Happy St Theo's Day 2025!

 

In advance!... Apologies, but I will be away on St Theo's Day itself this year, so... On behalf of every serving hospital porter, every former hospital porter, and everybody else who loves, appreciates and supports us, with all the Pride and Dignity of my Extremely Proud and Dignified Brother and Sister Porters, I'd like to wish all my friends and readers, a very happy St Theo's Day; in advance for this St Theo's Day, Sunday the 1st of June.
See here for The Gas Spanner St Theo 2024: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-gas-spanner-programme-85.html.

Civilian Uniforms

 

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2025/05/women-hps-uniform.html.
My endless laments about the loss of hospital portering traditions, and especially my tirade in the above article about HP women's uniforms, is not confined to HPing. It appears the same thing has affected the civilian professions. This change happened even earlier than the HP one. I just about remember the time when male nurses wore tunics. There have always been men in nursing, but they were very much a small minority until the establishment of the NHS. Today I would not go as far as to say the gender imbalance is the reverse of HPing; men are still a minority, but they are a larger minority, about twenty to thirty percent. Above you see two male nurses' uniforms, one from the 1960's and one from the present day. You can quite clearly see the difference, especially when you also compare the women's uniforms of the past with knee-length blue and white dresses, bonnets and pinafores, for example see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2024/12/devotion.html. I could show you a similar comparison involving radiographers, dentists and physiotherapists. Clearly men and women were made to look distinct from each other, even when doing the same job. Modern civilian uniforms in the NHS, like the portering ones, are virtually unisex. The tunic has been replaced with the very androgynous short Cuban top. The women's is slightly longer, but apart from that they are identical. The reasons why male and female staff are being made to look more and more like each other is a subject I cover extensively in other HPANWO projects, see the link below.
See here for more background: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/political-correctness-portal.html.

The Most Dangerous Man in Britain was a HP!

 

No, it's not me, despite what you might have heard. I'm talking about Ian Bone. That epithet was pasted onto him by The Sunday People, a typical British redtop. I first came across Ian Bone as a teenager because for a while in the '80's and '90's his journal became popular enough to appear on the shelves of WH Smith and other mainstream newsagents. Class War immediately caught the shopper's eye with its skull-and-crossbones banner. I was curious enough to read a few issues of "Britain's most unruly tabloid", which was its own motto. Class War caused outrage and scandal. It was full of swearing, extreme rhetoric and completely devoid of any attempt at diplomacy, to put it mildly. For example, I read its report on the fire at Windsor Castle in 1992 and remember part of it well: "It was brilliant wasn't it? Unfortunately the whole pile didn't burn down and 'Her Maj' was not in at the time. To think working class firemen risked their lives to put out the blaze! Bollocks to that!" When a police chief was hospitalized by a heart attack the paper encouraged readers to send flowers to his wife and to address them to his "widow" even though eventually the man recovered. Bone also organized "Bash the rich!" protests during which he would incite the harassment of what he called "penguin suited wankers!" Such activities, of course, would be totally illegal today and even back then Bone got into terrible trouble with the law. His prosecutions were for him all part of the "struggle!" He was an ultra-left anarchist, and seems still to be so today at the age of seventy-seven. During my lost weekend as a trade unionist I once asked one of the conveners who read Militant about Bone's anarchists. He replied: "They have only one rule: there are no rules; and sometimes they break that rule." (I'll say more about NHS trade union culture in a future article.) Even in those days I found it hard to take Class War seriously. Looking back at it now I see it as a form of unintentional black comedy. See here for the archive: https://libcom.org/article/class-war-newspaper. (These days Ian Bone writes a blog which I will not link to because Blogger will probably delete this article, but it's quite easy to find.)

I certainly do not share Ian Bone's political views, if indeed you can even call them that. However, he was indeed a hospital porter. He comes from Wiltshire, but has spent most of his life in Swansea, Wales. Today he lives in Bristol. He studied politics at university and started his first anarchist group in 1966. He took part in a massive protest against the South African rugby team's tour of Wales in 1969. However, most importantly of all, he also served as a porter at the city's Singleton Hospital. Source: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/ian-bone-class-war-anarchist-19454850. You might be shocked and appalled at Bone's words and actions; and I oppose a lot of what he said and did, but he was still a HP. I've known far worse people than Ian Bone who were HP's, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/12/hps-and-psychos.html. For better or worse, agree or disagree, the fact that Ian was a HP means that he and I share a common destiny. He is now elderly and suffers from Parkinson's disease which is very sad. I salute my Extremely Proud and Dignified Brother HP and wish him all the best.

Women HP's Uniform

 

Hospital portering in Britain is a primarily male occupation. Over ninety percent of HP's are men. Feminists do not object to this because HPing is such a low status low paid job. In fact doing a job like HPing is one of the few places left in the western world where you can find a "male space". However, a number of women have always been present in our ancient and noble profession. I can't recall a time in my career when every single one of the seventy to eighty porters at the JRH were male. A number of these women were very good porters. I remember with particular fondness a fifty-something post room porter called Linda who kind of adopted me in the same way Barry did, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2022/11/finding-barrys-grave.html. I also had a female shift partner in A&E once called Sandy. There is no reason why women cannot be HP's. Great physical strength is not necessary for the occupation; in fact, as a manual handling trainer, I learned that if you're using too much muscle power to do something then you're doing it wrong. Today a female hospital porters' uniform is almost the same as the men's except the trousers and shirt are feminine lines. However, when I started out there was a female HP's uniform that was distinct to the job and very different to the men's. It consisted of a simple green nylon knee length clinical dress with black tights and sturdy flat-bottomed shoes. The above illustration is the closest I could get to the reality I remember. I like the fact there was a proper uniform for female porters that was different to the male one and identifiable with the job. I think it should be brought back in, along with all the other traditions and pleasant aspects of the profession that have been stripped from us. I'm sure many readers are wondering this and I'm willing to confess it. I do find the sight of a woman wearing a traditional HP's dress erotic. This is because of my general sentiments for hospital portering.