Abstract
This book is not about blindness but about a unique social movement organisation and its campaign to replace all charitable aid for blind people with an entitlement to statutory provisions. It is a work of history and as such is predominantly concerned with challenging assumptions about the past. Nevertheless, it is hoped that this book will also be of interest to disability scholars and activists as it examines how a relatively small organisation with limited resources has managed to influence policy-making as well as public opinion from the late nineteenth century onwards. All members of the National League of the Blind were partially sighted or completely blind, but it was not this fact which led them to organise in the 1890s. What united them was a perception that they were marginalised in British society because their standard of living depended on the benevolence of others. In addition, they objected to the fact that sighted officials who controlled the funds donated for the benefit of blind people assumed the right to speak for them. The story of the National League of the Blind is therefore part of a much larger narrative. It illustrates how notions of democracy, economic performance and social entitlement became increasingly interwoven from the late nineteenth century onwards. The goals of economic security, civil rights and independence were inextricably linked in the eyes of the League’s leaders, and these goals had to be won through struggle.
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Notes
C. Braithwaite, The Voluntary Citizen (London, 1938), p. 171
quoted in Nicholas Deakin and Justin Davis Smith, ‘Labour, Charity and Voluntary Action: The Myth of Hostility’, in Matthew Hilton and James McKay (eds), The Ages of Voluntarism: How We Got to the Big Society (Oxford, 2011), p. 75.
Justin Davis Smith, ‘The Voluntary Tradition: Philanthropy and Self-Help in Britain 1500–1945’, in Justin Davis Smith, Colin Rochester and Rodney Hedley (eds), An Introduction to the Voluntary Sector (London, 1995), pp. 9–39; Matthew Hilton and James McKay, ‘The Ages of Voluntarism: An Introduction’, in A Hilton and A McKay (eds), The Ages of Voluntarism, pp. 1–26.
Rodney Lowe, The Welfare State in Britain since 1945 (3rd edn., Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 284–91; Virginia Berridge and Alex Mold, ‘Professionalisation, New Social Movements and Voluntary Action in the 1960s and 1970s’, in Hilton and McKay (eds), The Ages of Voluntarism, pp. 114–16.
Matthew Hilton et al., A Historical Guide to NGOs in Britain: Charities, Civil Society and the Voluntary Sector since 1945 (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 303–8.
William Beveridge, Voluntary Action: A Report on the Methods of Social Advance (London, 1948), p. 10; Justin Davis Smith, ‘The Voluntary Tradition: Philanthropy and Self-Help in Britain 1500–1945’, in Smith, Rochester and Hedley (eds), An Introduction to the Voluntary Sector, pp. 9–39; Helen McCarthy, ’Associational Voluntarism in Interwar Britain’, in Hilton and McKay (eds), The Ages of Voluntarism, pp. 53–7
Nicholas Deakin, ‘Civil Society’, in Paul Addison and Harriet Jones (eds), A Companion to Contemporary Britain1939–2000 (Malden, MA, 2007), pp. 407–26
James McKay, ‘Voluntary Politics: The Sector’s Political Function from Beveridge to Deakin’, in Melanie Oppenheimer and Nicholas Deakin (eds), Beveridge and Voluntary Action in Britain and the Wider British World (Manchester, 2011), p. 83; Hilton et al., A Historical Guide to NGOs in Britain, pp. 1–11 and 284–6.
Madeline Rooff, Voluntary Societies and Social Policy (London, 1957), p. 178.
R. Ann Abel, ‘Visually Impaired People, the Identification of the Need for Specialist Provision: A Historical Perspective’, British Journal of Visual Impairment Vol. 7(2) (1989): 47–51.
Brian Grant, The Deaf Advance: A History of The British Deaf Association 1890– 1990 (Edinburgh, 1990)
Peter W. Jackson and Raymond Lee, The Origins of the British Deaf Association (Feltham, 2010); Hilton et al., A Historical Guide to NGOs in Britain, pp. 104–7.
On poor people’s movements, see Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People’s Movements: Why they Succeed, How they Fail (New York, 1979).
The League’s Cork branch had become defunct in the early 1920s and the Belfast branch remained with the parent organisation. Pat Lyons, A Place in the Sun: A Brief History of the National League of the Blind in Ireland (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1999), pp. 7–8.
For an overview of the development of trade union membership in Britain see Duncan Gallie, ‘The Labour Force’, in A. H. Halsey and Josephine Webb (eds), Twentieth-Century British Social Trends (New York, 2000), pp. 308–11
Chris Wrigley, ‘Trade Unions: Rise and Decline’, in Francesca Carnevali and Julie-Marie Strange (eds), Twentieth-Century Britain: Economic, Cultural and Social Change (2nd edn., Harlow, 2007), pp. 281–92.
Steve Humphries and Pamela Gordon, Out of Sight: The Experience of Disability 1900–1950 (Plymouth, 1992), p. 118.
The Royal National Institute for the Blind (now Royal National Institute of Blind People) holds the copyright to the book. June Rose, Changing Focus: The Development of Blind Welfare in Britain (London, 1970), pp. 57–8.
See also John Coles, Blindness and the Visionary: The Life and Work of John Wilson (London, 2006)
Andrew Norman, Father of the Blind: A Portrait of Sir Arthur Pearson (Stroud, 2009).
Ardha Danieli and Peter Wheeler, ‘Employment Policy and Disabled People: Old Wine in New Glasses’, Disability & Society Vol. 21(5) (2006): 487.
For examples see, among others, Patrick Phelan, ‘Are We Producing the Goods?’, British Journal of Visual Impairment Vol. 2(3) (Autumn 1984): 70
Mark Priestley, ‘Commonality and Difference in the Movement: An “Association of Blind Asians” in Leeds’, Disability & Society Vol. 10(2) (1995): 158.
To name but a few: Moshe Barasch, Blindness: The History of a Mental Image in Western Thought (New York, 2001)
Ronald J. Ferguson, We Know Who We Are: A History of the Blind in Challenging Educational and Socially-Constructed Policies. A Study in Policy Archaeology (San Francisco, CA, 2001)
Catherine J. Kudlick ‘Disability History: Why We Need Another “Other”’, American Historical Review Vol. 108(3) (June 2003): 763–93
Simon Hayhoe, God, Money, and Politics: English Attitudes to Blindness and Touch, from the Enlightenment to Integration (Charlotte, NC, 2008)
Zina Weygand, The Blind in French Society from the Middle Ages to the Century of Louis Braille (Stanford, CA, 2009)
Susan Schweik, The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (New York, 2010)
Julie Anderson, War, Disability and Rehabilitation in Britain: ‘Soul of a Nation’ (Manchester, 2011); Selina Mills, Life Unseen: The Story of Blindness (London, forthcoming).
Amanda Nichola Bergen, ‘The Blind, the Deaf and the Halt: Physical Disability, the Poor Law and Charity c. 1830–1890, with particular reference to the County of Yorkshire (PhD thesis, University of Leeds, School of History, November 2004), pp. 402 and 409; John Oliphant, ‘Empowerment and Debilitation in the Educational Experience of the Blind in Nineteenth-century England and Scotland’, History of Education Vol. 35(1) (January 2006): 47–68
John Oliphant, The Early Education of the Blind in Britain, c.1790–1900: Institutional Experience in England and Scotland (Lewiston, NY, 2007)
Julie Anderson and Neil Pemberton, ‘Walking Alone: Aiding the War and Civilian Blind in the Inter-War Period’, European Review of History Vol. 14(4) (2007): 459–79
John Oliphant, ‘“Touching the Light”: The Invention of Literacy for the Blind’, Paedagogica Historica Vol. 44(1–2) (February–April 2008): 67–82.
For more general works see, for example, Humphries and Gordon, Out of Sight; Anne Borsay, Disability and Social Policy in Britain since 1750 (Basingstoke, 2005).
Gordon Phillips, The Blind in British Society: Charity, State, and Community, c.1780–1930 (Aldershot, 2004).
C. Kenneth Lysons, ‘The Development of Social Legislation for Blind or Deaf Persons in England, 1834–1939’ (PhD thesis, University of Brunel, 1973).
Peter Carter, ‘State Aid — Direct and Complete: The Blind Workers March 1920’, Working Class Movement Library Bulletin 7 (1997), pp. 11–19
Matthias Reiss, ‘Forgotten Pioneers of the National Protest March: The National League of the Blind Marches to London, 1920 & 1936’, Labour History Review Vol. 70(2) (2005): 131–65.
Carter also produced a paper on the League’s badges. Peter Carter, ‘The National League of the Blind and Disabled’, MS, July 1996. TUCL, HD6661z.
Gerry Northam, ‘Before Jarrow’, BBC Radio 4 FM, Friday, 8 April 2005, 11:00–11:30 a.m.; Tony Baldwinson, Unacknowledged Traces: Exploring through Photographic Records the Self-Organisation of Disabled People in England from the 1920s to the 1970s (Manchester, 2012).
Floyd Matson, Walking Alone and Marching Together: A History of the Organized Blind Movement in the United States, 1940–1990 (Baltimore, MD, 1990).
See also Felicia Kornbluh, ‘Disability, Antiprofessionalism, and Civil Rights: The National Federation of the Blind and the “Right to Organize” in the 1950s’, Journal of American History Vol. 97(4) (March 2011): 1023–47.
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© 2015 Matthias Reiss
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Reiss, M. (2015). Introduction. In: Blind Workers against Charity. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137364470_1
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