Steel Workers

COHSE/NUPE/NALGO Eisteddfod 1991 - Mewn undeb mae nerth

Cyfarchion o'r Eiseddfod Genedlaehol

Mewn undeb mae nerth

COHSE Banner's 1991

Robert Quick, Regional Secretary with COHSE banner of South Yorkshire and East midlands Region 12, Made by Red Wedge, Brighton Red and Gold
Sharrow Head, Sheffield.COHSE Banner Cymru Region 10 - Wales made by Dragon Banners Yorkshire. COHSE banner Unveiled by Hector MacKenzie COHSE General secretary Cardiff 1991.

Claybury branch banner is one of the finest COHSE branch banners, as it illustrates a rat leaving the "Asylum".

COHSE CYMRU-WALES BANNER

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

Tudor O Morgan - South Wales

Councillor Tudor O Morgan worked as a nurses at St David’s hospital in Cardiff and became the local branch chairman of the National Union of County Officers (NUCO).

He became chairman of the national unions NUCO Guild of Nurses in the late 1930's.

was secretary of his local Labour party ward and was a Cardiff City Councillor

He retired from the NHS after losing an arm in an accident in 1937

died 1949 aged 53

Frank McCarthy COHSE Regional Secretary stated "Will be remembered as one of the pioneers who worked tirelessly organising nurses and making them conscious of the value of trade unionism"

"His contribution to the building up of NUCO was an inspiration to others

"He did much work around the student nurses campaign in 1948