We were given documents, literally, to keep us alive, but we never lived again. There is a difference between living and surviving.
We were so poor that we had to go hand in hand to get some money to pay someone to take Graham up north to see his parents one last time.
Graham became impaired and was unable to work from about 1991. He watched as his younger brother, Anthony, also died of AIDS after contracting HIV from factor VIII.
During his last two years he was unable to work because he was so sick, in monstrous ways, in unimaginable ways.
Book of memory
He was disabled once, became disabled, and then disabled again, but worse. I think it added to the horror. If they give you something and take it away, it’s worse. Who wants to give away their toys? No one. It was like being at war in your own home.
Graham died on 19 December 1993. Baroness Campbell returns every year on the anniversary to St Botolphs Church where there is a book of remembrance for the haemophiliacs who were killed in the scandal. The book continues to receive new participants.
The baroness has been reluctant to get involved in the campaign, not wanting to be seen as a victim of the scandal. She is defined and proclaimed by her tireless work for equality for all disabled people, but she was also widowed by a drug given to her husband by the NHS.
He wants Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, a long-time champion of swift compensation and justice for what is known as the biggest treatment disaster in NHS history, to come out of his black hole at the Treasury and deliver on promises to deliver justice .
A speedy compensation and a full and sincere apology are his two wishes. Revenge is not on the Baroness’s agenda. Recognition, however, is.
She speculates toward the end of our conversation that what happened to the hemophiliacs, specifically the boys at the Treloars School and College for Handicapped Children, where dozens of boys were experimented with Factor VIII against their will, it wouldn’t have happened to healthy people.
We are seen as people who need care, who are tragic, who are victims, who are struggling, who suffer from our disabilities. We are not seen as people who are important human beings.
The anger is still there at the core
This contempt was compounded by decades of denial, delay and cover-up. Even so, the Government has not yet compensated the victims.
The Baroness wants the Government not only to apologize for its part in the deaths of thousands of innocent people, but to recognize the harm this has caused to families, spouses and children.
We didn’t have Elton John. We didn’t have anyone as a cheerleader. And more than that, people tried to cover it up, that it was someone else’s fault, he said.
Women were also giving up a lot. Many people forget what he did with marriages. We just got married, but we didn’t get married because we were too afraid to enjoy the honeymoon years. Many of us became nuns, not that we wanted to, but we thought it was the only way to protect ourselves.
Women abandoned their childbearing years and those who did not, were in danger of giving birth to infected children. Women also left their careers, for example. I was shooting in my career and then I stopped. I lost five or six years of that time in your life where you’re at the top of your career. You had to give up a lot.
The apology never really came
He is speaking out now, ahead of the Infected Blood Inquirys final report on May 20, to try to push the Government to finally, after four decades, do justice.
I want everyone to be treated with financial respect and apologize too. It never really came.
For me, it’s about the apologies and the financial settlement that will prove them wrong. For me, the most important thing is to give the bloody money to the living first. Don’t worry about me or anyone else, give them the money, give them mine too if it helps.
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