UPDATE: The 3rd Edition of this book is now available.

Summary

• In 1965 a group of disabled people and their allies – all Labour Party members – created a policy calling for a radically new form of social care, which we now know as personal assistants, PAs.
• This campaign for independent living became the National Campaign for the Young Chronic Sick. A small but very influential political campaign, it continued until 1970 and concluded its work with a new law giving disabled people legal rights to certain services in their homes.
• The title of this research – “we are bloody angry” – comes from the fourth newsletter published by the National Campaign for the Young Chronic Sick in 1967, after the hostility they faced from the government when trying to get this new policy implemented.
• This research has begun to uncover those bloody angry voices, and tell the story of their struggle for the first time.
• The third edition of this published research adds new campaign material up to 1974, and adds new material on the people involved from the outset.