REFUSED MEMBERSHIP

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 74, 17 January 1947, Page 5

REFUSED MEMBERSHIP

LONDON NURSES WIN BATTLE HAILED AS “FLORENCE NIGHTINGALES” There has been a sharp check to Great Britain’s seemingly unbridled embrace of the closed shop or 100 per cent, unionism. Just when doctors, nurses, bankers and practically everybody doing any sort of a job thought they were going to be swept into the. prevalent “union - for-all” movement, a band of hospital nurses in the Willesden district of London has made a stand which might well become a landmark in industrial relations.

They are being hailed in some quarters as Grace Darlings or Florence Nightingales—referring to the women who pioneered lifeboats and field hospital services, respectively.

The nurses have won. The overenthusiastic socialist councillors of Willesdent who discharged the nurses for not belonging to a union have been reprimanded.

Government leaders and trade union spokesmen have in effect apologised for “closed shoppism run riot.” Undertakings have been given that it is not the official intention to dragoon professions like doctors and nurses. A committee of the Willesden Borough Council met in private recently and passed a recommendation to re-engage all those nurses and doctors who had been served dismissal notices for not belonging to a union.

The committee also decided that the Council, though adhering to its 100 per cent, unionism, would consider as a union such organisations as the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal British Nurses’ Association and College of Midwives, and any other association, corporation, college, or body of persons. It looks as if it would not be very difficult in the future to call oneself a trade unionist in Willesdent.

Alderman Stanley Scott, the Willesden Mayor, is reported as saying: “We have agreed to recognise conscientious objectors to trade unionism just as conscientious objectors are recognised in wartime.” Meanwhile in the northern England towns of Gateshead, some 500 schoolteachers have forced the withdrawal of a questionnaire asking to what union they belong. The questionnaire was sent to them after a local council meeting had decided on a closed-shop policy.