Asbestos victims to be remembered at public memorial event

Rochdale MP Tony Lloyd supporting Action Mesothelioma Day in a previous year

Asbestos victims, MPs and campaigners will be rallying for a big outdoor event in central Manchester at 12.30pm on Friday (1 July) in memory of all those who have lost their lives to the asbestos cancer, mesothelioma.

The Lincoln Square event commemorates those who have died from mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer caused by asbestos. The event is also being held to push for justice for all asbestos victims and to call for the removal of asbestos from our schools, workplaces, and homes.

Local MPs will address the Action Mesothelioma Day rally, organised by the Greater Manchester Asbestos Victims Support Group, and the event will end with a release of doves by family members who have lost a loved one to the asbestos-related disease.

Several landmarks will be lit up blue that evening to commemorate the thousands of people who have already died from this disease in the biggest long-term industrial catastrophe in this country’s history.

More than 2,500 people die of mesothelioma in the UK each year, more than die in road traffic accidents. The UK has the worst incidence of mesothelioma deaths in the world, a legacy of our heavy use of the so-called ‘magic mineral’ in construction and industry after the war.

In Greater Manchester there were also local factors that fuelled this rising epidemic.

Turner & Newall, at one time one of the biggest asbestos companies in the world, had factories, in the Spodden Valley in Rochdale, Trafford Park, Hindley Green and Chapel-en-le-Frith (Ferodo). 

More raw asbestos was unloaded at Salford Docks than any other port in the country. And the widespread use of asbestos to insulate steam engines and railway carriages saw many workers at Horwich locomotive works heavily exposed to asbestos dust.