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GB 249 FLYNN · Collection · 1893 - 2005

Laurie Flynn's papers on the asbestos industry span the period 1893-2005 and contain information primarily on the occupational health hazards posed by asbestos. This interest is centred on the activities of Cape Asbestos Company Ltd (and all corresponding names including shell entities) as well as the company's overseas subsidiaries.

There are 4 main series:

  • mining in South Africa, 1938-2005
  • asbestos litigation in North America, 1934-2005
  • asbestos in the UK, 1953-2005
  • Cape Asbestos corporate papers, 1893-2000

The focus of the collection is on employer negligence concerning health and safety, as argued in compensation lawsuits brought against the company and its subsidiaries.

Access to the wealth of business and legal papers brought to light primarily through lawsuits led Flynn to question whether multinational enterprises are as progressive as some commentators (notably business historians) have made out. The depositions, affidavits and court exhibits contained in this collection illuminate the role played by corporations and their representatives (in particular company medics and corporate lawyers) in suppressing scientific evidence concerning the risks of asbestos exposure. The Flynn papers also illustrate the lengths to which Cape Asbestos’ legal advisers went to create complex and confusing company structures in order to distance the parent company from liability ("corporate veil").

The collection includes some of Flynn’s notebooks and other background research materials for journalistic projects (among them extensive interviews with South African miners and Glasgow laggers), scripts and transcripts for documentaries, press cuttings, scientific literature, and correspondence with health and safety experts, medical specialists, environmental consultants, tort lawyers and asbestos ban campaigners.

In addition to documenting Flynn’s sustained interest in the workings of multinational asbestos enterprise, the collection also includes a little material relating to gold and diamond mining and the medical impact of atomic testing.

Flynn, Vincent Laurie Macpherson, b. 1946, investigative journalist
Mining in South Africa
GB 249 FLYNN/1 · Series · 1938 - 2005
Part of Laurie Flynn papers on the asbestos industry

Flynn's twin interest in the South African mining industry and in international corporations' conduct in Southern Africa dates back to his period with Granada Television's current affairs programme World in Action, 1979-1990. Over the ensuing decade he expanded his network of contacts with South African researchers and with lawyers representing South African plaintiffs. This series reflects the broad range of Flynn's network including its legal dimension.

GB 249 FLYNN/1/1/1 · Item · 1974-2003
Part of Laurie Flynn papers on the asbestos industry

Correspondence and news coverage following the out of court settlement in the South African group action brought against Cape plc (formerly Cape Asbestos Company Ltd, from 1974 Cape Industries Ltd) in December 2001, after a 5 year battle. Also earlier notes, correspondence and research materials on the South African asbestos industry. Includes:

  • correspondence with ITV re a film project 'You will know us by the trail of death' (originally outlined in 1988 under the title 'Outrageous misconduct - asbestos as metaphor'; see FLYNN/2/1/3)
  • set of microfiches of Charter Consolidated company papers, filmed 1978
  • Flynn's handwritten notes on his background research c.1980-1982, including on the suppression of the research of the Johannesburg Pneumoconiosis Research Unit
  • correspondence between Richard Creasey (BBC, formerly World in Action) and Anthony Mendelle (employee at Cape Asbestos Company Ltd, Barking 1956-1968) following the BBC documentary 'The right to know', April 1974, re producing a WIA documentary about Cape Asbestos in South Africa. See also Mendelle deposition (1984) at FLYNN/1/2/6. Creasey had conducted the investigation for WIA documentary 'The dust at Acre Mill' (transmitted in June 1971), the first programme to bring the lethal dangers of asbestos to the attention of the general public, on the example of the Acre Mill asbestos factory at Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire.
GB 249 FLYNN/1/1/2 · Item · 1938-2000
Part of Laurie Flynn papers on the asbestos industry

Predominantly on mining workers' compensation. Includes:

  • correspondence with John Carol Anthony (Tony) Davies, formerly Director of the National Centre for Occupational Health (Johannesburg), re his project of miners compensation, 1998-2000
  • annotated copy of article on asbestos in 'Mining Annual Review' 1979
  • notes on shop stewards meetings ("Turnall SA minutes"), Durban, 1980s and photocopies of information on Turnall (received from Halton Cheadle, a South African labour lawyer). Founded in 1943, Turnall Holdings Ltd produces building and construction materials and is headquartered in Harare, Zimbabwe
  • affidavit of Samuel Manzezulu Sibanyoni in the matter of unionization (National Union of Textile Workers), 1981
  • photocopy of an article on South Africa’s asbestos industry, 'South African Mining and Engineering Journal', 15 January 1938
GB 249 FLYNN/1/1/3 · Item · 1994-2005
Part of Laurie Flynn papers on the asbestos industry

Correspondence chiefly with personal injury lawyer Richard Meeran of Leigh Day & Co solicitors, 1994-2001. Relates to case Afrika et al. v. Cape plc and its argument that a parent company owes a direct duty of care in tort to anybody injured by a subsidiary company in a group. Includes:

  • press coverage 2004-2005
  • joint asbestos initiative paper of the International Miners Organisation, African Miners Federation, National Union of Mineworkers, and Leigh Day & Co solicitors
  • copy of opinions of the Lords of Appeal for Judgement in the cause of Schalk Willem Burger Lubbe et al. v. Cape plc (2000)
  • copy of judgement Rachel Jacoba Lubbe & Ors v. Cape plc (1999)
  • Flynn's notes on a meeting on foreign plaintiffs and access to English courts in transnational litigation, British Institute of International and Comparative Law and Solicitors' Human Rights Group, November 1999
  • copy of judgement Moses Fano Sithole et al. v. Thor Chemical Holdings Ltd et al. (1998)
  • copy of draft judgement Rachel Jacoba Lubbe & Ors v. Cape plc (1998)
  • copy of judgement Rachel Jacoba Lubbe et al. v. Cape plc (1997)
  • copy of opinions of the Lords of Appeal for Judgement in the cause of Connelly v. RTZ Corporation plc et al. (1997)
  • copy of affidavit John Carol Anthony Davies in Rachel Jacoba Lubbe et al. v. Cape plc (1997)
  • copy of affidavit Richard Meeran in Rachel Jacoba Lubbe et al. v. Cape plc (1997)
  • copy of consolidated statement of claim, Busisiwe Ngcobo et al. v. Thor Chemicals Holdings Ltd et al. (1995)
  • copy of judgement Edward Connelly v. RTZ Corporation plc (1996)
'The diamond empire' (1994)
GB 249 FLYNN/1/1/4 · Item · c1980-1993
Part of Laurie Flynn papers on the asbestos industry

Materials relating to research for one or several documentary projects on diamond mining, one of them presumably 'The diamond empire' (1994), produced by Flynn for the American current affairs programme 'Frontline'. Includes:

  • research notes and reproductions of cataloguing information re film footage / programmes covering diamond mining and the diamond industry, with emphasis on South Africa, 1966-1993 & n.d.
  • extensive roll lists, 1992-1993
  • internal memorandum, 1989, re MGM footage from the James Bond film 'Diamonds are forever' (1971) becoming available for World in Action or BBC project 'Diamonds'
  • copy transcript of BBC Panorama programme on the collaboration between Russia and South Africa to pit the price of gold and diamonds, recorded from transmission 6 April 1981

Some of the materials may date back to Flynn's research for World in Action documentary 'The case of the disappearing diamonds' (transmitted 28 September 1987). This reported on how billions of pounds' worth of gem diamonds were stripped from South West Africa over a 20-year period by the world's largest diamond mining company.

GB 249 FLYNN/1/1/5 · Item · 1981-2001
Part of Laurie Flynn papers on the asbestos industry
  • correspondence with South African student Jaine Roberts 2000-2001, copy (2 versions) of Roberts’ Master Thesis on compensation of asbestos-related disease in Sehkukhuneland
  • script of World in Action (WIA) documentary 'Death is part of the process' (1986), covering the Kinross gold mine disaster
  • Flynn's handwritten notes c.1981 (chiefly re occupational health and asbestos in South Africa)
  • Flynn's "WIA notebooks 1981"
  • correspondence 1984-1985 re a South African asbestos documentary project ‘A breathe of death [sic]’, sponsored by BAMCWU, the Black Allied Mining and Construction Workers’ Union
  • South African press coverage on asbestos 1981, copies South African Health ‘Work and health’ fact sheets (n.d.)
  • annotated copy of Jonathan Myers’ study ‘Asbestos and asbestos-related disease in South Africa’ (Southern Africa Labour & Development Research Unit, Cape Town, 1980)
GB 249 FLYNN/1/1/6 · Item · 1957-1998
Part of Laurie Flynn papers on the asbestos industry
  • script and transcripts of World in Action documentary 'Dust to dust' (1981), manuscript & typescript notes of background interviews; correspondence arising from the documentary's transmission on 16 November 1981
  • correspondence and papers (including galleys) re and arising from Flynn's article ‘South Africa blacks out blue asbestos risk’, published in New Scientist 22 April 1982
  • papers and correspondence re mining in South Africa and Botswana, including:
  • copy of death certificate of Hesop Lieberman, 1957
  • copy of ‘Field survey in the North Western Cape and at Penge in the Transvaal (asbestos and mesothelioma)’, South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Pneumoconiosis Research Unit, Report No 1/64 (1964)
  • report ‘personal sampling’ of asbestos taken in the Mafefe area 1988
  • review of Flynn's book 'Studded with diamonds and paved with gold' in Financial Times, 23 July 1993
  • Felix et al. (1994) ‘Three minerals, three epidemics — asbestos mining and disease in South Africa’, in Mehlam & Upton (eds.), 'Advances in modern environmental toxicology: the identification and control of environmental and occupational diseases: Asbestos and Cancer', vol. 12: 265-286, etc.
Wagner thesis
GB 249 FLYNN/1/1/7 · Item · 1962
Part of Laurie Flynn papers on the asbestos industry

Copy of John Christopher Wagner's M.D. thesis 'The pathology of asbestosis in South Africa', submitted at the School of Pathology, University of Witwatersrand, 1962.

The thesis, which examined the risks of occupational and environmental exposure to asbestos, brought its author significant pressure from the mining industry to stop researching asbestos-related disease in South Africa. In 1962 Wagner accepted a position at the Pneumoconiosis Unit at Llandough Hospital, Wales, where he worked until his retirement in 1988.

GB 249 FLYNN/1/2/1 · Item · 1975-1996
Part of Laurie Flynn papers on the asbestos industry
  • deposition of Matthys Van Rooyen (6 + 8 November 1996), in Asbestos Personal Injury Cases, Arrington Lead, Civil Action No 93-9-114, Circuit Court of Jones County, Mississippi
  • abstract (?1995) and deposition of Geoffrey Arthur Higham (4 June 1975), in Herman Yandle et al. v. PPG Industries, Inc. et al., District Court of Eastern Texas
  • abstract (1995) and incomplete deposition of Geoffrey Arthur Higham (8 + 11 April 1981), in Anthony A Barber et al. v. Charter Consolidated Ltd et al., Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
  • abstract of deposition of Geoffrey Arthur Higham (3 + 4 October 1984), in Thacker v. UNR Industries [no further detail]
GB 249 FLYNN/1/2/2 · Item · 1996-1997
Part of Laurie Flynn papers on the asbestos industry
  • deposition of Justin Mackeurtan (19 November 1996), in Asbestos Personal Injury Cases, Arrington Lead, Civil Action No 93-9-114, Circuit Court of Jones County, Mississippi. Deposition taken in Johannesburg, South Africa
    Includes covering correspondence from Robert Blackwell (research assistant to Hayden S Dent, attorney), 16 May 1997
GB 249 FLYNN/1/2/3 · Item · 1996-1997
Part of Laurie Flynn papers on the asbestos industry
  • deposition of H E G Wilson (25 November 1996), in Asbestos Personal Injury Cases, Arrington Lead, Civil Action No 93-9-114, Circuit Court of Jones County, Mississippi. Deposition taken in Johannesburg, South Africa

Includes covering correspondence from Robert Blackwell (research assistant to Hayden S Dent, attorney), 15 May 1997

GB 249 FLYNN/1/2/4 · Item · 1996-1997
Part of Laurie Flynn papers on the asbestos industry
  • deposition of Geoffrey Arthur Higham (24 October 1996), in Asbestos Personal Injury Cases, Arrington Lead, Civil Action No 93-9-114, Circuit Court of Jones County, Mississippi. Deposition taken in London, UK

Includes covering correspondence from Robert Blackwell (research assistant to Hayden S Dent, attorney), 16 May 1997.