Doctor On The Job by Richard Gordon Page B

around the chops.’
    ‘I am drunk, but with indignation.’
    ‘Go on?’
    ‘I delivered those flowers in the Bertram Bunn Wing. I had an altercation with the matron.’
    ‘Go on?’
    ‘The Bertram Bunn Wing is a towering social injustice, which should be demolished.’
    ‘Go on?’
    ‘ Please don’t keep saying “Go on” like that, Harold. Haven’t you any opinions of your own?’
    ‘You gets good tips there. Some of them wogs hand out quids like they was Green Shield stamps.’
    ‘Harold, I implore you to raise your eyes from the mud to the stars.’ Harold Sapworth dutifully looked upwards. ‘Now let me get this absolutely right. The same porters, cooks and bottlewashers serve the Bertie Bunn as the St Swithin’s National Health patients? The same telephonists put through their calls from the central hospital switchboard? If the Bertie Bunn went up in flames, exactly the same hospital firemen would carry all the sheikhs out over their shoulders? But do these porters, cooks, firemen and so on realize how they’re being exploited?’
    ‘Shouldn’t think so. Most of ’em can’t speak English.’
    ‘Harold, I am going to hold a branch meeting of the union,’ declared Pip, clapping his companion on the shoulder.
    ‘Hold it here and now, if you like. No trouble. You and me’ll do. Pass a resolution, write it in the book. Arthur Pince and me worked it like that for years. Mind, Arthur was a gaffers’ man. Still, he had problems of his own.’
    ‘ That’s not democracy, Harold. That’s not what Oliver Cromwell, Earl Grey, Benjamin Disraeli, William Ewart Gladstone and Clem Attlee fought for.’
    ‘Go on?’
    ‘What the great Reform Bills gave the British people in the last century, we shall give the workers of St Swithin’s today. That is, a say in the decisions which dominate their lives. I see my duties as shop steward as primarily educative rather than executive. I’ll book the Founders’ Hall for tonight. What’s a convenient time? Seven o’clock?’
    ‘No one will come,’ said Harold gloomily. ‘Especially if there’s something good on the telly.’
    ‘I shall make them come,’ said Pip earnestly. ‘I’ll go right through the hospital crying, “Workers Awake!”’
    ‘Won’t be popular down below, this weather,’ Harold grumbled. ‘Afternoons, most of ’em doze off.’
    A few minutes later, Pip was knocking deferentially at the door of Mr Grout’s office on the first floor.
    ‘If it’s about the dartboard,’ said the junior administrator as Pip was admitted, ‘Mr Clapper is away for the afternoon playing – playing host to a very important conference at Sunningdale.’
    ‘I want to convene a meeting of ACHE.’
    ‘That should present no administrative difficulty.’ Mr Grout reached into his glass-fronted bookshelf. ‘Let me see, General Whitley Council Handbook…Paragraph one, “No obstacles should be put in the way of granting facilities for staff organizations participating in meetings…” What notices do you intend to display?’ he asked, looking up. ‘They should be submitted to my prior approval, but permission to exhibit should not be unreasonably withheld.’
    ‘I don’t think there’ll be time for any notices,’ Pip said doubtfully. ‘I wanted the Founders’ Hall for seven this evening.’
    ‘It doesn’t say you have to stick up notices,’ Mr Grout agreed, peering into the book. ‘That’s all right, then.’
    ‘There’s just one thing –’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Why are private patients treated in National Health hospitals?’
    ‘Because of Section Five of the National Health Service Act, 1946, as amended in the Health Services and Public Health Act, 1968. Charges by medical or dental practitioners were delimited under Circular S I 1966 stroke one five five three good afternoon,’ said Mr Grout, turning his eyes dismissively down to his blotter.
    In his evangelical tour of the hospital, Pip quickly discovered that Harold Sapworth had a sure