Perhaps aware of the various weaknesses of the Labour party - and of union members' exhaustion - the trust continued to see the careworkers' old employment contract as part of a romantic past that it had no plans to visit.

I rang trust chief executive Carole Sawyers' office early in 2008 to arrange an interview about the dispute.

I explained to Sawyers’ PA that I’d been talking to careworkers and that I wanted to put their concerns to her.

Her PA said that Sawyers would call back that afternoon.

Ten minutes later, the PA called back. Things had changed. She wanted me to submit questions by email. I don't believe in email interviews, but agreed to email an outline of the sorts of questions I’d ask when Sawyers and I spoke. I told the PA that I still expected an interview.

I never got it. Sawyers emailed through an old press release. That - for the time being, at least - appeared to be that.

Barnet council didn't inspire, either: I rang its press office to speak to someone about Catalyst and the Fremantle dispute, which was by then more than a year old.

'Fremantle?' the press officer asked. 'Who is Fremantle?'

Gamanga, meanwhile, was incensed: forced by Unison's Labour-friendly bureaucracy to re-ballot on technicalites for further strike action, and angered by careworkers' waning enthusiasm for the fight, she brought a formidable aspect to the Wednesday night meetings.

'Is it hard [to keep people motivated]? Hard? Hard? Let me tell you how hard this is... I look at the people who are not in the union and I think - I am not interested in you. Why should I be? Why should I be? They let us do the fighting... What are they doing? What are they doing?'

'If I was younger, I would go somewhere else. I wouldn’t be here. I would go.' Careworker Ann Quinn, 2007.

Photo: Ann Quinn.