Tuesday 29 June 2010

Wyfold Road in the '80s

For some reason, my previous bloggie about 'The British Be-In' to support HIV/AIDs sufferers reminded me of when I first came face to face with unthinking discrimination about AIDs in the '80s.

In the second half of the '80s I worked in an unemployment benefit office in Fulham, Wyfold Road to be precise (I think the UBO closed many years ago). I was a Claimant Adviser and it was my job to run a caseload of people who had been claiming unemployment benefit for over six months. In the recession of the late '80s there were lots of people on well over one year, let alone six months. Fulham covered claimants from Kensington, Chelsea, Putney and Roehampton as well as Fulham, so it had lots of different types of people, from former city whizz-kids and showbiz types, to people from the sink estates in the area. We also had lots of drug addicts and ex-offenders as well as a sizeable proportion of people with HIV/AIDs who moved to the area because of St Stephens Hospital which was one of the few places that specialised in the disease at the time.

I was good at my job and my area manager (several grades above me at the time) came to Fulham UBO to sit in on some of my interviews to get a feel for the challenges we faced and how we dealt with them. That day was arranged with all new interviews so I had no idea who might walk through the door or what problems they might have. One bloke came in, sat down, me sitting at the side of the desk and my boss's boss sitting safe behind the desk. We chatted and then I asked why he thought he was finding it hard to get a job. His response was that he had HIV and was on treatment every other day at St Stephens and that meant no-one would offer him a job.

As soon as he uttered the the phrase 'I've got HIV' my boss's chair flew as far back from the bloke as he possibly could, obviously and noisily putting distance between him and the plague carrier. To try to offset this, I leaned closer and asked about his treatment, how long it took, etc. We continued in this vein for a while and then I said I'd get back to him, shook hands and said goodbye. My boss immediately said that I should have stopped his benefit since he obviously couldn't work - I pointed out that he plainly could work since he was relatively healthy, he could possibly do re-training or could transfer to sickness benefit. He suddenly had another appointment and left the room as quickly as he could, as if the germs were still in the air. Leaving me there, obviously. I felt awful about that blatant display of fear and ignorance in front of someone who suspected he was dying. People did in those days.

I saw the bloke a couple of times again and his health and appearance was like a yo-yo - one visit he looked fine, the next he looked awful. Then he didn't turn up. I don't know if he signed off and found a job, moved to another area or maybe just gave up and died. I never found out, and I feel guilty for that. He was only a couple of years older than me and it's such a sad loss of life, or at least I assume it was. My only excuse is that at one point I had so many people with HIV on my caseload it was all I could do to keep my head above water. And druggies. Lots of druggies.

This isn't the happiest of blog entries but how do you control memories? I'm pleased I worked at Fulham and pleased I worked with such a great team - I still see a couple of former colleagues every now and then. I learned a lot about 'real life' in that job, face to face with some of the most disadvantaged in society in the recession of the late '80s, being threatened with violence and sparring with DSS colleagues on whether they should pay benefits (as far as I remember it was Me 100%/DSS 0% - they didn't know the regulations that covered their own benefits and I suspect it's the same today). I grew and I learned a lot, and that's helped make me who I am today.

No comments: