Trevor Clay

Who was Trevor Clay?

Trevor Clay, CBE, FRCN was a British nurse and former General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing.

Clay began his nursing career in 1957, but it was as General Secretary of the RCN, beginning in 1982, that he became a public trade union official and negotiator. He had been Deputy Secretary since 1979 but was not a public figure.

In 1982, almost at the outset of his tenure he began negotiations with the UK government over a labor disagreement concerning nurses' salaries, then at yearly levels of no more than £5,833. As a result, a "Pay Review Body" characterized by autonomous operation was created; the compensation of the nurses he represented was also increased.

Clay was diagnosed with severe emphysema at the age of 37. With a membership in excess of 285,000 at the time of Clay's pensioning off due to illness in September 1989, no labor organization unaffiliated with the Trades Union Congress surpassed the RCN in size, and none had a greater rate of expansion. Clay's respiratory disease claimed his life, aged 57, in 1994.