‘The NHS would collapse within hours’: BME staff say Britain fails to appreciate their roles

Long-serving workers say they faced racism as they helped build health service – but it ‘seems things have got worse’

• Foreign medics are shunning the NHS because of anti-migrant rhetoric, says top doctor

“I am fed up of being called names. I know I am Black. I was born Black. And I love being Black. So tell me something I don’t know.”

Those words, uttered 50 years ago as a young nurse facing regular racial abuse from patients on a London hospital ward, were a turning point in Allyson Williams’s life and career.