In the mid-1920s, radio technology developments and the BBC’s foundation in Britain led to new and exciting possibilities. Access to music, educational talks and current events became available to increasing numbers of people. Here, guest blogger Dr Rachel Garratt explores how one man, Captain Ian Fraser, used his position as a Member of Parliament and disabled veteran to campaign for radio access for blind people.
‘There are times when the atmosphere of the House of Commons changes from the commonplace to the impressive with dramatic abruptness, and on the most unexpected pretexts. In a flash, after the rumble of welcome had died down, the House of Commons became attentive, sympathetic, and keenly interested.’
(The St. Dunstan’s Review, 1926)
The Member of the House of Commons who had triggered this rapt reception on 10 November 1926 was Captain Ian Fraser, MP for St Pancras North. An aristocrat, Member of Parliament and First World War veteran who was blinded during the battle of the Somme, Fraser was introducing the Wireless Telegraphy (Blind Persons Facilities) Bill. The Bill provided free wireless licences to blind people and was part of a broader campaign to ensure that blind people in Britain had easy access to radio sets and BBC broadcasts.
Ian Fraser, Baron Fraser of Lonsdale (1897-1974), was a Conservative MP who combined his political ambition, interest in radio technology and lived experience of disability to campaign for free radio sets and licenses for blind people in Britain. In the 1920s, radio technology and broadcasting offered new and exciting possibilities, and British charities for blind people encouraged their members to engage with radio as mediums such as books, newspapers, theatre, and film were inaccessible.
In his speech to the House of Commons, Fraser highlighted three reasons that he felt justified the provision of free licenses for blind people:
‘The first is that in my opinion there are no means so useful, or so full of potential usefulness, as broadcasting for adult self-education, and there is no class in the community so limited in its ability to undertake self-education as the blind community. There is no other class that is unable of its own volition to read the daily newspapers, and no class so cut off from the normal entertainments which the ordinary man and woman can enjoy in the evening hours. Lastly, there is much that can be done, and I hope will be done, to alleviate the material and mental condition of the blind people of this country. But while this Bill does nothing to meet many of these needs, it does do something to facilitate the use by these people of an invention which means much more to them than to any other class in the community.’
Fraser’s powerful speech aided the passing of the 1926 Bill. In his biography, My Story of St Dunstan’s, Fraser describes himself as ‘partly responsible’ for wireless being ‘a popular hobby at St Dunstan’s before there was any BBC’, as ‘I had been a wireless fiend when I was still in school.’ St. Dunstan’s Home for Blinded Veterans was a residential rehabilitation centre for blinded servicemen set up in 1915 by Sir Arthur Pearson, a blind publisher and newspaper owner and in 1921 Ian Fraser became chairman of the charity.
During the war, Fraser had been a signals officer, and later, at St Dunstan’s, he began experimenting with wireless technology as a hobby. This was not unusual among military men of the First World War. The need for better communications technology during the conflict greatly accelerated the development of radio sets and broadcasts, with many military personnel becoming familiar with both using and experimenting with the technology. Some veterans continued playing with radio equipment on their return from war.
Fraser was one of these so-called ‘radio hams’, and his passion for the potential of broadcasting was evident. He described himself as ‘nagging ministers’ during Question Time in the House of Commons until ‘perhaps to shut me up – they appointed me to the Crawford Committee on Broadcasting in 1925.’ Fraser combined his passion for wireless and broadcasting with his work for fellow blinded veterans by setting up an initiative in which all St Dunstaners, as members of the charity were known, were provided with radios.
However, Fraser’s ambitions went beyond just providing radios within the charity, and he sought to give all blind people free access to radio broadcasts. In 1926, he introduced The Wireless Telegraphy (Blind Persons Facilities) Bill. The St Dunstan’s Review, the charity’s in house magazine, reported Fraser’s speech in the House of Commons as ‘well understood and so sympathetically received.’ They claimed it was written in ‘practically every London newspaper of importance, and many leading Provincial and Northern publications’: The Times wrote that ‘Captain Fraser today gained the sympathy of the whole House’ whilst The Daily Telegraph reported on the cross-party support for the initiative, claiming that ‘all parties in the House of Commons yesterday gave a sympathetic reception.’
The date Fraser introduced the bill was significant: the 10th of November. Subsequently, newspaper coverage of the subject was printed on the 11th, Armistice Day. The Manchester Guardian picked up on this, commenting:
‘That the beneficiaries include 1,500 men who, like the sponsor of the Bill [Captain Fraser], lost their sight in the war make the measure a singularly right attendant on Armistice Day. But on any other day it would be an act of intelligent kindness.’
In the 1920s, there was an emerging sense of responsibility for those injured serving Britain in the First World War, both by the political elites and the public. Therefore the political weight of having a veteran group and an MP supporting this cause was beneficial throughout the century.
Access to radio, facilitated by the Bill, was a huge benefit to members of the blind community. This is evident in letters received by the Royal National Institute for the Blind in 1929. A contributor named only as L.F. wrote:
‘The value of the wireless to us who are blind is beyond price; deprived as we are of the daily papers, we hear every evening through the general news bulletin the chief events of that day […] Our eyes are shut to these scenes, but the wireless gives us magic spectacles.’
A man going by F. W. Storky concurred:
‘Being a blind man from birth, I should like to express to you my appreciation and gratitude [for radio]. It has bought new interest and happiness into my life. Being blind, I have a lot of time on my hands, and might often be melancholy if that blessing of wireless had not been discovered, and that with such a variety of programmes that completely take one out of oneself altogether – especially in my own case. Wireless has opened for me such inward light into new pleasures and delights that I am indeed a very grateful blind man.’
In May 1965, The St Dunstan’s Review reported that Fraser asked the House of Lords for reassurance that wireless licenses would remain free for blind people. They agreed, continuing a precedent that remains today and has also been extended to provide blind people with subsidies on television licences.
RG
Further Reading:
My Story of St Dunstan’s by Lord Fraser of Lonsdale (1961)
War, Disability and Rehabilitation in Britain: ‘Soul of a Nation’, by Julie Anderson (2011)
Dr Rachel Garratt (she/her) is an early careers researcher working on disability history. In 2023, she completed her PhD at the University of Leeds. Her doctoral research was conducted within the White Rose Electronic Soundscapes Research Network, an interdisciplinary network that focused on sound, hearing and sonic cultures. Her thesis focused on how d/Deaf and blind people engaged with new media technologies in 20th century Britain. Alongside her academic interests, she has worked on public engagement projects, including writing online content on the history of science for National Life Stories, an oral history charity based at the British Library. She has worked as a researcher on several history podcasts commissioned by both Audible and the BBC.
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