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collections
Research correspondence

In roughly chronological order, starting with Nancy Tait's interactions with and concerning the Asbestos Information Committee (AIC).

Tait's asbestos research began as a quest for convincing answers regarding the death of her husband William Ashton Tait, who died of mesothelioma in 1968.

Comparatively little material from the early years (1969-1978) of Tait's investigations survives. Gaps include:

  • Tait's systematic study, begun in 1972, of the state of knowledge regarding the health risks of asbestos, resulting in her publication of 'Asbestos kills' (1976)
  • Tait's application for the Churchill fellowship, awarded to her early in 1976, and correspondence relating to her extensive travels in Europe in 1976
  • growing out of this, correspondence and papers documenting Tait's work with the Study Group on Asbestos of the Economic and Social Committee of the EEC (Section for Protection of the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Affairs) from 1977; much of this, including Nancy Tait's correspondence with Petra Kelly 1976-1981, can be consulted in the Petra Kelly Archive, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Berlin

From the early to mid 1970s, Nancy Tait fashioned herself into a lay expert on occupational and environmental health hazards, initially chiefly those posed by asbestos.

This took several forms, such as: testifying before commissions and committees, advising and consulting during ongoing inquiries, participating in relevant panels, or commenting on consultation papers. The boundaries between Tait's expert witnessing / consulting work and her advocacy activities (see link below) are somewhat blurred.

By 1978 Nancy Tait was, in her own words: "concerned with all aspects of the [asbestos] problem, since I provide information for the UK and European Parliaments, the DHSS and many other bodies, and have given written and oral evidence to the government Advisory Committee on asbestos. I am at present advising a Committee of the EEC ..." (to British Rail, Doncaster, 1 March 1978)

Includes early correspondence of Nancy Tait and materials focusing in particular on asbestos on railway and underground systems.

Legal Working Party

Documents the foundation, by the Society of Labour Lawyers, of the ‘[SPAID] Legal Working Party’ (originally called ‘Asbestosis Working Group’) and some of its meetings 1980-1986. The brief of the working party was 'to examine the law and procedure on asbestosis claims, with particular reference to the inter-relationship between Coroners' Courts and the Pneumoconiosis Medical Panels'. The idea was to create a forum for helping Nancy Tait with research and also 'a useful tool for Parliamentary lobbying without infringing SPAID's charitable status'.

Asbestos ban campaign

Relates to Nancy Tait's efforts to bring about and implement a prohibition on the importation, manufacture, use and sale of asbestos-containing products in the UK.

Elsewhere in the archive there is documentation of Nancy Tait's involvement in the foundation of 'Ban Asbestos' in Strasbourg on 14 June 1991, at the initiative of the Green Group of Members of the European Parliament. See http://atom.lib.strath.ac.uk/oeda-maureen-wards-reference-files-on-key-actions

SPAID Fellowship
GB 249 OEDA/F/1 · Series · 1981-1994, ?2005
Part of Occupational and Environmental Diseases Association (William Ashton Tait) Archives

According to an early invitation, SPAID Fellowship started out as an initiative aiming to ensure that the industrially disabled were not forgotten in the International Year of Disabled People (1981).

The SPAID Fellowship was understood as the 'Supporters Club' for the organisation. People disabled by industry would meet those interested to help them and to prevent further disease. SPAID Fellowship developed around St Barnabas Church, Bethnal Green, London. Following a get-together at the home of Joan Piccolo of Rainham, Essex, in February 1981, and an inaugural occasion at St Barnabas in June, meetings were expected to take place every first Saturday of the month from 2-4 pm.

Later on SPAID Fellowship developed also at Merseyside.

Joan Piccolo, whose husband had died of an asbestos-related disease, campaigned as part of the Women Against the Dust group; see 'Morning Star', 1 April 1976.