Action Mesothelioma Day 2025

Action Mesothelioma Day this year has been brought into sharp focus with the publication of "The Legacy of Cape PLC and the Case for Justice " by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Occupational Safety and Health (APPG).

Following a public hearing in March 2025 into the legacy of the former asbestos manufacturer, Cape Asbestos, the APPG has stated its clear support for the "Cape Must Pay" campaign.  Raised by the Asbestos Victims Support Group Forum UK (the Forum) and arising from disclosure of documents which revealed the nefarious history of Cape Asbestos, the ‘Cape Must Pay’ campaign calls for Cape / Altrad (the company which bought Cape in 2017) to pay £10 million towards mesothelioma research by way of recompense for the devastation caused by the company’s activities in the past, which are still felt and ongoing today, and calls on the government to stop awarding any public contracts to Cape / Altrad until such a donation is made.  

Cape Asbestos

Blue asbestos was discovered by a German geologist in the early 1800s when he was travelling near Prieska in South Africa, but it was not until 1891, that the Cape Mineral Syndicate was formed to mine the mineral and two years later the Cape Asbestos Company Ltd was formed in London and went on to acquire a number of different mines in South Africa, allowing them to bring thousands of tonnes of the deadly mineral to England where asbestos does not occur naturally. Over the following years, Cape became one of England's largest asbestos manufacturers, producing various products, including Caposite, Asbestolux and Marinite. 

However, running alongside the growth of the company was an increasing acknowledgement of the dangers of asbestos and the diseases that it caused. The 1930s saw the passing of the Asbestos Industry Regulations 1931, as a consequence of a Parliamentary inquiry into the activities of Turner Brothers (Cape’s competitor company).  

Over the following decades concerns continued to grow about asbestos until the late 1950s / 1960s saw a watershed in the understanding of the risks of asbestos.  In 1959, at the Johannesburg Pneumoconiosis Conference, Dr Christopher Wagner presented five cases of mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure and just one year later, his paper was presented in the British Journal of Industrial Medicine, noting 33 identified mesothelioma cases, with all but one suffering exposure to "Cape Blue" asbestos.  Dr Wagner’s research led to the watershed paper from scientists Muriel Newhouse and Hilda Thompson in 1965, which became front-page news in the Sunday Times on 31 October 1965, with the headline "Scientists track down killer dust disease". This finally made the irrefutable truth public that even small amounts of asbestos exposure from living near a factory or washing contaminated clothing could cause fatal cancer. 

Despite the evidence about the killer dust, asbestos manufacturers in England continued to dominate in industry.  

With its base in Barking, East London, Cape’s asbestos plant in Harts Lane, claimed the lives of countless workers, family members and residents living close to the factory. School children described "snow" being pumped from giant fans and running round the playground of local Northbury School with white dust whipping up behind them like aeroplanes. The factory closed in 1968, but not before poisoning untold local people and cases of mesothelioma from its operations continue to appear 60 years on. 

By the 1970s, Cape had subsidiaries across Europe and South Africa with factories in London, Hebden Bridge, Uxbridge, Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Belfast and even on the Isle of Wight, producing numerous products like asbestos cloth, insulation boards and mattresses, sprayed insulation, friction materials like brakes and clutches, and both flat and corrugated asbestos cement sheets. 

As the deaths from asbestos increased into the hundreds through the 1970s and 1980s, the legacy of Cape was laid bare in the 1982 television documentary about Alice Jefferson (“Alice – a fight for life”), a former worker from Cape’s “Acre Mill” site in Hebden Bridge monikered the "killer mill". By the mid-1970s, more than one in ten Hebden Bridge workers were suffering from crippling asbestos diseases and the Hebden Bridge Asbestosis Action Group was formed in 1975 to campaign for safety in the area. 

Through the following decades, Cape was brought to court countless times by asbestos victims claiming compensation for diagnoses of mesothelioma and other asbestos illnesses like asbestosis, lung cancer and pleural thickening. In 2017 Cape again went to court, this time not fighting asbestos victims, but denying a claim by insurance companies who had paid out to Cape employees in a case known as Concept 70 v Cape International Holdings Ltd. After the six week trial finished but before the judge handed down his judgment, Concept 70 and Cape agreed between themselves to destroy the historical documents. Our Partner, Harminder Bains, received a tip off learning of this agreement between the parties to destroy key historical documents and she received instructions to obtain an injunction to prevent their destruction from Tony Whitston, the founder of the Forum.

The court case ran for 3½ years before the Supreme Court and ultimately confirmed the Forum’s entitlement to receive the documents. The Forum’s case revealed that, amongst other things, Cape knew that just handling their ‘Asbestolux’ products caused a risk of mesothelioma, yet they continued to publicly deny such a risk and deliberately prevented warning labels on the products, so they did not affect their profitability.

In its report published on Tuesday (1 July 2025), the APPG has recognised the inexcusable behaviour of Cape in covering up the dangers of asbestos products and thereby increasing the risks to workers and the general public. The APPG clearly sets out its support for the Cape Must Pay campaign calling on Cape / Altrad to pay £10 million to Asthma + Lung UK to conduct medical research to find a cure for mesothelioma. In addition, the APPG recommended that the government refrains from awarding future contracts to Cape / Altrad until the £10 million reparation is paid.