Pensioners’ forums — a voice for older people

Abstract

National organizations representing pensioners’ interests historically arose mainly around the demand for adequate retirement pensions. Such demands go back to the early years of the century. As early as 1902 a national conference was called by the Co-operative Union Congress and the Trades Union Congress to call for an old age pension and to save ‘aged Britons ... from disfranchisement and pauperism, from the ignominy of “charity” or from actual starvation’. Thus started an historic link between the trade unions and pensioners. In 1939, a petition to raise the old age pension from 10/- to £1 gained two million signatures.