Thalidomide - The Fifty Year Fight

Over 50 years ago, the drug thalidomide shocked the world.

There are some children without arms, some without legs,

some without arms OR legs.

We're looking at the very worst disaster inflicted by medicine.

For ten years, a battle for compensation was fought

against one of Britain's largest corporations.

This was one of the dirtiest pieces of litigation

run by a large corporate ever.

One man stood up against this injustice.

I said, "I don't agree with all this. I think it's absolutely absurd.

"I think it's ridiculous and I am not going to accept it."

But this man would see those he was fighting for turn against him.

For the vast majority of parents, he doesn't represent them at all.

The other parents described him as a bit of a show-off,

and enjoying it all.

And many attempted to silence his story.

David Mason said, "I am being blackmailed into a cover-up

"about what almost amounts to an atrocity."

The phone calls were terrible, threatening physical violence.

Some of them threatened the well-being of my family.

But his actions set in motion a chain of events

that changed the lives of every thalidomide child in this country.

Our lives would not be what they are today without the work he had done.

And the legacy of that battle continues today,

over 50 years on from the tragedy.

Campaigners are now focusing on the inventors of the drug.

What gives that company the right to get away from this

without recognising the damage they've caused,

not just to us, but to whole families?

BABY CRIES

When I was born, I was born at home,

delivered by a midwife, who was shocked, to say the least.

I was given to my dad.

Midwife explained, no arms, no legs.

I think he was quite gutted, obviously.

I was born with heart deformities,

which are quite common to people with thalidomide disability.

My early days were spent in an oxygen tent.

I was very small,

and obviously was fighting for those very early days.

The door of the delivery room opened and the doctor came out.

He walked towards me and said,

"Oh, Mr Mason, I wonder if we could have a word."

There was no "Congratulations" or anything like that.

It was just, "I wonder if we could have a word."

So I pushed past him, we went into the delivery room,

and there in the hospital cot was...

..Louise, our daughter.

She can only be described at the time as a torso

with what appeared to be little flowers

where her arms should be and her legs should be.

Nothing could have prepared you for such a shock.

Between 1959 and 1963, hundreds of babies across Britain

were being born severely damaged by thalidomide.

This drug had been taken by expectant mothers

suffering from symptoms of early pregnancy.

Hundreds of babies have been born deformed,

some of them without arms,

simply because their mothers, in the early stage

of their pregnancy, took a new drug called thalidomide as a sedative.

Thalidomide only damaged the unborn baby

if it was taken during the first 42 days of pregnancy,

and the scale of the injuries

depended on what day the drug was taken.

The damage varied from day to day.

So if the mother took the drug on around day 20,

you'd be getting central brain damage,

and 21, it would be the eyes,

and 22 to 23, it would be the ears and the hearing and the face,

and day 24, it would be the upper limb damage.

So a tablet on day 24 was capable of removing a complete pair of arms,

and over the next four days,

corresponding patterns of leg damage.

Parents struggled to cope with the realisation

that a drug they had taken had caused damage to their own baby.

My mother had a nervous breakdown.

In those days, the blame was on the parents

for having given birth to children with disabilities,

and they all knew it was a drug that they'd taken,

so the parents were blaming themselves,

and that's an incredibly soul-destroying blame to live with.

But as one parent saw it,

the guilt shouldn't rest with those who took the drug,

but instead, with those who made it.

These are dreadful thoughts to have, but I felt a sense of relief,

because now here I had a reason

as to why our baby was in such a mess,

and the reason was somebody else.

Not me, not Vicki.

These are very ignoble thoughts,

you know, they're not anything I'm proud of thinking,

but this is the truth.

Thalidomide had been sold in Britain by Distillers.

At the time, they were the UK's largest manufacturer

of whisky, gin and vodka.

How a drinks company became responsible

for one of the greatest drug scandals of all time

can be traced back to a single article in a Sunday newspaper.

In 1956, they saw an article in the Sunday Times

suggesting that there was a new wonder drug called Valium

that was totally harmless and a very good relaxing preparation

and that it would probably result

in people preferring to have a tablet of Valium when they got home,

rather than a whisky and soda or a brandy and ginger.

And it appears at the next meeting of the Distillers directors,

the chairman apparently put this article in front of them all

and said, "What are we going to do about this?

"Our business could be at risk."

In 1957, Distillers licensed a drug they hoped would calm their fears.

Thalidomide was a tranquilliser

from German pharmaceutical firm Chemie Grunenthal.

It was being marketed as a non-toxic sedative,

a drug you could not overdose on.

The people who'd invented it,

Chemie Grunenthal, in Germany,

had not been able to find any adverse effects.

On animal experiments,

they had found it impossible to kill rats with thalidomide,

so it seemed to be an extremely good drug.

In 1958, thalidomide was released in the UK under various brand names,

including Distaval.

It was a huge success, and deemed so safe,

it was eventually given to pregnant women for morning sickness.

In the 1950s, the theory was

that morning sickness was psychosomatic,

it was all to do with women being very excited about being pregnant,

and that's why a lot of doctors thought a sedative

that was not an anti-emetic would be helpful with morning sickness.

And one thing thalidomide doesn't do is to stop people throwing up.

From 1959, medical staff began witnessing a surge

in rare birth defects.

Doctors and midwives struggled to cope with the malformations

they were witnessing in the delivery room.

The first reaction of the clinical staff was panic themselves,

and they just did not know how to handle the situation

of showing the mother the baby that she'd just given birth to.

BABY CRIES

Stories of medical staff ignoring the problem

were told to journalist and author Phillip Knightley,

who researched the thalidomide tragedy.

Nobody knew how to handle it.

In some instances that we know of,

the maternity nurses would wrap the baby in swaddling clothes

and send it home for the mother to find out for herself.

I said, "Go and get my baby," and she said, "Oh, I can't."

I said, "Go and get my baby. I want to see her."

And she brought my baby

and I unwrapped her and poured down with tears,

cos I could see all her limbs were affected.

Apparently when I was born,

the midwife assumed that I was dead when I came out.

I was stuck in some kind of like container under the bed

while they saw to my mother.

And I don't know whether I had, like,

moved or made a sound, or someone had kicked the box,

but I started crying in the box.

It was suggested that I was left in the hospital there,

obviously then to go into a home, or I could die naturally.

I think...

..it wouldn't be wrong to say

euthanasia was probably on their minds.

The chairman of The Thalidomide Trust

has heard first-hand accounts

about extreme decisions that medical staff made.

It seems that a very considerable number of babies

were put to death immediately after birth.

They were either suffocated or they were put in a cold place

so that they would get hypothermia and die in a cold room.

Thalidomide was on sale for three years

before the medical world realised it was causing the birth defects.

In the winter of 1961, thalidomide was withdrawn from sale.

But over 180 million tablets had been sold in over 46 countries.

This was a global tragedy.

We're looking at a number that's well in excess of 100,000 babies

who were either destroyed or damaged by the drug,

and that makes it the very worst disaster inflicted by medicine.

In the UK, around 550 children damaged by thalidomide

survived beyond their first few months of life.

Distillers refused to accept liability for the tragedy,

even though they had distributed the drug.

Distillers saw themselves as much of a victim as the kids were.

"These things happen."

You know, it's part of the penalty you pay

for advances in the pharmaceutical industry.

But the parents of the thalidomide children disagreed.

They wanted to see someone brought to justice.

So in 1962,

a group of 62 families started legal proceedings against Distillers.

One family took a more direct approach.

David Mason's family were Distillers shareholders

and his father met with the chairman of the drinks company.

Bottom line is, my father said they denied liability

and said they would not be paying compensation out on it,

because they weren't negligent, et cetera, et cetera,

and they were making it under licence from another company

and there was no way they were going to pay compensation, and...

But my father managed to extract from them a promise

that if, however, at a later date, policy changed,

then Louise, his granddaughter, would be included.

David Mason's agreement with Distillers meant nothing

unless there was a settlement.

But Distillers disputed their liability.

And as each year went by, parents involved in the legal fight

realised there was to be no swift outcome.

The court case did have a great impact on my parents financially...

as well as mentally, it affected them.

The case went on for an incredibly long time,

and it was almost part of their lives on a daily basis.

This legal battle was just one of the pressures

these families had to endure.

Another challenge for them

was how society reacted to severely disabled children.

My mum went through...a hard time.

Um...

If she didn't suffer enough guilt herself,

other people helped her to feel guilty.

She would hear people talking behind her back

that, "Oh, it's one of those thalidomide children,

"the mother shouldn't have taken the tablets, all her fault."

So, my mum went through...

..pain.

For the families, it was isolation,

it was alienation, it was fear of the future,

and it was a terrible sense of guilt.

"Now, why did I take...? I only had morning sickness.

"Why did I take that pill?"

In the '60s, disabled people were largely hidden from society.

You know, we were hidden away in institutions and special schools

and, you know, you didn't really see disabled people.

I would say there was still a lot of shame around disability as well,

and embarrassment, you know,

and I think maybe that's why some thalidomide parents

just couldn't cope and gave up their kids.

And many parents were given advice

to put their newborn baby immediately into care.

We sat down with the experts.

They said, "How can you look after her at home?"

You know, "What chance, what opportunity can you give her?

"Where does she stand the best chance in life?"

He said, "I think certainly not at home."

The pressure pushed some parents to breaking point.

Quite a lot of the fathers found it very hard to take

that their child was so deformed

and, in fact, there was, I think, a 50% divorce rate in the end.

Many of the mothers really couldn't take it.

Three of the mothers - to my knowledge - committed suicide.

During the six years since their child's birth,

some families had been torn apart.

For those caught up in the legal battle, there was some good news.

In 1968, Distillers agreed to pay £1 million,

worth nearly £15 million today.

This would be shared out amongst the 62 families who had issued writs.

After the hearing, the father had told me

that he was satisfied with the awards, but he said,

"Nothing can compensate the children for what they have lost.

"You can't compensate for the loss of arms and legs."

Hearing about this £1 million settlement,

David Mason phoned the Distillers chairman

to remind him of their agreement.

I went through the undertaking that had been given

and the conversations that had taken place.

A furious row developed, at the end of which he said,

"Mr Mason, this conversation is at an end," and down went the phone.

I went absolutely ballistic. I'd been slighted, snubbed, I'd been lied to.

That was the start, as far as I'm concerned,

of the thalidomide campaign.

'David Mason, West End art dealer.

'A man who built up his business from scratch

'when he was earning £3 a week.

'Father of four, and one of them

'one of the first thalidomide children,

'born with no arms and no legs.'

David Mason would now set in motion a chain of events

that would forever change the life

of every thalidomide child in this country.

His first action was to have a writ issued against Distillers

on behalf of his daughter.

This was to be the first of over 350 writs

that solicitors issued on behalf of other families.

Then, in November 1971,

Mason and the other parents

were invited to a meeting in central London.

When we got there,

there were hundreds of people going into the hall,

and Vicki and I took a seat at the back.

They then got up and said,

"Before we go any further, could you all just have a look round?

"Do you recognise the people who are around you?

"Are there any interlopers here?"

So, we're all looking round

and sort of people are asking each other questions.

I'm sitting there thinking,

"This is absolutely like bloody kangaroo... It's nonsense.

"What can be so secret? This is ridiculous."

Secrecy was needed

because Mason's solicitor had negotiated a potential settlement.

And that figure was £3 million.

"£3 million? How the hell do you get to £3 million?

"Who has done a really thorough job

"on finding out the individual disability?

"What's entailed here?"

This offer worked out to an average of £8,000 per child,

worth £96,000 today.

So parents stood up one after the other.

It was brilliant, it was fantastic, women stood up in tears,

and all the time, I was sitting in the back in stony silence.

The parents were desperate.

They hadn't got enough money. They had a very severely disabled child.

At the time, the settlement, which was totally inadequate

to look after the children for the rest of their lives,

but amounted to a few thousand pounds,

looked like an attractive alternative

when nothing had been on offer beforehand.

But with this offer, there were conditions.

It had to remain confidential, and every family had to sign.

Without 100% agreement, this offer would be withdrawn

and no child would receive a penny.

So, "Those in favour?" So a sea of hands went up.

So he said, "Those against?" Nobody put a hand up, including me.

I didn't want to be lynched.

And there were all these parents, this hysteria going on.

So, "Right, will everybody queue down the room?"

I walked straight down, past all the lines of people, right up.

I said, "I'm just wanting you to know that I don't agree with all this,

"I don't accept it, I think it's absolutely absurd,

"I think it's ridiculous, and I am not going to accept it."

By refusing the offer, David Mason was blocking the settlement

for all the other parents,

and his solicitors made sure everyone knew

who was holding up the deal.

The sad thing is, even our lawyers, when they spoke to the parents,

probably were saying to them that David Mason was to blame

for not having a settlement already.

They were desperate to get a solution.

They wanted to actually draw a line under it.

So...they were very vulnerable emotionally, the parents...

and Distillers and the lawyers were able to take advantage of that.

The money offered would have made an immediate difference

to the lives of the thalidomide children.

Many had received no financial assistance since they had been born.

For some, it was left up to the ingenuity of their parents

to help them overcome their disabilities.

'Andy can get in and out of the driving seat without help

'and without artificial limbs

'and, for the first time in his life,

'Andy does not have to ask to be taken out to play.'

I couldn't sit in a regular chair, so my dad made me,

out of a few old pallet boards or something, a little chair.

He made a little step

that folded out from underneath the sink upstairs,

that could be folded up out of the way

when anyone else was using the sink,

but meant I could reach the tap and brush my teeth.

He built me a little car, a little pedal car, out of an old oil drum.

And, again, you know,

I can remember thinking it was absolutely brilliant.

As well as adaptations,

many children were encouraged to use prosthetic limbs.

But these proved not to be useful in everyday life.

Most of us hated the prosthetic legs, cos in terms of practicality,

you couldn't walk in the stupid bloody things.

And they were really heavy, cos they were made of basic metal and leather.

I remember in junior school, and in the reception classes,

the desks were, like, really low down.

And sometimes, if I leant too far forward,

I'd literally fall over the desk in these stupid legs.

So the school had a great idea, and you think,

"Well, why didn't they provide you with bigger desks?"

But their idea was, they tied us to the pipes of the radiators.

They were well-meaning.

I suppose they didn't want to treat us any differently.

But tying you to the radiator's treating you differently.

Nine years after thalidomide had been taken off the market,

over 400 families had received nothing in compensation.

Many parents wanted to force through the £3 million settlement

that Distillers had offered.

Their solicitors advised them

that an aggressive course of action would be taken.

David Mason and four other families would be taken to court.

They said, "Look, the bottom line is,

"you're not going to get away with blocking the deal.

"The other parents are going to move against you

"and take you to court

"and have Louise removed from you as next friend and guardian."

I said, "You what?"

David Mason's own solicitors

believed he wasn't acting in his daughter's best interests.

To force through the £3 million settlement,

they were threatening to remove him as her legal guardian.

I was dumbfounded. I couldn't believe it.

I'd never heard anything so disgusting in my life

as getting the other parents who, in a similar position as me,

with a crippled child, their lives ruined,

and here they were being party, the whole lot of them,

to ganging up on me and fighting me and taking my daughter from me.

Er...

There was very little to say, apart from,

"Well, I dispense with your services. You're both fired."

David Mason was losing his battle.

His own lawyers had turned against him,

and he was now facing the prospect

of his daughter being taken away from him.

But then he hatched a plan

that could swing the odds back in his favour.

The one thing that I had thought,

with all the secrecy surrounding this meeting...

what if I blew the whistle on the whole thing?

What if I blew the whistle on the whole thing?

Fleet Street would be the place I would go.

MUSIC: "Love Is The Drug" by Roxy Music

By going to Fleet Street, David Mason was breaking

the confidentiality clause in Distillers' offer.

He hoped exposure in the press

would see the £3 million settlement withdrawn.

David Mason contacted the Daily Mail and said,

"I am being blackmailed into a cover-up,

"er, about...

"..what almost amounts to an atrocity."

The Daily Mail's editor, David English,

saw the importance of reporting this story.

It was like an epiphany in the newspaper office. Like...

What's happened? Why haven't we noticed this before?

-TELEPHONES RING, LOUD CHATTER

-Distillers, and the lawyers,

had up until then kept news of the offer out of the press.

But once David Mason spoke to David English,

the editor became determined to expose this father's fight.

He said, "If I were to publish all of this,

"would you be prepared to join in it?"

I said, "You bet I would!"

I remember going downstairs and I waited for the paper to

sort of half come through the letter box, snatched it,

I went upstairs, I was staggered! There was this two-page spread.

On the 20th of December, 1971,

the Daily Mail published the first in a series of articles

exposing David Mason's fight, and the battle for compensation.

I remember very vividly the Daily Mail headline,

um, which was, "Scandalous!"

And I remember, we discussed at the time that "scandalous"

wasn't a fitting word. It wasn't a bad enough word,

a big enough word, to describe how we thought

350 children and their parents were being treated.

Immediately after the first article was published,

the Daily Mail found itself under extraordinary pressure

to stop printing future articles.

Almost immediately, we became aware that the whole thalidomide thing...

..was being suppressed.

The threats were made, surprisingly, by government lawyers.

As these 1973 confidential ministerial briefing notes show,

government lawyers were getting involved, because the other parents

were worried how these articles could affect their settlement.

They called on the Attorney General to force the Daily Mail

to stop publishing any more in its series.

Attacked on all sides, from Distillers, the parents,

and the government, the Daily Mail agreed to stop publishing.

Talk about a full stop going on the whole thing.

It just ground solidly to a halt.

The press had been silenced.

And a few months after the Daily Mail articles,

David Mason was removed as his daughter's legal guardian.

The £3 million settlement could now be approved.

There was one last hurdle - Mason's appeal.

He had one final chance

to prove he was acting in his daughter's best interests.

That there was a better settlement out there.

It was then he was given a tip-off to call a lawyer in Los Angeles.

I phoned up this number.

I said, "Dr Fry?" "Yes." "It's David Mason."

"Ah! Mr Mason. Glad you phoned."

I said, well, "I'm just in the middle of the court case."

He said, "I know, I've been reading the newspapers over here.

"In fact, I've been reading the Daily Mail, cos I fought

"the Shirley McCarrick case."

I said, "Who was Shirley McCarrick?" He said, "Oh, a thalidomide victim."

It was in June 1971 that Mrs Shirley McCarrick

was awarded 2.7 million

for the damage thalidomide had caused to her daughter Margaret.

If Mason could present the documents of this case,

and its multimillion-dollar settlement,

he would've proved there could be a better deal out there

and that he was acting in his daughter's best interests

by turning down Distillers' offer.

He said, "I've got all the court records in my office."

He said, "But I can't come over to you. You can come over to me."

I said, "I'll be there."

MUSIC: "Wooden Ships" by Crosby, Stills & Nash

So I arrived in Los Angeles

and we went down to his office in Wilshire Boulevard,

we went in there and there they all were.

Just documents after documents, folder after folder.

He said, "This is the writ, this is the judgment, this is the appeal,"

this is this, this is that, this is, etc, and this is

the incorporation of who we are and, you know, and our credentials.

So I got those and, of course, you know, I was overjoyed.

This judgment was instrumental in Mason winning his appeal.

He was reinstated as legal guardian to his daughter.

And now, he could focus his energy on the real fight -

securing a just settlement from Distillers.

I felt like, you know, I'd achieved a huge and major victory.

But of course, I hadn't yet beaten Distillers.

I'd slapped their face, but, you know, I still hadn't...

you know, I hadn't beaten them.

Victory in the appeal courts saw David Mason's case

free to be reported in the media.

I will not give in until they face up to their moral responsibilities over

their thalidomide victims and I will fight on until we achieve our goal.

But David Mason's rising public profile

angered those who wanted him to sign the deal.

Mr Mason does claim, in fact, that he represents most of...

He does not claim and it was proved in there just now!

He might have claimed... be the spokesman for a few,

but for the vast majority of parents, he doesn't represent them at all!

The other parents felt like he was seeking publicity

for his own daughter, or his case.

I heard somebody describe him

as a bit of a show-off and enjoying it all.

They started off at £3.25 million.

I refused it. I stood out on my own and said no.

There was a certain amount of parental opposition to this.

Er, I received threatening letters, I received threatening phone calls.

TELEPHONE RINGS

The phone calls were terrible, threatening physical violence.

Some of them threatened the, er, well-being of my family.

Police cars outside their schools,

police cars calling round at the house,

me waking up in the middle of the night, which I did frequently,

and looking out of the window and seeing a police car.

Not comfortable. Not comfortable.

Mason's high-profile campaign

was also having an impact on his daughter Louise.

At the institution where she lived,

the other children objected to what her father was doing.

People were going on saying, "Oh, your father's a big head" and

"Why does your father do these sort of things?"

And, "Louise, you keep right away from me,

"I don't want to get involved with your father and you."

Come here. Now, sit.

All their anger, because they were supporting their parents,

was aimed it me.

Because I was number one, enemy number one's daughter.

So I went from being pretty popular to being sent to Coventry.

So I found it pretty hard.

Mason had wanted to use the media in his fight against Distillers.

But after reporting the success of his appeal, the press backed off.

The media were afraid of sub judice,

the prejudicing of any ongoing court case.

'This blasted sub judice thing,'

I couldn't go on television, I couldn't go on the radio,

I couldn't go into the newspapers, I couldn't go and so on,

I couldn't take the fight to them. Why? Because of sub judice.

I... I had a...

a frustration that was beginning to creep in.

David Mason was finding it impossible to use the press

to help fight back against Distillers.

Then, in the autumn of 1972,

his fight attracted interest from The Sunday Times.

Phillip Knightley, one of their top investigative reporters,

met with Mason at his gallery to explain how his paper could help.

I said, "Yes, I'm pleased to tell you

"I'm here, Mr Mason, to offer you the full facilities

"of The Sunday Times to help you in your quest, in your campaign."

Phillip Knightley, and The Sunday Times,

had been working for the past five years on the thalidomide story,

but had found their articles constrained by the legal problems.

They were determined to expose how this tragedy had unfolded in the UK.

Well, the burning sense of outrage that

perhaps the greatest tragedy in the history of the drug industry

has never been fully investigated

or with reasons got into. And I think the public

have a right to know the whole story, how it came about.

The Sunday Times' editor, Harold Evans,

had devised a way of getting around the reporting restrictions.

His paper would focus on the plight of the families,

rather than Distillers' liability.

The night before this campaign was launched,

David Mason was invited to The Sunday Times' printing presses.

We went into the print room. He said,

"I would like you to push the button that will set everything going."

And there was this tremendous emotional moment

where we pushed the button... BELL RINGS

..and the noise, the racket, and all the papers started.

The papers were pouring off the side.

I picked up the first one.

And there it was - "Thalidomide: a cause for national shame."

This article would prove to be a watershed moment

in the battle against Distillers.

Over the following weeks, The Sunday Times

published stories on the children damaged by thalidomide.

Marjorie Wallace travelled the country

finding families affected by the drug.

My first job was to track down the families,

and that was much harder than you could think.

There was such secrecy surrounding thalidomide.

And the lawyers fighting for compensation said,

"You must never, ever talk to the press,

"because that would jeopardise your compensation

"and the compensation for everyone."

So, sometimes, I would turn up at the doors and I would

knock very nervously - I was a very young reporter at the time -

and then, sometimes, I would be allowed in

and I would have to gain their trust.

I would spend hours and hours, really just being with them,

just watching what it was like to have a ten or 12-year-old child

without any arms, without legs.

I will never forget, there was a girl on a rocking chair

just rocking back and forward and screaming.

And her mother said, "She just screamed like a rabbit in a snare."

And she didn't do anything all day but just rock and scream

while her parents looked on helplessly.

These weekly articles

kept the plight of the thalidomide children in the public eye.

And this ongoing campaign attracted the attention

of a Member of Parliament.

There are some children without arms,

some without legs, some without arms or legs!

And they haven't received a penny!

And it's dragged on in a legal wrangle for ten years!

Jack Ashley MP, who had become deaf at the age of 45,

was determined to use the power of Parliament

to help the campaign for compensation.

He was always a hugely compassionate man

and he was always very, very upset,

genuinely just upset by disability

and people not being able to get around, to be mobile, um,

and he saw the original Sunday Times story

and was determined to do something about it.

Jack Ashley proposed a parliamentary motion

to highlight the plight of the families affected by thalidomide.

And then, the night before the debate,

Distillers upped their offer,

from £3 million to £5 million.

Well, I think they thought this was a chance to stop the whole thing,

but it wasn't that simple, their offer was still fairly derisory.

My father had been a skilled trade union negotiator for many years

early on in his career and his immediate response to this was

"far too little, far too late," and they were having none of it,

so everything progressed as it was always going to do.

HUBBUB OF THE COMMONS

On 29th of November, 1972,

Jack Ashley opened the Parliamentary debate on thalidomide.

It was a packed chamber.

Jack got to his feet.

He said, "We're talking about children at 10 years of age

"the height of two Johnnie Walker whisky bottles stood end on end."

And, his oratory was brilliant.

But interestingly, there were quite a few people who were still

on the side of industry who were saying, "This isn't right.

"You shouldn't be trying to do this. This is most unusual."

Um, so I think the house was fairly divided.

I would say many more on my father's side than on Distillers' side,

but it wasn't a clear-cut battle at the time.

He said, and I remember this phrase particularly, he said,

"How can it be that you can have a young girl, no arms to...

"..to hold somebody with and no legs to dance on?"

Hard words.

And, er, tough words, but brilliant words.

This debate, along with the ongoing Sunday Times campaign,

galvanised public opinion.

There were student protests on the streets

demanding justice for the thalidomide children.

And around the country,

posters suddenly appeared attacking Distillers.

So, you'd have a wheel man driving the car,

you'd have a chap in the back with the posters

and I'm talking about, say, 500 posters.

So you'd drive along until you saw an empty shop or a hoarding

and the paste man would quickly put the paste on,

whack the poster up, over the top it would go.

You'd do two or three different posters

and then you'd be back in the car and off you'd go.

But of course, you know, we knew we were breaking the law.

We knew it was against the law.

Determined to keep up the pressure on Distillers,

David Mason had resorted to this illegal poster campaign.

But the originator of this idea had not been Mason himself.

The poster campaign had been funded by someone

who wanted to remain anonymous.

None other than newspaper owner Rupert Murdoch.

He generally felt there was a case of the big establishment company

facing a lot of ordinary people.

And he wanted to be on the side of the ordinary people.

Rupert Murdoch didn't play by

the English rules of smoke-filled rooms and gentlemanly behaviour and,

"We'll quietly censor that for you, members of the government."

And, "We won't rock the boat with the big large corporations."

He was the young Turk from Australia

and he wanted to stick it to them. And he did.

Murdoch had secretly funded this national guerrilla campaign

and, as well as Mason, there were people in England, Scotland

and Wales putting up these posters that openly attacked Distillers.

Then, Distillers faced pressure closer to home.

Now, their own shareholders were in revolt.

Why is it only now that shareholders in the Distillers company

have decided to do something about the thalidomide children?

I think that we didn't realise the extent of the problem.

Of course, it's been sub judice for a long time, as you know.

It's only recently that The Sunday Times have brought it

to the public's notice.

My initial feeling was that I must sell the shares,

um, but my husband said, "I think that you can probably...

"You'd be better off doing something as a shareholder."

Sarah Broad became chair of a committee of shareholders

who wanted to press Distillers to improve their offer.

And very quickly, she found out they weren't alone.

Other shareholders agreed and wrote pledging their support.

It seemed that everyone now wanted Distillers

to compensate the victims.

After a sustained attack from angry parents, the national press,

Members of Parliament and now their own shareholders,

Distillers proposed a new settlement.

£12 million.

But Jack Ashley and the others were holding out

for a much larger figure.

He had always said 20 million.

In those days, that was an awful lot more money than it is now.

He'd always thought 20 million was a fair amount and so, er,

that's what he was fighting for.

The £12 million offer was rejected. And the campaigners were determined

to put greater pressure on Distillers.

Their focus would now be to hit Distillers where it hurt -

their profits.

They would call a boycott.

They all got very excited about organising a boycott

with Ralph Nader, the American consumer leader.

At the time, they thought, if nothing else was going to work,

then a boycott of all Distillers' products

was something they were next going to fight very hard for.

So I remember great excitement when they suddenly got

the interest from America to join the fight with them.

Ralph Nader was a rising star in American politics.

In the mid-1960s, he had become a consumer rights champion

and was the perfect figurehead

for a potential boycott in the United States.

'There's hardly a liquor store in the States which doesn't sell

'at least one brand of spirits manufactured by Distillers.

'Mr Nader has compiled a list of literally

'hundreds of different groups and organisations,'

all of which he says he could get involved in a massive boycott.

Determined to try and make the boycott a reality,

David Mason flew to Washington to meet with Ralph Nader.

And during the flight across the Atlantic,

Mason started a boycott of his own.

I heard this announcement, "Ladies and Gentlemen,

"the attendants will be going through the cabin.

"We have Johnnie Walker's whisky and Gordon's gin and this and that."

I sat bolt upright and I thought, "What?!"

Here they are throwing this in my face.

I'm going over to boycott...

Ah! I'm going over to boycott

and they're trying to flog it on the plane.

"Right!" So with that, I got up,

I walked straight through, found the drinks trolley

and I said, "Excuse me, I'm fighting a case against Distillers

"and they make all these drinks.

"And I've got a daughter who's got no arms and no legs,

"because of their lack of drug testing.

"May I ask you to choose any other drink apart from a Distillers drink?"

"You bet you can. Fine! What else have you got?"

So they were having all these other drinks.

'Even before Mr Mason arrived in the States,

'he'd been busy organising a mini boycott,

'persuading passengers not to buy bottles of Distillers spirits.

'He reported 100% success.'

The threat of a boycott had captured the attention of the media

on both sides of the Atlantic.

Any drop in sales from a boycott

had the potential to impact Distillers' profits.

The definition of an effective boycott

toward a company like Distillers, er, is one which would involve

a diversion of 2-4% of sales, which would amount to millions of dollars.

Talk of a boycott and the constant pressure in the media

hit Distillers' share price.

The board saw more than £9 million wiped off the value

of the company's shares in just one week.

It was then that Distillers proposed the offer

that everyone had been holding out for.

The firm which sold the thalidomide drug in Britain

has offered to pay £20 million.

It will go to more than 300 children born deformed, because their mothers

took the drug on doctors' orders when they were pregnant.

For all those who had fought in the campaign,

their goal had finally been reached.

We had it.

We had everything, basically, that we'd fought for.

My campaign over the past 12 months

has taken us forward from £3.25 million

to the sum that I've always striven for, namely 20 million.

It was a very emotional day.

I particularly remember

I went down and had bacon and egg for breakfast,

and Vicky broke the egg and...

I mean, quite ridiculous, but it was a double yolk.

A double yolk egg, which I had never one of those before.

Everything had changed.

And suddenly, you know, the world was a happier place.

The thalidomiders really appreciate what David did on our behalf

and our lives would not be what they are today

without the work he had done.

It transformed the thalidomiders', um, life for the last 50 years.

And, for that, we have to salute him.

He was a fighter and he was justified for doing what he did.

He was my hero.

In 1973, when the settlement was reached,

the thalidomide children were becoming teenagers.

£6 million of the settlement, worth over £60 million today,

was distributed amongst the 370 families

who had been fighting Distillers.

The remainder would be used to create a trust that looked after

every thalidomide child in the country.

When the trust was set up, it had an impact on my life.

I could buy my own wheelchair and gadgets I needed around the home.

They also managed to buy my first car.

So, they were... Yeah, life-changing.

The compensation, no-one can deny, liberated them.

It gave them cars, adapted cars, it gave them the adapted houses.

It gave them abilities to learn and to have businesses

and create an incredible world for themselves.

The money also enabled the teenagers to enjoy some of the freedoms

that others might have enjoyed.

The trust started encouraging the children to drive.

So, we have a very high number of our people now,

whatever limbs they've got missing,

are happily driving cars that are adapted for them.

That was fantastic in terms of making us independent.

I could go away on camping holidays with my friends or my sisters.

It just gave me a huge amount

of freedom and independence.

There was a determination within the trust to encourage independence.

The money allowed many of the teenagers to explore the world.

The Thalidomide Trust decided that they would organise

group holidays for us and they didn't just take us to the south coast.

They decided to take us as far afield as places like America

and Hawaii, which, for the time,

was just an incredible experience to suddenly,

at the age of 16 or 17 years old, be able to have a holiday

with a whole group of people who were the same age as you.

I often joke, saying, actually, we invented the 18-30s holidays

because they were equivalent.

It proved very, very good for the kids and it gave them the experience

of being with one another and learning how others did things.

And I am reliably informed that it gave them

a very thorough education on matters like sex and the effects of alcohol,

from which they've never looked back.

As the money from the settlement was being put to good use,

one of the campaigners was finding the return to everyday life

difficult to adapt to.

The mental anguish that I suffered after the campaign had ended

was quite extraordinary.

I went into a deep depression.

I became very introspective. I wouldn't see anybody.

People would come to see me, "No, I'm not here".

"So-and-so on the phone." "No, no. I'm not here".

Vicky was very worried.

We'd come home into the house and if we were sitting down

and the doorbell went, and friends had come round, I was up the stairs.

All this was the price I paid for the campaign.

My mind, to some degree, closed down on me.

The thalidomide children have managed

to exceed expectations throughout their lives.

At the time of their birth, many in the medical community

had not expected them to survive into adulthood.

Over five decades on,

there are 468 British thalidomide survivors alive today.

And, for many, the focus now is on the last few decades of their lives.

One thing that really worries me is the fact I'm getting older. I'm 52.

Sometimes, I feel like I'm 72.

Sometimes, I'm literally in that much pain I can't move.

Whereas, a few years ago,

I could get round on the floor really, really easily.

And that's what worries me, that, sometime in the future,

I won't be able to move around the way I do now

and that I'll be stuck in my chair, you know, constantly.

My fingers to do tend to get used...

There's only three of them on each hand, so they tend to get used

far more than if they there were five of them. And in ways that...

I use my outside finger for grip. So, therefore,

I put an enormous amount of strain on some of these outside joints.

Actually, our people's bodies are now like somebody

about 50% older than them. And where does that lead?

So, if at 50, they have physical function

on a par with the average 75-year-old,

what's it going to be like for them in 10 or 20 years' time?

Deep down, I don't think any of us believe we'll make it past our 70s.

Already, I've lost a lot of friends, um...

So...

The reality is, live life now,

because we don't know how much longer we've got.

But the rest of our lives that we have got,

we want to make as comfortable as possible.

In 1997, drinks giant Diageo acquired the Distillers brands.

Since then, they have formed a close relationship

with the Thalidomide Trust.

In the past eight years, they have paid over £60 million

into the trust and continue to provide financial assistance.

Today, there is a new battle.

For campaigners like Nick Dobrik, their target now

is Chemie Grunenthal, the German company which invented thalidomide.

What we want Grunenthal to do is, on an annual basis,

provide some assistance and relief for the thalidomiders

over the next 25-30 years,

so, in the last quarter of the thalidomiders' lives,

they can live with dignity and independence.

And I think that is the least we can expect from this company

given the 50 years that we've been fighting this.

I want to see justice finally done.

Yeah, I'd like to see them admit liability.

Not some mealy-mouthed apology, but admit liability and say,

"Yeah, it was our fault you were born that way," cos they never have.

Chemie Grunenthal denies it could have known

about the side-effects of their drug,

but has apologised for not responding fully to victims.

They have made voluntary payments to German and other victims

of thalidomide, but don't believe they have any liabilities in the UK.

This has not stopped those in this country

from pursuing them for compensation.

I'm hoping for the same outcome as what my parents did originally.

And that is for justice to be done,

for Grunenthal to own up to what they've done.

I don't think any of us are asking for the world,

we just want justice and security.

What gives that company the right to get away from this

without admitting that it was wrong and it should have been prevented,

that it didn't have to happen?

I would just so like to hear that from them before my mum dies.

You know, I'd like her to hear it herself

that they're sorry for what they did and recognising

the damage they've caused, not just to us, but to whole families.