Introduction

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.