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.

Established at the Royal Technical College in 1920 under the auspices of the British Pharmaceutical Society and the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association of Chemists, the School of Pharmacy rapidly grew in prestige and fame becoming the largest School of Pharmacy in the UK in the span of a decade.

For most of the 1920s and 1930s Professor David Ellis worked as Superintendent of the School and Lecturer in Botany (pictured at the rear of our featured image), collaborating with Professor James Todd, Lecturer in Pharmacy and Materia Medica (at the rear, by the door). A number of women were also employed in the School as demonstrators and assistants, such as the botanist, Wanda Zamorska.

The student body and the number of classes taught grew steadily. The majority of the students were men, mainly ex soldiers discharged from service after the first world war and enrolling in courses with the aid of the Ministry of Labour. However, a significant number of women attended laboratories and classes at the School, as is evident from this photograph. Opening education to people from all walks of life was one of the most important legacies from Anderson’s Institution. Indeed, John Anderson, the founder, had expressed the hope in his will that the institution would be ‘the first regular institution in which the fair sex have been admitted… on the same footing as men’.

Pharmacy students could proceed to a B.Sc. in Pharmacy awarded by the University of Glasgow by attending qualifying classes like botany, pharmacy and materia medica, but a popular option was to take the qualifying examination from the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.

Archives reference: OP 4/131 Royal Technical College students in School of Pharmacy laboratory, c.1920

The onset of the Great War in the autumn of 1914 had immediate and far-reaching consequences, both for the Royal Technical College and for its academic community. By the end of December, more than 1,000 members of staff, students and alumni had volunteered for the services. A further thousand enlisted during the following year, and by October 1920, the Royal Technical College’s Roll of Honour numbered no fewer than 3,225 officers, non-commissioned officers and men, including one nurse and 19 personnel on ‘Special Service’. A permanent memorial to the 615 students, staff and alumni who were known to have died or been killed on active service was subsequently erected in the foyer of the Royal College Building.

One of the survivors, Ronald William Walker (1893-1984), qualified for the Royal Technical College’s Associateship in Civil Engineering in 1913, shortly before the outbreak of war. Walker entered the theatre of war in France on 2 December 1917 as a Sapper with the Royal Engineers, rising to the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery. He subsequently served in, and survived, the Second World War as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Engineers.

On his return from France, Walker forged a successful career in the field of civil engineering, his College training allowing him to make a practical contribution to the country’s post-war recovery. An Associate Member of the Institute of Civil Engineers and a Member of the Institution of Structural Engineers, he worked both in Scotland and England, holding a variety of posts (Assistant Civil Engineer with the firm of Formans and McCall, Glasgow; Resident Engineer with Surrey County Council, and Civilian Engineer with the War Office in London, amongst others). Walker also retained strong links with his alma mater. He was elected a Member of the Council of the Royal College of Science and Technology (RCST) - the successor body to the Royal Technical College - in session 1963-64. Following the RCST’s amalgamation with the Scottish College of Commerce to form the University of Strathclyde, Walker became a Member of the University Court until 1967. By virtue of the fact that he had been a serving Member of the Council of the RCST when the Royal Charter came into effect, Walker was also appointed a Life Member of the General Convocation of the University of Strathclyde.

Archives reference OP/4/210/1: Photograph of Ronald W. Walker (ARTC), Second Lieutenant, Royal Garrison Artillery, c.1918