Obituary: Joseph Wright
IN AN age when the philosophy that bigger is better was becoming axiomatic with success in all aspects of retail business, Joseph Wright led the struggle for survival of the independent chemist’s shop.
He ran the National Pharmaceutical Association from 1961 until 1981. During that time he was instrumental in making available to the independent pharmacist a range of specialist support services that provided its members with some of the commercial facilities available to the large multiple. These ranged from designing pharmacy layouts to providing marketing aids, business efficiency evaluation to insurance services and technical information. He introduced training courses for pharmacy staff that proved to be a model of their kind. Membership of the NPA thus became indispensable, so that virtually every pharmacy in the UK, with the exception of Boots branches, is now in membership.
Joe Wright’s career as a pharmacist began in an absolutely conventional way. An apprenticeship in Blackpool before he qualified at Chelsea School of Pharmacy led to community pharmacy work in London. This pattern was changed completely by war service in the RAF, during which he was commissioned as a wireless navigator in Coastal Command. After the Second World War, and further study to take a higher qualification in pharmacy, he joined in 1947 the pharmaceutical section of the Ministry of Health.
He soon decided that a Civil Service career was not for him. But the knowledge he gained of the way the Civil Service mind works was to prove invaluable when he was later involved in negotiating the terms by which pharmacists were remunerated for dispensing NHS prescriptions.
Wright left the ministry to take up a job with the organisation which became his life’s work; in 1948 he joined the National Pharmaceutical Union, as the NPA was called in those days. He progressed to the post of Assistant Secretary and then, in 1955, to that of Deputy Secretary. Along the way he had been called to the Bar at Middle Temple.
When the incumbent secretary of the organisation, Harry Noble, retired in 1961, Wright succeeded him. The NPA at that time was faced with many challenges, some deriving from the rapidly changing society of Britain in the 1960s and others from the fact that the NPA itself need modernising. New staff, with different skills, were needed to replace those retiring and to provide the resources required to meet changing conditions.
Pharmacies were (and still are) in a unique position among high- street shops. They derive their income from two quite different sources: running a retail business and providing a professional service. The first is a straightforward commercial operation, and the second is remunerated as a contractor to the NHS. The situation is complicated by the fact that, as a professional establishment, a pharmacy operates under constraints that limit its commercial potential. Both as head of the organisation that supports these commercial activities and, wearing a different hat, as head of the committee which negotiated with the Government on pharmacists’ remuneration for dispensing NHS prescriptions, Wright operated with enthusiasm and skill.
Knowing from his Civil Service experience the sort of evidence acceptable to ministry negotiators, he commandeered academic help to compile statistical data, based on activity sampling and cost analysis, that confirmed the actual cost of providing a pharmaceutical service. The result was a contract based on a formula embracing an added-on cost that was fair to both sides and ran for a number of years. Since that system was abandoned, payment for their services has been a constant cause of dissatisfaction to pharmacists.
Joe Wright was a tough, but fair, negotiator. As an administrator, he developed the NPA and its associated organisations to provide community pharmacists with strengths that, if they had not been available, might have left many to go to the wall. As an individual, he was a genial companion and a dedicated family man. As an employer, he drew intense loyalty from his staff. John Ferguson, a former colleague of Wright’s who went on to head the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (which in 1980 awarded Wright its Charter Gold Medal for his services in promoting the interests of pharmacy), comments that the NPU team was one of the most united he had ever encountered.
Wright was a keen radio ham, an interest he acquired in his RAF days. He had a particular flair for getting on with children, both his grandchildren and others. Many a fractious child has been soothed by his calm and gentle manner. On one occasion, when travelling by plane, an infant in a nearby seat was crying long and loud. Eventually Wright went over, had a word with the mother, and took the child in his arms; the crying stopped immediately.
Joe and his wife Peggy - also a pharmacist - were within six months of celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary when he died.
Edward Boden