Administrative/Biographical History:

Andrew Roberts was born in 1944, during the final air raids of World War II. He grew up in Essex, attending Billericay Secondary Modern School. He worked as a bookseller from the age of sixteen, but struggled with suicidal thoughts and poor mental health, which came to a head when he overdosed at nineteen. Andrew was admitted to Ingrebourne Centre in Essex for treatment, where he first saw the possibilities of patient-lead groups.

During the 1960s Andrew worked in a school science laboratory and began studying social science at Enfield College of Technology. At twenty-one, Andrew married Valerie Argent, another patient at Ingrebourne, and they would remain married until her passing in 1991. Together, they were part of the group that founded the Mental Patients’ Union (MPU) in 1973 at Paddington Day Hospital. MPU was created for representation and in opposition to psychiatric oppression, becoming the second UK mental patient-lead union after the Scottish Union of Mental Patients (SUMP), which was founded in 1971. At the first meeting of MPU, with over a hundred patients and ex-patients present, they discussed forming a patients’ union, and drafting a declaration of intent.

While active, MPU worked to inform patients and survivors of their rights, support them with housing, and help drive attention to the oppression that mental health patients experience. They also developed some key documents, such as their declaration of intent, a directory of the side effects of psychiatric drugs, and their ‘fish pamphlet’ – a booklet arguing the need for a mental patients’ union. Andrew Roberts continued to be involved with a variety of groups and projects that followed the creation of MPU. Key among these is the Survivors History Group, founded in April 2005 to ‘value and celebrate the contribution that mental health service users/survivors have made and are making to history’. The group launched their manifesto in 2006, setting out to create an archive that would highlight the diversity and creativity of survivors and make survivor history accessible to all.

As the secretary of the Survivors History Group, Andrew came to hold a large archive of materials related to service users/survivor groups he helped found or was a part of since the 1970s. Over time, other group members such as Joan Hughes (Martin) and Frank Bangay contributed their own collections to the archive, which together was donated to Bishopsgate Institute.

Scope and Content:

Papers from the Survivors History Group, including: materials and correspondence relating to their local groups across the UK; the Hackney branch papers and meeting minutes; logo materials; declaration of intent papers; fish pamphlet and pilot committee leaflet; civil liberties papers; MPU history and correspondence; poems and articles by and about MPU; MPU publications; membership forms; telephone book entries; accounts papers; MPU Housing documents; MPU questionnaires and responses; general MPU meeting minutes; two cassette tapes from the San Francisco Mental Health Conference; the MPU scrapbook of press cuttings and other materials; assorted fragments from the Survivor History Group Archive; the Greater Manchester Survivor History Group papers; reproduction copies of materials; publications and articles; laminated documents; teaching materials; survivor voices timeline and duplicate copy; miscellaneous papers from Frank Bangay; miscellaneous files from the Survivors archive including files on the Scottish Union of Mental Patients; international mental patients groups; the German Socialist Patient Collective; Scotland files; the Leslie Bailey legal case; P Davies diaries; Hackney Mental Health Action group; Beyond Diagnosis magazine; Miscellaneous survivor materials; Survivor Biographical Project; Perceptions magazine; UK Advocacy Network; Psychology Politics Resistance newsletter; Mad Media papers; article and book excerpts; City and Hackney Association for Mental Health; Tower Hamlet African and Carribbean Mental Health organisation; Sam Shakes, Slade Oludejo and Philip Morgan papers; SIMBA newsletter; Liz Davies (Durkin) and Paddington Day Hospital; Lesley Mitchell (Lougher) papers; The Shoreditch Centre; Case studies; Time Together magazine; Eric Irwin papers; MIND papers; Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression; David Kessel papers; Women and mental health; People not Psychiatry; Patients Voice; various correspondence; material on the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry World Conference; materials donated to the collection by Frank Bangay, including Prompt Pyschology magazine; Southward MIND newsletter; miscellaneous poetry; papers relating to Schizophrenia A National Emergency; miscellaneous papers and poetry and prose by Frank Bangay; newsletters and general papers from the Survivors Speak Out archive.

Quantity:

12 Boxes