The Silent Majority

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"If you work on the ward, you have to be the person who says at some Those were the words of a former placement nurse at Broughcourt Hospital for the mentally handicapped in Reading.

He was trying 1o show that the callous scenes appearing on our TV screens were not the result of callousness but were an inevitable result of the way the hospital was run and in particular the staffing levels.

Three nurses, facing a 12 hour shift, had just spent hours struggling to dress and feed more than 20 heavily dependent men. The result was to turn them loose into a fenced grassy compound.

The film which focussed on the plight of the menTally handicapped at both Broughcourt und St. Laurener's Surrey, the old South london (slum) has come under attack.

Health officials have claimed that the film at Reading was obtained by decepit and that it has been taken out of context.

But the film had an evident integrity which those attacks did nothing to impute.

Warehouses

Large hospitals for the mentally handicapped-quite distinct from psychiatric hospitals which are for the mentally ill-have long been known to be warehouses.

What Nigel Evans' sensi live film did was bring to a wider audience the humanity of the mentally handicapped and the inhumanity of society towards them.

One patient staggered down the hall, arms outstretched and with dracula teeth sticking out of his mouth while another told the camera:

"Some of sn are not halt so menti are supposed to be and we can take the mickey out of ourselves"

The most powerful sequence showed a young lad, Nicky, pulling tablecloths to the floor and overturning chairs in a desperate attempt to gain attention.

But as he looked around for help, the hard pressed nurses only had time to right the chairs or straighten the cloths.

Their final solution was to tie Nicky to a pillar where he struggled and wept against his bonds.

The isolation unit at St. Lawrence's contained one man who had been in solitary confinement (even the nurses called it a stammer). -The programme showed a circular from the Oxford Regional Health Authority saying that nobody should be in isolation for moré than half an hour.

Criticism of the programme also claimed that it had been unfair to nurses. That was not so: it stressed that the nurses were the victims of the system. The former placement worker said:

"It would be absurd to suppose you can provide care. It would be absurd to begin... (These nurses) are the best and most caring people around. That's why they responded to those wonderful adverts"

Greater tragedy

The weakness of the programme was that it failed to explain why these hospitals still exist so under"staffed. Behind the tragedy on the scieen lies the greater tragedy-the cuts of the Tory, and Labour govern. ments-and the callous indifference of the Thatcher government to what in many cases are already victims of inadequate health care.

It is the health unions which will not take up a real fight against these cuts and for decent social services who ought next to be investigated.

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point 'go and amuse yourselves' and then goes and has a cup of tea".