Justice Edwin Cameron is a South African Supreme Court of Appeal Judge. He is widely noted as one of the first key South African figures to publicly announce that he is living with HIV/AIDS. After contracting the syndrome Justice Cameron has campaigned tirelessly to raise awareness of the various social reverberations that are a direct consequence of the disease. These include drug company pricing, lack of access to medication and governmental denial.

He lived privately with the knowledge of his illness for a significant period of time before allowing this information to become public. He was inspired to act after learning of the death of a young carrier of AIDS named Gugu Dlamini who was stoned and stabbed to death after admitting on a Zulu language radio that she was infected with the disease.
Justice Cameron has employed strong rhetoric throughout his campaign speeches and has compared those governments and officials who do not act on the issue of AIDS with those who did not act when Nazi Germany and Apartheid began to creep into the consciousness of the international community. He has been instrumental in the fight to bring the fight against HIV/AIDS to the forefront of International politics.

The following ‘Spoken Word: Collection Highlight’ is a personal and moving interview with one of modern history’s great campaigners. The radio programme is presented by Fergal Keane who orchestrates an interview that uncovers the motives behind the actions of a dying man.

• Taking A Stand

Photo Courtesy of Ben Oswest

‘The NHS is committed to providing quality care that meets the needs of everyone, is free at the point of need, and is based on a patient’s clinical need, not their ability to pay. The NHS will not exclude people because of their health status or ability to pay.’

On Saturday the 5th of July the National Health Service will celebrate 60 years of providing citizens of the United Kingdom with free healthcare regardless of their wealth or social standing. Born out of the report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services chaired by William Beveridge (better known as the Beveridge Report) the NHS was the key component of the then Labour government’s ambitious plans to create a Welfare State.

Despite various criticisms such as access controls and waiting list times the NHS has survived the first 60 years of its history relatively unscathed.
Currently the NHS faces significant challenges and scrutiny from a wide arc of society. On account of this many changes have been forecast for the NHS. The most extreme viewpoints argue that it is simply not sustainable as a service due to the increasing advancements in drugs and medical procedures. The outlook may not be this bleak but it is certain that the NHS will have to adapt in order to continuing serving the United Kingdom for the next 60 years.
The Spoken Word has a wide array of materials relating to the NHS. Such is the diversity of the collection that the following links will take the user to a selection of Spoken Word materials:

• Welfare State
• NHS
• Medicine
• William Beveridge

A significant degree of the current political frictions between China and Russia on the one hand and the United States on the other has arisen due to the conquest of space. NASA’s ‘Satellite Situation Report‘ estimates that there are roughly 25,000 man made objects currently orbiting our planet. Very recently both the United States and China have launched missiles into space that have subsequently destroyed satellites. Despite varying degrees of international condemnation both countries confirm that they are committed to the peaceful development of outer space.

Britain’s entrance into the furore of space politics was not without controversy. Previously Britain had relied heavily upon the American satellite system for intelligence but during the Falkland’s war Britain realised that this system was not sufficient for their needs. Consequently the country planned to launch it’s first spy satellite to intercept radio signals from Russia and Europe, codenamed Zircon. The Zircon project was eventually canceled in 1987 due to spiraling costs. However a journalist named Duncan Campbell that was working for both New Statesman Magazine and the BBC unearthed some information that the Zircon project had been hidden from Parliament, and estimated it was costing the government £100 million a year. The BBC became increasingly nervous about the content of a documentary that Campbell was producing regarding Zircon and after consultation with the government shelved the project on the grounds of national security. Despite this fact Campbell went on to publish the documentary’s findings in New Statesman and the secret Zircon project then became public knowledge.

Special Branch and the Police raided BBC offices in Glasgow and Duncan Campbell’s home. The contents of the documentary were obtained by opposition MP Robin Cook who planned to show the video to MPs in the House of Commons. The Attorney General managed to place an injunction on the showing of the video and public interest in the whole affair began to disappear. The whole debacle serves to illustrate how sensitive the issue of civil rights and space politics can be.

The Spoken Word has two programmes on the Zircon Project:

• The Nine O’Clock News - The Zircon Affair

This programme contains highlights from an intense Prime Minister’s Question Time in which Margaret Thatcher is attacked by opposition parties for her role in the Zircon Affair.

• The Zircon Affair

This is a video programme that shows the beginning of the original Zircon documentary that was banned under the Official Secrets Act on the grounds of National Security.

Photographs Courtesy of: picadillywilson and Huzhead

Scotland and specifically Glasgow has one of the worst health records in the entire Western world. Glasgow is a perfect candidate for the title ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, it is a vortex of extreme poverty and wealth that has rendered the city with an undeserved scarred and spartan reputation.

It is true that Glasgow’s health record has significantly changed for the better over recent years but much still remains to be done. Government and councils have worked towards healing Glasgow’s ailments through various different projects. One of the projects currently at the forefront of such activity is named the ‘Glasgow Centre for Population Health‘. The GCPH aims to provide a ‘focus on those issues which drive the patterns of ill-health that characterise Glasgow and the West of Scotland’. The organisation ‘provides a setting where academics, policy-makers, practitioners and local people can come together’ in order to ‘help remove the ’sick city of Europe’ label from Glasgow’.

The Spoken Word has played a key collaborative role with the GCPH by providing a platform for the recording of their seminar series. The seminar series involves a number of public lectures designed to bring a range of input from professionals and lay people on numerous health related topics. The seminars have had various distinguished key speakers opening the discussion including the philosopher A.C. Grayling and the economist Lord Richard Layard.

All of the GCPH seminar series can be found through i-Tunes or directly through our repository by clicking on the image below:

Picture Courtesy Of: bicameral

Merry Christmas everyone from the Spoken Word! Our repository is sprinkled with various Christmas themed programmes that are of both educational and festive value. These programmes include:

• Empire Exchange

This is a radio programme originally broadcast in 1934 that depicts Christmas celebrations throughout the Commonwealth. It is of particular note as it includes a Christmas message from King George V.

• Scotland on Film: Christmas and Hogmanay

This is a fascinating television programme from 2002. It highlights the traditional Christmas and Hogmanay celebrations that have taken place in Scotland. It includes some brilliant archive footage of Scots celebrating the festive period throughout the ages.

• Around Scotland - Behind the Scenes at Pantomime

This television programme from 1986 offers a behind the scenes look at the traditional Christmas pantomime.

The Nobel Prizes are awarded for Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace and Physiology or Medicine. These first five prizes were instated in 1895 through the will of the Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel. A further unofficial but associated prize for Economics was added in 1968 by Sweden’s National bank. The Nobel prizes are widely seen as one of the highest accolades anyone could receive for their work in serving humanity. Traditionally the prizewinners are announced throughout the month of October. All of the prizes are handed out on December 10th in Sweden with the exception of the Nobel Prize for peace that is awarded at a ceremony in Norway.

As the announcement for this years’ award winners is almost upon us it is interesting to consider the material that the Spoken Word’s repository holds in relation to the Nobel Prize.

The first programme highlights the work of one of Britain’s greatest Nobel Prize winners, Philip Noel-Baker. As well as winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1959 Noel-Baker was also a politician, diplomat, academic and an amateur athlete that ran at the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games and was manager of the British track team at both the 1920 and 1924 Olympics. The takes the form of an interview with Noel-Baker that charts his varied life experiences.

• Friends & Contemporaries: Philip Noel-Baker

The second programme available on the repository that concerns the Nobel Prize is a set of interviews with four British Nobel Prize winners. The interviews are extremely interesting and give an insight into the work and minds behind the winning of a Nobel Prize.

• The Prizewinners

Photo Courtesy of: David Monniaux in compliance with Wikipedia fair-use terms
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‘Here You Leave Today and Enter the World of Yesterday, Tomorrow and Fantasy’

Plaque at the entrance to Disneyland.

On July 17th 1955 the first Disney theme park opened in Anaheim, California. Today there are over ten Disney theme parks open around the world that let in millions of visitors through their doors each day. The Spoken Word repository has a small but interesting collection of media that bears testament to ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’. The first is a programme looking at the reason why and how tourism first evolved and the reasons that Walt Disney first thought that the United States needed the wholesome Disneyland. The second is a news programme that explores the new Disneyland that has recently opened in Hong Kong and how the Chinese people have reacted to such a place.

• The Tourist - The Last Resort
• Disneyland Opens in Hong Kong

The Nuremberg Trials took place after the Second World War and aimed to convict various leading members of the Nazi Party for the crimes against humanity that they had committed. The most famous of these trials was the first one to take place and was given the title the ‘Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal’. This tried 24 of the most important and often nototious leaders of Nazi Germany including the commander of the Luftwaffe, Herman Goering and the Deputy Fuhrer, Rudolf Hess.

The three main allied powers and France provided one judge, an alternate and prosecutors in order to decide upon the outcome of the trial. Various sentences were handed out ranging from full acquittals to death by hanging.

The Spoken Word has various recordings from the actual trial of the major war criminals in Nuremberg including the opening and closing speeches, the pleas of the defendants and the reading out of the sentences. This is another important snapshot of history from the Spoken Word repository.

• Opening Statement by Lord Chief Justice Lawrence
• Pleas of the Defendants
• Closing speech by Sir Hartley Shawcross
• The President of the Tribunal, Lord Chief Justice Lawrence, pronounces the sentences and reads the dissenting Russian opinion

‘What is so ghastly is not so much the individual acts of barbarism that take place in SS camps but the gradual breakdown of civilisation that happens when human beings are hearded like animals behind barbed wire’

Richard Dimbleby, Bergen-Belsen Nazi Concentration Camp, 15th April 1945.

On 15th April 1945 the British 11th Armoured Division liberated the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp near Celle, a town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is estimated that over 50,000 prisoners died in the site between 1939 and 1945. When the camp was liberated the British troops found 60,000 prisoners inside and a further 13,000 unburied corpses lying around the camp unburied.

Richard Dimbleby was one of the first journalists to enter Bergen-Belsen with the British Troops and this ‘Collection Highlight’ featured report is a testament to one of the most poignant historical events that has ever occurred. Dimbleby recounts a first hand view of the liberation that is obviously both moving to the listener and to the reporter.

• Bergen-Belsen Nazi Concentration Camp, An Eye Witness Account by Richard Dimbleby