Walton called the first meeting in the following year. He started a newsletter and chaired the new association until 1987. Since then, Walton's newsletter has become a serious legal journal with the sponsorship of distinguished Lord Justices.

Clarity, the organization Walton founded, has become a worldwide group of practising lawyers, judges, parliamentary and public service legal staff, teachers and professors, librarians, legal translators, linguists and plain language consultants, with a membership of more than 1,000, representing close to 30 countries worldwide.

And what a beacon they are to us all! Just this past summer, Clarity put on its first conference in co-operation with the Statute Law Society in Cambridge, England. [Congratulations, Clarity! Would all the Members of Clarity in our midst please stand up!]

The United States
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter issued Executive Order No. 12044, requiring federal regulations to be written in plain English. This was revoked in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan.

But meanwhile, in the early spirit of Clarity In the United States, there was the Plain English Committee of the State Bar of Michigan. [Pioneer Joseph Kimble of the Thomas Cooley Law School, please stand up!]

And the United States Document Design Centre, created by the National Institute of Education, had begun a project in 1979 leading to "a 20-year period rich with contributions to the growing field of document design" bringing together "anthropology, cognitive psychology, composition, graphic design, forms design, legal drafting, linguistics, organizational psychology, rhetoric, and sociology."⁽⁹⁾

[Do we have anyone from the Document Design Center of those days? Please say hello!]

A community educator I met in 1984 named Michael Fox had begun an organization called PLAN - Plain Language Action Now - out of Washington, D.C. And the American Labor Education Center had begun a campaign to educate local organizers and stewards as early as 1982.