Joseph Hodgson Briggs

Former consulting physician London (b Workington 1928; q St Bartholomew's Hospital 1951; MRCP 1958), d 22 January 2002.

In 1967 he gained a degree of not unwelcome notoriety when he became the second chairman of the newly launched Junior Hospital Doctors Association (JHDA). The JHDA was one of several organisations of the time that started by challenging the BMA's right to be the sole negotiating body for doctors. In those days the BMA's own Hospital Junior Staffs Committee was little more than a talking shop adjunct to the Central Consultants and Specialists Committee. At the same time, under the slogan “no taxation without proper representation,” the JHDA challenged the General Medical Council to withdraw its imposition of a new annual retention fee or to become more democratic of the profession at large. It also began the debate over the morality of junior doctors having to work more than 100 hours a week.