A firm hiring blind staff went bust - but its mission lives onBBCWhen Clarity – the UK's oldest social enterprise – collapsed five years ago, more than a hundred workers lost their jobs and salaries. Clarity was founded in 1854 to provide employment opportunities for blind people, and in recent times focused on making soap. The former owner was taken to court for stealing his workers' pensions, and he sued two employees who spoke out. Now one of those who was sued has launched a new business, aiming to carry on Clarity's social mission in a new way. Over its long history, Clarity's patrons have included Queen Victoria and actress Joanna Lumley. However, in 2020, a big shortfall in its pension fund caused the business to collapse, and a man called Nicholas Marks bought the company out of administration, promising to keep the business going. It didn't turn out that way."He wasn't interested in growing jobs for disabled people and even protecting the jobs for the disabled people that we had working with us, which was truly heart-breaking to watch unfold," says Camilla Marcus-Dew, who was the company's head of commercial. The workers, many of them blind or visually impaired, were laid off, and didn't get the wages, furlough or redundancy payments they were owed. The factory closed and the company was shut down for good — owing more than £400,000 to 84 employees. Shortly after the BBC reported on the story, Marks took Marcus-Dew and another person to court, wrongly blaming them for the company's problems. After a long legal battle, the case was thrown out. The pensions regulator then charged Marks with fraudulently taking workers' pensions, but he died before that case came to court. Getty ImagesA factory in London run by General Welfare of the Blind, which later became Clarity, in about 1901That could have been the end of the story, but Marcus-Dew has taken what she learned and started again. In a corner of a large warehouse in London operated by the homelessness charity Crisis, a group of workers gather once a week to pack soap products for a new business — Amplify Goods. It provides paid work experience at the London living wage to homeless people, disabled people, and prison leavers."The longer you're out of employment, you start to lose confidence that you do have something to offer even just in being yourself," says Pasha Michaelsen, who co-founded the company with Marcus-Dew. Camilla Marcus-Dew, co-founder of Amplify Goods, says she is putting people who want to work at the centre of her social enterpriseTaylor is autistic and has verbal dyspraxia.
