Reginald Trevor Clay, CBE, FRCN (10 May 1936 in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England – 23 April 1994 in Harefield, Middlesex, England) was a British nurse and former General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

Clay registered as a nurse in 1957 after training at Nuneaton Hospitals Training School for Nurses.^[1] He then went on to train as a Mental Health Nurse at the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospitals in London, registering in 1960.^[1] Clay became one of the first men in nursing to join the Royal College of Nursing when it opened its membership to men in 1960.^[2]

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 labour 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 labour organisation unaffiliated with the Trades Union Congress surpassed the RCN in size, and none had a greater rate of expansion.^[3] He was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing in 1985.^[4] Clay's respiratory disease claimed his life, aged 57, in 1994.

Writing

He authored the following books:

• The Workings of the Nursing and Midwifery Advisory Committee in the National Health Service, 1974
• Nurses: power and politics, 1987