They were not on "disability pensions." They were put on incapacity benefit in their tens of thousands (or more) for the simple reason that they wouldn't thereby appear in the unemployment statistics. A decade or two later, when they were all ageing men and women, huge numbers of them were thrown off that benefit, or its successor ESA, by Iain Duncan-Smith's resort to the French company ATOS, who pretended to employ "health professionals" whose only brief was to kick people off the benefit that had baled Thatcher out. Thousands per annum are still dying of severe illness even though they have been deemed fit for work. Do recognise Tory Britain for what it really is.