Showing 74 results

Roughly in chronological order.

From the mid-1970s, Nancy Tait maintained very active contacts with a number of trade unions, discussing health & safety matters, news and developments. The resulting body of correspondence mostly accumulated by name of union.

In reverse chronological order, arranged by year, divided into outgoing and incoming telephone calls. Mainly photocopies of telephone memoranda.

Incomplete series in the early sections:

• 1992 - January to April only
• 1993 - missing
• 1994 - March to early May only
• 1995 - missing.

There is no dedicated series of minutes and associated papers, suggesting that much of the organisation's executive decision-making was effectively oral (i.e. that some records were not created in the first place).

Even where executive records were generated, they were not systematically kept. During the SPAID period (1978-1995) and in particular until c.1991, records of trustee meetings and written reports on the organisation's activities survive mainly as part of correspondence with a trustee. After OEDA formally took over from SPAID in January 1996, Management Committee meetings were convened on a fairly regular basis. Nevertheless, their documentation did not take the form of a continuous dedicated series of minutes of management meetings, nor are there series of management correspondence or correspondence with the OEDA chairperson.

The surviving documentation shows that earlier names for SPAID were 'Trust for Asbestos Welfare Research and Control' (TAWRC) and 'Asbestos Induced Diseases Society' (AIDS). Proposals for the name of the new organisation OEDA included 'Occupational Diseases Association' (ODA), 'Industrial Diseases of the Environment Association' (IDEA) and 'Investigation of Industrial Diseases of the Environment Association' (IIDEA).

Much corporate strategic information can be found in the organisation's fundraising records, in particular grant applications with the London Boroughs Grants Unit (OEDA/J/2/1) and the National Lottery Charities Board (OEDA/J/2/2/5).

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.

Correspondence and papers.

Solvents as an occupational and environmental health issue entered Nancy Tait's field of vision as early as c.1978, when she attended the International Congress on Occupational Health in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. The charity gathered information on topic but did not produce a leaflet dedicated to solvents until 1995; see link below.