Black History Month: ‘We’re here, we’re contributing’

From Windrush to the summer’s far-right riots, UNISON’s Black members have important stories to tell

Glenn Carrington in paramedic uniform, sitting on the back of an ambulance

For Glenn Carrington (pictured), Black History Month is a time to remember how far the UK has come in terms of race equality.

A paramedic with the East of England Ambulance Service, based in Peterborough, Glenn is the UNISON branch Black members’ officer and chairperson.

“I was one of the last people to come over on the old Windrush boats,” he explains. “I remember walking off the plank, with my old dad and it was snowing and I said: ‘Dad! What’s this white stuff on the floor?’ I’d come from Barbados, right, and Dad said to touch it and then taste it. I hated it then and I still hate it!” He bursts into a deep, booming laugh before recalling their efforts to find somewhere to stay.

“It’s all well documented – ‘no Blacks, no dogs, no Irish’. When I look back, we’ve come so far since then. I mean, would the NHS run without us? Would the trains run without us? Would the buses run without us? As my mum used to say: ‘You have to integrate’!”

Glenn’s own journey saw a stint in the army, which he left in 1985 and applied to join the police. He passed the relevant entrance exams, but, as it was at a time when Margaret Thatcher’s government had put a hold on recruitment, he couldn’t actually get a job in the force.

“I had young kids at the time and a job with the ambulance service came up and it was routine work and I thought: ‘I tell you what, I’ll do that until I hear from the police’.”

‘A side of myself I didn’t realise I had’

That was in 1986. “I stayed. I just loved it”, he explains. “I discovered a side of myself I didn’t realise I had. A caring side. Empathetic. I liked helping people”.

For a few years, Glenn worked in patient transport. His love of the work continued, but “there’s a side of me that wanted to climb the ladder.” In 1990, he moved into frontline ambulance work and six years further down the line, became a paramedic.

“It was Cambridgeshire Ambulance Service then,” he notes. “I was the only Black paramedic and boy, did I know it!”

“It was challenging,” he says quietly, before adding that, having been in the army previously, “anything that the general public threw at me and anything that the ambulance service threw at me was small fry compared to that.”

He’d been the only Black soldier in his regiment and he says his experiences gave him resilience.

Glenn says that, since then, there’s been “a culture change”. That doesn’t mean there is no longer racism in the ambulance service, but “instead of being in your face, it’s more nuanced, more covert, more subtle.”

To illustrate the differences over time, he recalls being hung upside down in a drill yard while in the army – “I could give many more examples like that” – whereas when he started in the ambulance service it was name calling, finding bogeys on the ambulance steering wheel or “bodily fluids” on his seat – “childish stuff”. Today, he says it’s more passive aggressive.

“I’ve had more trouble with colleagues than I’ve had with patients,” says Glenn, noting that, when people are in pain, they don’t care what colour a paramedic is or how they identify – they just want someone to help them.

Glenn Carrington walking alongside an ambulance

Indeed, problems in the workplace were heightened in the summer’s far-right riots. Describing the situation as “scary”, he observes that it was “the loud minority rather than the silent majority” that was behind the trouble.

He is also quite clear that politicians “that look like us” yet make racist comments enable others to “think it’s okay to start doing that too”. Glenn says that he would go into the station and see messages from colleagues shared to a WhatsApp group, of pictures and footage of the rioting, and with deeply offensive comments about immigrants in general.

When he said to them: “You do know I wasn’t born here?” the reaction was “‘Oh, we don’t mean you.’ But they thought it was okay to share.”

He says that things got so bad that “we’ve had a few people dismissed over that – and rightly so”. It was difficult, not least as Glenn and his fellow UNISON members “had to call some people out. We had to stand our ground. The way I see it, if that’s the way you think, are you really in the right profession?

“We’re here to help people, be they Black, be they white, be they gay, be they straight, be they transgender – we’re here to help people. We’re not here to judge – keep your opinions to yourself. And I’d argue that the people who shared those messages and put KKK stickers on our lockers shouldn’t be here.

“There’s been a bit of backlash, but it’s calming down now.”

And of his mother’s comments about the need to integrate, he notes: “You look at the [England] football team – there’s a lot of people of colour there. The cricket team – when it didn’t have people of colour, it was useless!”

“We’re there, we’re here, we’re contributing.

“When I got here, the national dish was fish and chips. I like my fish and chips, but now the national dish is either Chinese or a curry. It’s Christmas Day and you’ve run out of Bisto for the gravy, where do you run to? It’s either one of the Asian shops or one run by eastern Europeans because they’re the only ones that are open!

“What I like about this country, after right-wing rhetoric has all died down, is how we’ve amalgamated, how multi-cultural it is. And I think that’s a good thing and I think that’s lovely.”

Passionate about equality

Maria Alberts, a member of the admin team at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Gateshead also saw first-hand the problems created by the summer’s violence.

“When the far-right riots kicked off, there was a lot of uncertainty from the nursing staff from overseas just coming in. The trust organised taxis for people to come into work,” she says.

“Most of the racism that people were facing was from staff rather than patients. It has been addressed – and the trust has dismissed people because of that. And that’s why it’s zero tolerance.”

A member of the UNISON service group executive, Maria is particularly passionate about equalities and, earlier this year, was awarded the Northern TUC Equality Award.

Maria Alberts with her TUC award

Her hospital is part of the Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust – she’s proud that it was the first trust to sign up to the Race Equality Charter.

“We got Show Racism the Red Card in to train the managers, which we did for three months,” she explains.

She’s also been involved in setting up a group on zero tolerance that meets every month and has created “changes not just for the staff, but for the patients as well.

“It’s made a difference. If you can’t care for your staff, how can you care for your patients when we live in a multi-cultured region?” she asks.

And in terms of improving the hospital experience for Black patients, Maria has also been involved – not least with helping improve “basic needs”, such as Black skin and hair care.

As we come to the end of this year’s Black History Month, it couldn’t be clearer that UNISON’s Black members have histories to relate and that, as Glenn put it, they’re here and they’re contributing.

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