African & Caribbean contributor – Joel O’Loughlin
Who can forget the moment in 2008 that Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States? Pundits wrote in sweeping prose that this momentous event had cast aside the last racial barrier in American politics, and given Obama’s re-election they may nearly be right.
Less than 50 years before there were places where men like Barack could not eat or take a cup of water on a hot day. Down in the South some of those places are still resisting the hurricane of change. My generation growing up in England did not experience American style apartheid but I can still remember a ‘colour bar’ and being turned away from factory gates and boarding houses. Black skin does that to you some times and I wish it would stop it.
In 2008 I sat up all night watching with sky-high hopes as a tide of blue swept across the American landscape. I remember repeating the mantra “the impossible has a habit of happening” and clinging to the hope that love often comes from the most unexpected places.
For me Obama’s election was more a triumph of love over hatred than a society reaching political maturity on the issue of race. I say this because post Obama African Americans are still overpopulating jails, and dying early of stress, gunshots and poverty. Beyonce may be singing the National anthem but brothers and sisters are still singing the blues.
On the same day of Obama’s Inauguration Zoeta Manning slipped without fanfare into the Chair of the Managers in Partnership. This strong and intelligent woman became the first African Caribbean woman ever to Chair MiP, and aside from Bill Morris I can’t think of another equivalent black person reaching the top of a Union in the UK.
Of course this historic event was not greeted with a roll call of Hollywood stars or a celebrity singing God Save the Queen with different words. It is also very likely that this demure and dedicated lady was at that very moment far too busy with her NHS day job to process her part in making history. Public service is in the DNA of some folks and I admire all those individuals like Zoeta who get up each morning and just do it.
Zoeta Manning and Archbishop Tutu
Of course it’s one thing to achieve high office and another to move an institution in the direction of your vision. Obama promised a change we can feel; he held out the hope of sweeping away the mistakes of the past to transform an America faced with crippling debt, debilitating wars and mounting job losses.
Zoeta takes the stage when NHS managers are being cast as wasteful and unnecessary by a government bent on cost cutting and privatising our national treasure. Hundreds of MiP members and other staff in PCTs, SHAs and other NHS bodies have received redundancy notices in a bid to follow the latest dogma that you can manage complex institutions with a skeleton crew of managers.
The scale of the challenges does not bode well for MiP and public sector unions, but balance requires that every action must be met with an equal and opposite reaction. The question for Zoeta Manning is the same as it is for Barack Obama – What Now?
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