'Bottom dog men': Disability, Social Welfare and Advocacy in the Scottish Coalfields in the Interwar Years, 1918-1939.

This article connects with and builds on recent research on workmen's compensation and disability focussing on the Scottish coalfields between the wars. It draws upon a range of primary sources including coal company accident books, court cases and trade union records to analyse efforts to define and redefine disability, examining the language deployed and the agency of workers and their advocates. It is argued here that the workmen's compensation system associated disability with restricted functionality relating to work tasks and work environments. Disability became more visible and more closely monitored and this was a notably contested and adversarial terrain in Scotland in the Depression, where employers, workers and their collective organisations increasingly deployed medical expertise to support their cases regarding working and disabled bodies. In Scotland, the miners' trade unions emerged as key advocates for the disabled.

Miners, silica and disability: The bi-national interplay between South Africa and the United Kingdom, c1900-1930s.

This paper investigates silicosis as a disabling disease in underground mining in the United Kingdom (UK) before Second World War, exploring the important connections between South Africa and the UK and examining some of the issues raised at the 1930 International Labour Office Conference on silicosis in Johannesburg in a British context. The evidence suggests there were significant paradoxes and much contestation in medical knowledge creation, advocacy, and policy-making relating to this occupational disease. It is argued here that whilst there was an international exchange of scientific knowledge on silicosis in the early decades of the twentieth century, it was insufficient to challenge the traditional defense adopted by the British government of proven beyond all scientific doubt before effective intervention in coal mining. This circumspect approach reflected dominant business interests and despite relatively robust trade union campaigning and eventual reform, the outcome was an accumulative legacy of respiratory disease and disability that blighted coalfield communities.

Oral history, subjectivity, and environmental reality: occupational health histories in twentieth-century Scotland.

This essay uses oral histories of dust disease in twentieth-century Scotland to illustrate the ways in which such history can illuminate how the working environment and work cultures affect workers' bodies and how workers come to terms with the ill-health caused by their employment. It emphasizes the agency of the interpreter but argues further that oral histories of dust disease in twentieth-century Scotland are simultaneously influenced by, and evidence for, material conditions. The essay explores the notion that the bodies, not just the voices of interviewees, are material testament to health-corroding work practices, cultures, and habitat. The focus is the problems caused by the inhalation of coal and asbestos dust.

Asbestos in Scotland.

This paper outlines the asbestos hazard in Scotland and draws upon a systematic oral history project to analyze from the workers' perspective the nature of exposure, the limitations of government regulatory initiatives, and the ramifications of contracting asbestos-related diseases for sufferers and their families. Current issues are investigated, stressing the agency of workers, trade unions, sympathetic local councils, and, especially, the victims' pressure groups. The occupational and environmental health threats of asbestos in Scotland remain significant, although recent E.U.- and U.K.-based decisions to ban further use of asbestos together with active campaigning by local activist groups have helped to reduce them. Mesothelioma mortality rates remain high, due to historic exposures, and much work remains to be done to reduce the number and plight of asbestos-exposed workers.