Working Class Movement Library

I recently heard on Radio four a programe about the National League of the Blind March from Manchester to London in July 1920 (almost Eighty five years ago) to protest to the Government about the treatment of the blind, particularly in relation to the Blind Workshops that were run by charities and the treatment and payment of these types of workers. This march pre dates Jarrow and the Marches of the Unemployed of the 1930's. The speaker indicated that much of the planning for the march had their origins in the suffragettes movement of 1912, the year of the great unrest. The treatment of Blind Officers returning from the first world war was also a bone of contention.

The speaker indicated that the research for his programme had originated in the minutes and papers of the National League of the Blind now housed at the Working Class movement Library at 51 the Crescent, Salford. I visited the library to look at these and found them to be in excellent condition for researchers, but with little or no aids to the blind or partially sighted.

A web site exists at http://www.wcml.org.uk/