As editor of The Sunday Times newspaper, Sir Harold Evans – shown in 1990, when he was president and publisher of Random House – put the suffering of thalidomide survivors in the spotlight and held to account the company whose drug caused their disabilities.Jack Manning/The New York Times
More • David Thomson on their family friendship • David Walmsley on his books • Guy Tweedy on their common cause
On Sept. 23, 2020, the world lost a giant. Sir Harold Evans was a brilliant and acclaimed journalist, writer and editor. To me, however, Sir Harold, or Harry, as he insisted on being called, was a comrade in arms – a relentless and courageous advocate and an ally in the 50-plus-year war fighting for the survivors of the drug thalidomide.
Sir Harold’s sword was the power of the pen. In the 1970s, as the editor of The Sunday Times, he led a journalistic crusade chronicling the heinous criminal conduct of Chemie Gruenenthal (the German chemical company that invented thalidomide), the callousness and negligence of Distillers (the British distributor of thalidomide) and the utter incompetence of the British government regulatory officials who permitted thalidomide onto the market.
Equally as important, Sir Harold and his Times team brought the personal stories of the British thalidomide survivors and their private suffering to the public. His groundbreaking coverage exposed the thalidomide scandal in Britain, led directly to a change in British law and laid the groundwork for the subsequent campaign almost 40 years later in which the British government finally funded a trust for the 466 thalidomide survivors.
In exposing the thalidomide tragedy in Britain, Sir Harold was out in front. What just a few people know, however, is the critical behind-the-scenes role he played on behalf of the Canadian thalidomide survivors.
Thalidomide survivor Mercédes Benegbi, left, speaks in Ottawa in 2014.
In 2012, I along with Mercédes Benegbi, the executive director of the Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada (TVAC); Joseph Fiorante, a Vancouver lawyer; and Christopher Holz and Natalie Dash, Canadian political strategists, led a task force committed to seeking to secure from the federal government a fund for the Canadian thalidomide survivors to ensure they could live the remainder of their lives with independence, financial security and dignity.
The government had never previously provided any meaningful support for Canadian thalidomide survivors. Sadly, it had failed to do so despite the fact that the Canadian Food and Drug Directorate was culpable in permitting thalidomide to be sold in Canada starting in the late 1950s and failing to withdraw the sinister drug from the market until 1962, after thalidomide babies had been born in Canada and around the world.
My personal connection to the thalidomide community runs deep. My late father, Arthur Raynes, a trial lawyer like me, tried the first U.S. thalidomide case in 1969. In the 1970s and early 80s, my father successfully represented 36 Canadian thalidomide children in the American courts. His work on behalf of Canadian and American thalidomide children and their families for more than 15 years was the professional passion of his life.
It was during those cases that he came to know and become an ally of Sir Harold and Phillip Knightley of The Times. They shared with each other the evidence they had accumulated in their respective investigations, as well as their strategies to take on the distributors of thalidomide. Sir Harold and Mr. Knightley were particularly interested in the successes in the American courts, in stark contrast to the inadequacies the British justice system had afforded the thalidomide families.
With that backdrop from 40 years earlier, permit me to outline how Sir Harold’s achievements and hand touched the Canadian thalidomide campaign and the Canadian survivors. Early in 2014, the task force approached key members of Stephen Harper’s Conservative federal government after assembling evidence for more than a year and a half.
The initial response to our approach was chilly, to say the least. The task force was completely ignored for the next nine months after confronting the government with overwhelming evidence of its moral responsibility because of the conduct of the Canadian Food and Drug Directorate, and with heartbreaking video-taped testimonials from many courageous thalidomide survivors who had suffered in silence for more than 50 years. At that point, our task force decided to go around the government and put pressure on members of Parliament through the media. As trained trial lawyers and strategists, we know that if we cannot persuade the opposing party to do the right thing and resolve disputes, we go to trial – we go to the jury (as American lawyers say).
Sir Harold and Guy Tweedy, a leader of the British thalidomide survivors' campaign, are shown in New York in 2019.Courtesy of Guy Tweedy
My partner, Mr. Fiorante, and I travelled to London to meet with the leaders of the British thalidomide campaign. In London, we spent time with one of its fearless leaders, Guy Tweedy. Mr. Tweedy and his thalidomide colleagues had successfully waged a seven-year campaign against the British government and Diageo (the successor to Distillers), which led to the government providing a significant financial contribution for the first time to the previously formed British Thalidomide Trust in 2009, and for Diageo to increase its contributions significantly.
The newly funded Thalidomide Trust was an important, successful model providing financial independence and security to British thalidomide survivors. It would not have been possible were it not for Sir Harold having laid the foundation 40-plus years earlier. While in London, Mr. Tweedy, in assisting us in strategizing the task force’s Canadian campaign, told Mr. Fiorante and me, “You must speak with Sir Harold Evans. He will help.” That was an understatement.
Upon my return to the United States, I called Sir Harold. He immediately remembered my father, was excited about the prospect of helping Canadian thalidomide survivors and told me to come right over to his home. I brought with me our videotape of the heartbreaking interviews we had taken of thalidomide survivors throughout Canada, as well as the presentation we had submitted to the federal government. I also brought with me a copy of his 1979 book, Suffer the Children: The Story of Thalidomide by the Insight Team of The Times of London.
In the book, there were two successive chapters juxtaposing the success of the American cases with the inadequacies of compensation for the thalidomide survivors in the British courts. The irony was not lost on either of us that decades later I was coming to him on behalf of the task force and the Canadian survivors to build on the British model of a government fund.
Sir Harold joins a group of survivors at the 2016 premiere of the documentary Attacking the Devil.Dominic Lipinski/PA Archive/PA Images
Sir Harold spent countless hours with me watching the video interviews of thalidomide survivors and learning about the evidence we had accumulated and the strategy of our campaign. He was moved to tears by the survivors' sharing of their suffering and energized and excited to assist. He provided important advice on the editing and framing of our presentation and our strategy, and concluded our meeting by saying, “Stephen, I must put you in touch with my friend, David Walmsley, the editor in chief of The Globe and Mail.”
That connection through Sir Harold, without a doubt, was the critical moment to the success of the Canadian campaign. After watching the videotape and reviewing our written materials, and after meeting Ms. Benegbi, a survivor herself and the brave and tireless leader of TVAC, Mr. Walmsley called me. “This is outrageous," he said. "We are in. We are committing two full-time reporters to this injustice; the story must be told.” The fire was lit and the baton had been passed.
Over the next several months, our task force provided The Globe with the evidence we had developed, and we facilitated access to the survivors for The Globe’s staff to hear their stories firsthand.
Saturday, Nov. 22, 2014: I refer to this day as the first day of the public trial. That day, The Globe printed and published its first story: a detailed exposé on the Canadian government’s role in permitting thalidomide onto the market, its delay in withdrawing the drug and the fight for survival of 50-plus year old thalidomide adults. The Globe featured the Canadian campaign with front-page coverage every day for eight straight days. Mr. Walmsley and his Globe writers, including Ingrid Peritz and André Picard, put the spotlight on a national tragedy and a national shame. It was advocacy journalism to right a wrong in its purest, truest form – in the model of Harold Evans.
Thalidomide survivor Bernadette Bainbridge is featured on The Globe's front page from Nov. 22, 2014.The Globe and Mail
Sir Harold, mentor and role model to Mr. Walmsley and editor at large of Thomson Reuters, gave the Canadian thalidomide campaign the keys to the courthouse – the courtroom of public opinion. The Globe became the courtroom. All the evidence played out directly in front of the Canadian public and provided our task force with the leverage we needed to secure from the Canadian government what the Canadian thalidomide survivors were entitled to and had been denied for more than 50 years.
Under unrelenting public pressure from this next generation of journalistic crusaders, inspired by and counselled by Sir Harold, the previously obstinate Conservative Canadian government capitulated.
On Monday night, Dec. 1, 2014, Parliament unanimously passed a motion to create a fund to ensure that the Canadian thalidomide survivors would live the remainder of their lives with independence and dignity. Sir Harold watched and counselled our campaign from a distance, but with a crucial behind-the-scenes role.
I feel blessed to have known Sir Harold – Harry – and am eternally grateful for his contribution on behalf of the thalidomide survivors. God bless his soul.
Courtesy of Guy Tweedy
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