When did the Armley asbestos disaster first begin?
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On 20 July 1982, Yorkshire Television broadcast the documentary "Alice - A Fight For Life", predominantly the story of Alice Jefferson, who had worked at the Acre Mill asbestos factory in Hebden Bridge for just nine months when she was 17 years old. Thirty years later she was diagnosed with mesothelioma and given only six months to live. The documentary was also an "exposé on the workings of the asbestos industry." Its broadcast resulted in £60 million being knocked off T&N's share price overnight, headlines in the national newspapers, and the setting up of a government enquiry. Within ten days the government had halved the legal limit for asbestos dust in the workplace. In 1988 Yorkshire Television picked up the "Yorkshire Evening Post" story and produced a second critical investigation focusing on the pattern of deaths in Armley, and contradicting the government's reasons for refusing an inquiry. Called "Too Close to Home", it was broadcast as part of the "First Tuesday" documentary series on 6 December 1988.
Armley asbestos disaster
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The contamination was the result of the activities of a local asbestos factory, part of the Turner & Newall (T&N) group (often referred to by the name of its founders, J. W. Roberts Ltd.) and occurred between the end of the 19th century and 1959 when the factory eventually closed. At its peak the factory had 250 employees. At least 300 former employees are believed to have died from asbestos-related illnesses, and a number of cancer deaths in the Armley area were traced to the factory in 1988 as a result of an investigation by the "Yorkshire Evening Post". The estate was found to have the highest incidence in the country of mesothelioma. As the interval between exposure and diagnosis can be up to 50 years the number of further deaths which may occur due to the factory's emissions or residual dust since its closure cannot be predicted.
Armley asbestos disaster
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The Armley asbestos disaster is an ongoing health issue originating in Armley, a suburb of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Described by Dr. Geoffrey Tweedale as a "social disaster", it involved the contamination with asbestos dust of an area consisting of around 1,000 houses in the Armley Lodge area of the city.
Armley asbestos disaster
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J. W. Roberts Ltd. was founded in Armley in 1874 as a textile producer, primarily working with cotton, hemp and jute. By 1906, its factory on Canal Road, known as the Midland Works, specialised in the manufacture of asbestos insulation mattresses for steam locomotive boilers and is believed to have been one of only two factories in the world at the time which processed blue asbestos. In 1920 it merged with Turner Brothers Asbestos Company Ltd., Newalls Insulation Company Ltd., and the Washington Chemical Company Ltd., to form Turner & Newall Ltd., which in 1925 became a public company. T&N's rapid growth has been attributed to a product called "Sprayed Limpet Asbestos", developed in the Armley works in 1931. This was made by mixing raw asbestos with water and cement, the resulting slurry being spray applied to the surface to be insulated, creating a cheap sound- and fireproof coating. Sprayed Limpet Asbestos generated huge profits for T&N who exported the product to 60 countries where it was applied to a wide range of buildings including schools, churches and theatres and the London Underground. The factory at Armley closed in 1959.
Armley asbestos disaster
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Taylor met with John Battle, then the Member of Parliament for Leeds West, in 1987 to present his findings, and Battle raised the matter in a House of Commons debate. Along with Leeds City Council, he called for a public inquiry into the deaths at Armley, but the incumbent Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher rejected the request, on the grounds that it "would cause needless concern, that it was impossible to discover what had happened at Roberts, and that no one could then have imagined that the dust could have harmed residents." Battle submitted to the House: "I cannot believe that those who owned and ran Roberts can have gone in and out without seeing the dust everywhere on the surrounding streets and pavements. If they knew that their workers within had to be protected from the asbestos dust, how could they have ignored the position of their neighbours who lived with that dust outside? It was not rendered neutral or innocuous as it left their premises. If they knew, why did they knowingly continue to ask not only their employees but local residents for a generation to pay the price with their lives for the profits of continued asbestos production? ...Should not the company be responsible for that deadly legacy? The Armley asbestos tragedy cannot remain private and hidden because it is not yet over."
Armley asbestos disaster
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June Hancock's story formed the subject of a play, "Dust", by Kenneth F. Yates, which was performed in Armley and at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in July 2009.
Armley asbestos disaster
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Further claims of compensation for other victims eventually commenced in 2007 when Federal-Mogul emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. By that time, just £91 million was available for T&N's worldwide non-U.S. asbestos liabilities for the next 40 years. Successful applicants receive as little as 17% of the value of their claims.
Armley asbestos disaster
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Documents discovered by lawyers in the 1990s revealed that in 1979 T&N were also notified of asbestos contamination in a house in Aviary Road that had once been part of the Midland Works after the city's Public Analyst found asbestos in an attic and garden, and an internal T&N memo about this stated "... presumably it is reasonable to suppose that adjoining properties might also be involved." Leeds City Council did not inform the public. T&N paid for the decontamination of the property in Aviary Road but "secured an understanding that 'any reference to the proximity of the buildings to the old JW Roberts factory will now be omitted from the Land Registry Records'" and all such references were then removed by Leeds City Council. They then began to prepare "dossiers on 'likely attackers' and journalists with a 'special interest' in asbestos." In 1992, when asked to comment about contamination in Aviary Road T&N said: "T&N has not been made aware of any evidence linking that asbestos with JW Roberts's former factory."
Armley asbestos disaster
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When John Major became Prime Minister in November 1990, he gave Young the role of Minister for Housing and Planning. Shortly after, during an interview for BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme in June 1991, Young described the homeless as "the people you step over when you come out of the opera". In 1992 when asked during parliamentary discussions of the Armley Asbestos Disaster for financial assistance in surveying local housing in the Armley area for residual asbestos, Young responded that the government would not provide financial assistance to the home owners or the council to pay for decontamination as this "would not be a justifiable use of public funds".
George Young, Baron Young of Cookham
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T&N's chairman Sir Colin Hope, writing on 25 October 1989, claimed that after the company vacated and sold the premises in 1959, it had ceased to keep any records relating to the operation, that it held no archived records, and what records might still exist would be "extremely scanty" ("sic") and "largely confined to basic employee record cards." John Battle MP addressed the House of Commons on 8 July 1992 regarding the difficulties faced in mounting a legal case against T&N: "Basically, it is an attempt legally to prove negligence in the face of foreseeable likelihood that harm would occur as a result of causing or permitting asbestos dust to permeate the atmosphere in or around the factory premises in Canal Road, Armley, between 1925 and 1958... The legal test is whether the company knew that the dust could cause serious or possibly fatal injury to those living in the 840 houses nearby who work in the local workplaces or who attend the Armley Clock school... I have reason to believe that the company and other sources, medical and environmental, did have that sort of data, and still do. The difficulty lies in seeking it out - discovering it - and, especially, forcing the company to disclose all that it knew and knows."
Armley asbestos disaster