President of the College David Cartwright

Baroness, Ladies and gentlemen, honoured guests, members of Council.
Good afternoon and thank you for coming to celebrate the College’s 25th anniversary – our silver jubilee.

I am David Cartwright and I’m the 18th President of the College of Optometrists. It is a particular pleasure to stand here today surrounded by so many past presidents of the College.   I am very conscious that I have the fortunate circumstance to be in office on this day and I feel I am speaking on behalf of all our past presidents.  All but four of my predecessors have been able to join us and I would like to pay them all tribute for the work they have done to get the College to where it is today.
As you will have worked out by now, the College was founded in 1980. In the same year sixpence pieces ceased to be legal tender, no computers or internet, and Philips released the Compact Disc player. One of the biggest news stories of the year was the murder of John Lennon by Mark Chapman in New York. We became a nation of soap addicts, anxious to know, “Who shot JR?”; West Ham won the FA cup, beating Arsenal 1-0 in the final; and the Rubik’s Cube was voted toy of the year.
And while Lech Walesa was forming Solidarity in Poland, Rhodesia was becoming Zimbabwe, and the American people were electing an actor as their 40th President, here in Britain, the British Optical Association, the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers and the Scottish Association of Optometrists were founding a single institution as the professional examining body for ophthalmic opticians. Admittedly, less impactful on a global level, nonetheless, the British College of Ophthalmic Opticians was a big deal for optics and was the result of a number of years of discussion and negotiation.
The College came into existence on 1 March 1980, with Philip Cole, who is sitting with me today, elected as its first president. One Member of the founding Council of 1980, Bob Chappell, remains a councillor today and another, Michael Wolffe only left our number in March this year after many years of service and an unshakeable belief in his role to do his best for the profession and the public, even when that meant asking the most difficult questions! By September of 1980, 5,615 of those eligible to join the College had done so. The first annual subscription fee, for 1980/81, was set at £45. In November that year Tom Collingridge was appointed the College’s full-time General Secretary, a position he held for eleven years. Tom hasn’t been able to join us from his home in France today but was responsible for establishing the administration of the College, acting as the principal advisor to the College Council – in forceful or persuasive style as the situation demanded – and is remembered by the staff who knew him as a real “people person”.
It was in 1984 that the College made its first cautious approach towards attaining a Royal Charter. In 1987 it became the British College of Optometrists before turning attention once more to petitioning for a Royal Charter in 1992. The Charter was finally granted on 18 September 1995, and “The College of Optometrists” adopted as our new name, in recognition of the change of status conferred by the Royal Charter.
Of course optometry too looked very different in 1980; an NHS examination for all, followed by dispensing a delightful 524 in black, brown, blue or perhaps pink, private frames would be in a draw and remember there was no advertising and prices in windows.  Varifocals were virtually unheard of, hard contact lenses, no unregistered dispensing, no Boots, Vision Express or Specsavers.