UK Disability History Month (14 November - 20 December 2024) provides an opportunity to reflect on the history of the disabled rights movement and the ongoing fight for equality and human rights. It also serves as a chance to confront the myths and stereotypes that affect the lives of disabled individuals while amplifying the voices of those with disabilities, both past and present. This year, the theme for Disability History Month is ‘Disability Livelihood and Employment’.

To mark Disability History Month, our latest display on Level 3 of the University Library, curated in conjunction with Alex Kabaj, Graduate Intern at the Equality and Diversity Office, features documents, posters and photographs relating to the 1981 International Year of Disabled People and to a support group established during that year by the Society for the Prevention of Asbestosis and Industrial Diseases (SPAID). SPAID was founded in London by health and safety campaigner, Nancy Tait, and registered as a charity in 1978. The world’s first asbestos action group, it was also ‘the only Society caring specifically for … Industrially Disabled [people].' ¹

One of SPAID’s key functions was to help those disabled from exposure to asbestos at work, and those suffering from other industrial diseases, by providing information, support, and practical advice on making compensation and benefits claims. It also encouraged research into the causes, prevention and remedial treatment of industrial diseases and the publication and discussion of the results; campaigned for legislation on the notification of industrial diseases; and championed the use of electron microscopy to detect asbestos fibres in lung tissue.

When the United Nations designated 1981 as the International Year of Disabled People, Nancy Tait resolved that people suffering from industrial diseases – who faced unrelenting respiratory and mobility challenges, exhaustion, mental strain, and isolation – should not be excluded from the initiative. Accordingly, she and her SPAID colleagues launched a supporters’ group, named the SPAID Fellowship, as SPAID’s contribution to the International Year of Disabled People. The Fellowship arranged social gatherings at which people disabled by workplace exposure to asbestos, and their relatives and friends, could meet others in similar circumstances, share their experiences and make new friends, whilst also receiving one-to-one advice from SPAID representatives on how to claim any assistance to which they were entitled.

The inaugural SPAID Fellowship event took place at a community centre within St Barnabas Church, Bethnal Green, London, on the afternoon of 20 June 1981. Tea and musical entertainment were provided, along with table tennis to amuse any accompanying children. The event having proved to be worthwhile, the Fellowship continued to hold support meetings at St Barnabas on the first Saturday of each month. In January 1996, SPAID was officially renamed as the Occupational and Environmental Diseases Association (OEDA), and the support group became known as the OEDA Fellowship. The OEDA Fellowship continued to meet into the early 2000s.

Further information on the activities and impact of SPAID and OEDA can be found in our Occupational and Environmental Diseases Association (William Ashton Tait) Archives (reference: GB 249 OEDA).

Details of other Disability History Month resources and events taking place at Strathclyde are available on the University's Disability History Month webpage.

¹ OEDA F/1/2: Typed statement outlining the aims of SPAID, 1981.