The NHS, the honours system, and me - Lisa Rodrigues
When I received my CBE letter from HM the Queen in May 2012, two years before my retirement, I felt conflicted.
On one hand, I was thrilled. It was the culmination of a long, hard slog in a senior role in the NHS. If I accepted, the honour would reflect well not only on my achievements, but also the staff I led and the many thousands of patients we served. And it would raise the profile of my national work challenging the stigma associated with mental illness and championing race equality.
On the other, was my work more deserving than those who serve on the frontline, who make more difference each day to patents than I ever could as an NHS chief executive, no matter how many national committees I chaired?
But my main unease was about the explicit mention of Empire. And it remains so. What place does such a concept have in today’s NHS, in which the staff are more diverse than the patients? Since the inception of the NHS, health care professionals have travelled to the UK from all over the world, and especially countries of the former British Empire, to care for our sick and dying, often at great personal cost.
Our modern, 21st Century NHS, is our most treasured national institution and public service. And yet we still don’t acknowledge the disproportionate reliance Britain has on a workforce from formerly colonised places. Let’s talk about that, celebrate that, but let’s also acknowledge the harm done by Britain to those places too.
So many highly qualified people leave behind health services far more poorly resourced than the NHS. And they send significant proportions of their UK wages to support extended families back home. At a time of international pandemic, their dedication to the NHS could not be more poignant.
As Sathnam Sangeera writes, understanding the concept of Empire ‘explains our particular brand of racism’. He is right that until we understand our history much better, we simply can’t understand the reason structural and system racism exists still today.
In the end, I accepted my award, mainly because I knew how much it would please my mother. Her own mother was a product of the British Empire, being mixed-race Anglo-Indian.
I remain forever grateful for the honour bestowed. But I join the wise and thoughtful band of awardees who have so eloquently explained why they wish to see the change from Empire to Excellence for these awards.
I am under no illusion that I can enhance the excellent arguments made by my fellow awardees. But I am a lifelong campaigner for equality, which ironically helped me gain the attention needed to be nominated for my CBE.
Today I stand right alongside my black and brown brothers and sisters whose heritage has been far more devastated by the concept of Empire than mine. And for whom systemic racism remains a blight against which they must steel themselves every day.
If we believe in equality, this small but significant change must be made.