United Kingdom in the 20th century

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I'm looking for a information on perceptions of autism/aspergers and the state of laws & services in the United Kingdom from the sixties through the eighties.

Does anyone have links to articles or other data sources, or book recommendations?

From the 60s to the 80s, autism was basically "classic" autism. It was called "infantile autism" then. Or, later, just "autism."

From the 50s to the 60s, the concept of the "refrigerator mother" was prevalent. By the 70s, that concept had been debunked.

Asperger's (other than from Asperger himself) wasn't even a concept until 1981, and didn't become part of any diagnostic grouping until 1994.

At least in the US, until the late 70s, most people with Asperger's or "high-functioning" autism would have been diagnosed with "minimal brain dysfunction," "brain damage," "perceptual problems," or some such thing.

There was no concept of an "autistic spectrum" then. There was some vague concept of relatively high-functioning autism in the later 80s.

The two opposite ends of the autism spectrum were separately discovered in two different countries: Dr. Hans Aspergers found aspergers syndrome ( a subset of what would later be called "high functioning autism") in Austria on the eve of WWII. And Kanner discovered what is now called "low functioning autism" here in the USA shortly after WWII.

So the first may already have been a "thing" in the two successor states to the Third Reich (Germany and Austria), but not in the English speaking world.

Kanner's idea gradually became accepted in the USA by the 60's. I assume autism probably also became accepted in the UK about that time.

Interestingly the first major motion picture to depict autism that I know of (though it doesn't mention the condition by name, that's clearly what it's about) was produced in the UK in the late Sixties. The drama "Run Wild, Run Free" predated "Rain Man" by like 20 years.

In the US the idea of autism being a spectrum gradually took hold. But it wasn't until 1994 that aspergers became an officially recognized diagnosis here in the USA. The Uk probably had a similar time table, but I don't know the specifics.

Has anyone else read People Of The Lie by the American psychiatrist M. Scott Peck (author also of The Road Less Travelled)? It was written in the late 70s/early 80s and some of the case studies seem to me (and to many other people, I think) to centre on people with Asperger-like traits, though Peck of course uses no such terminology, preferring instead a strange quasi-religious analysis.

Peck does refer specifically to autism in his presentation of a patient he calls 'Charlene', and it's well worth reading the book for that chapter alone.