Tuesday 23 March 2010

Forward - The History of Birmingham Disability Resource Centre

 
Image from the front cover of Forward, drawn by Crippen

Crippen's cartoon shows the Forward statue which was formerly located in Centenary Square Birmingham, with the various characters featured in the original sculpture replaced by representations of disabled people 

Copyright details

First published 2010 by Birmingham Disability Resource Centre, Bierton Road, Yardley, Birmingham, B25 8PQ, UK, with funding received from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Copyright © Birmingham Disability Resource Centre 2010

The rights of Birmingham Disability Resource Centre and the contributors of this book, to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher (Birmingham Disability Resource Centre). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Illustration and Front Cover: Crippen (http://www.daveluptoncartoons.co.uk/ )

Editing and design by: Hazel Wood of Hazelwood Associates (http://www.hazelwooduk.com/ )

Printed by: Westpoint Printing Co Ltd, Fazeley Street, Birmingham, UK.

Also available online in PDF format

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter One:  The roots of change

Chapter Two:  When the personal became political

Chapter Three: Defining moments and Building Bridges

Chapter Four : Spirit of perseverance

Chapter Five: Rights now!

Chapter Six : Doing it for ourselves

Chapter Seven : The man from the council

Chapter Eight : Empowering services

Chapter Nine : Forward!

Acknowledgements

Resourcefulness is etched into the very heart of Birmingham Disability Resource Centre. Its founders and supporters were people of enormous resourcefulness and determination in their quest for equal opportunities, education and dignity. This book is dedicated to them and to all those who have had to strive to be recognised for their abilities and their potential.

We would like to place on record our appreciation to everyone for their support in helping to give this centre and its people its rightful place in history, not only in Birmingham, but in the UK as a whole.

Special thanks must go to Hazel Wood for her work in editing and designing this book and to Ray Gormley for his stalwart work as audio technician and interviewer. They have both contributed extra time and dedication to the project.

We are grateful to The Heritage Lottery Fund which recognised the importance of this project and ¬for its financial assistance. We would also like to acknowledge the wealth of contributions and support we have had for this book from the following:

Mary Barker           David Barnsley     Andy Beaton          

Stuart Bishop          Yvonne Boddey   Sir Albert Bore   

John Boular             Jerome Chen Bacchus

Carl Chinn             Anita Cole           Julie Cole   

Tom Comerford      Ken and Maggie Davis 

John Ellis                 Clenton Farquharson

Carl Freeman         Ray Gormley       Mandy Hawker      

Mike Higgins          David Heap            Linda Laurie       

Demelza Llewelyn   Dave Lupton (Crippen)

Maria Mleczko      Sarah McMahon  Clive Mason           

Debbie Nunn          Susan O’Shea        Tim Philips          

George Rowley       Alun Severn           Louise Simmons     

Sue Smith               Robin Surgeoner       Len Tasker

Mohammed Vaseem    Daniel Vincent          Terry Vincent

Katherine Walsh      Bob Williams-Findlay    Hazel Wood

Irene Wright

Preface: The Heritage Lottery Fund

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) distributes money raised by the National Lottery to heritage projects throughout the UK. These projects include multi-million-pound investments in well-known buildings and sites like Birmingham Town Hall and Hadrian’s Wall, and also smaller grants making a big difference to communities and community groups such as the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre.

One of our strategic aims is “to help more people and a wider range of people, to take an active part in and make decisions about their heritage”. This includes helping disabled people themselves and disabled people’s organisations to make grant applications. It was, therefore, with great pleasure that HLF was able to fund the project which has resulted in this book.

The history and heritage of disabled people and disabled people’s organisations has for too long been a ‘hidden history’, but in recent years, with HLF funding, many disability organisations have been able to research, record and share their unique heritage with a wider audience. Much of this has been possible using oral history techniques with the recordings being held as a permanent record in archives and libraries for present and future generations to learn from.

An important aspect of these histories is how disabled people themselves have influenced and brought about changes in society’s attitudes towards disability, leading to disabled people gaining equality of access and the inclusion in society enjoyed by non-disabled people.

The Birmingham Disability Resource Centre’s project not only ensured that disabled people took an active part in exploring their own heritage, but also has highlighted the active role disabled people have played in influencing attitudinal change.



Heritage Lottery Fund

March 2010

Foreword by Professor Carl Chinn, MBE

I never knew my Granddad Perry when he was able to walk. Our Granddad was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the early 1950s and one of the last times he was able to walk unaided was when he escorted Our Mom down the aisle on her wedding day in 1954.

Soon after, the MS took such a hold that Granddad lost the use of his legs and his right arm. But he never lost the use of his mind or his memory, nor of his wit or his good humour. I recall that when we were out with Our Granddad in his wheelchair that people would often look over him to Our Mom and ask “How is he?” Mom would answer angrily, “Ask him yourself. He is Arthur and he can talk for himself.”

I grew up with disability, but did not recognise it as such because Our Granddad was such an important member of our family and he was always treated as such. Nor did I recognise that Our Nan was disabled. But she was. She had lost her index finger on her right hand in an accident on a power press in a factory.

Looking back, Nan’s physical health had also been badly affected by the poverty in which she had grown up in the 1920s. Her feet were misshapen because of the charity boots she’d had to wear and she always had problems with them. But, like Granddad, we never thought of Nan as disabled because she was another key figure in our family.

Disability touches every family and every neighbourhood in Birmingham at some time. Whether this be a parent, a sibling, a friend or a neighbour who may have been born disabled or become disabled later in life. Sadly, in the past, not so many Brummies had disabled playmates at school or disabled colleagues in the workplace, this was because for a large part of the last century our society was less enlightened and many disabled people spent their school days and adult lives living in institutions.

But, throughout those years, there were many disabled people who have fought not only for their own independence, but for the independence of others. They have struggled to free themselves from institutions and go into the community to live full and active lives, to be respected as equal citizens and to be able to contribute to our proud city in the modern age.

This is a most significant history book. It tells the story of the fight for independence by what started off as a small group of disabled people in the city, but who went on to successfully campaign for and to set up their own centre at the former Bierton Road School in Yardley in 1992.

Eighteen years on, the centre is still going strong and still supporting Birmingham’s disabled citizens through information and support services.

The board members, staff and volunteers of the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre continue to work with tireless dedication to make our city accessible to all Brummies, regardless of age, disability or caring responsibilities and they should be rightly proud of the inspiration they provide to all of us as we move our great working city forward and into an age where every citizen can access work, leisure, housing and education opportunities.

Introduction by Pete Millington

In September 1992, a new centre opened in a section of the ground floor of an old public building in Birmingham which once used to be a school.

The school itself opened in 1928 and was known as Bierton Road Council School. Its intake of 86 pupils came from nearby Yardley Primary School. There are still many local people from South Yardley today who have memories of their school days from 1928 right up until it closed in 1985.

One can only imagine the excitement and trepidation for both children and teachers alike on their first morning at this brand new building with its magnificent and resplendent Birmingham City Council coat of arms positioned over the entrance hall from the main playground.

We can but speculate whether the children gained inspiration for their educational studies from gazing up at the sculpted objects which are, to this day, displayed on either side of the heraldic shield of the coat of arms, as they entered the school each morning or following play time.

On one side of the coat of arms are tools of industry, including an imposing anvil from the smith’s foundry, representing Birmingham’s industrial heritage and on the other side are the implements of leisure and the arts, representing the city’s cultural tradition. Or, perhaps, the pupils of Bierton Road were inspired by the city’s optimistic and self-assured motto, Forward, which was adopted at the very first meeting of the council in December 1838 and has, henceforth, adorned the base of its coat of arms.

What we can say with certainty is that very few disabled children would have passed under that beautiful crest in the decades between 1928 and 1985. In 1928 there were scant opportunities for disabled children, least of all access to academic education.

In the early part of the 20th century, if disabled children did not die in infancy or were forced to beg on the streets in order to survive, the majority were destined to spend their lives in long-term institutions, hospitals, workhouse infirmaries and even asylums. The luckiest of them might have attended a more forward thinking charitable institution where therapy and occupational training replaced academic study.

Even the guarantee of education for disabled children, provided by the 1944 Education Act, contained no mention of inclusion into mainstream schools like Bierton Road. Whilst there is no doubt that the introduction of special schools offered a great improvement from what had gone before, disabled children were still destined to spend their lives away from their peers with no prospects of gaining qualifications in readiness for the big wide world.

Perhaps there is some irony, therefore, in the fact that the new centre, opening on the old Bierton Road school site in 1992, was going to be one of the country’s first support centres not just committed to the inclusion of disabled people in wider society, but actually set up and run by disabled people themselves.

The conversion of a ground-floor wing of the school into a fully accessible centre known as Birmingham Disability Resource Centre was even funded by the same city council whose forward-looking motto and coat of arms acknowledging the firm foundations of industrial and cultural heritage still embellishes the front entrance hall at Bierton Road.

The most important story behind the launch of Birmingham Disability Resource Centre is that of the pioneering disabled people whose own vision of an inclusive future led to a seven-year campaign of lobbying, negotiating with, and working alongside, the local council. For the most part these were ordinary disabled people who had banded together in 1985 to form the Birmingham Disability Rights Group to raise awareness about disability and to campaign for greater access and equality of opportunity.

Most were people whose own personal experiences were not so greatly dissimilar to those of disabled citizens of the early 1900s – segregation, isolation, rejection, disadvantage, life on low income, medicalisation and discrimination.

Here is our own attempt to document, celebrate and recognise the legacy of the disabled people and their allies who set up Birmingham Disability Resource Centre. It is a celebration of the achievements of all those who have been associated with both the Rights Group and the centre in its 25-year history. In 1986 concepts like equal citizenship and social justice for disabled people were virtually unheard of and the vision of a centre in Birmingham run by disabled people for disabled people was an unachieveable pipedream.

This historical record would not have been possible without financial support from the Heritage Lottery Fund (West Midlands) which has recognised the importance of heritage to disabled people by funding the 18-month oral history project which has provided the material for the book.

This is much more than just a history of a building; a history of bricks and mortar. It is the story of Birmingham’s role in the wider change brought about by the international disabled people’s movement. A change based on inclusive living principles, user-led direction of services and the liberating “social model of disability”.

This is by no means the end of the road in this history of social transformation, but, if we are to continue to move forward, it is essential to pause every now and then to reflect on the rich and resourceful heritage we have been gifted from the past.

Chapter 1 - The roots of change

In the early part of the 20th century, life for working class people in Britain was harsh and opportunities were very limited. In his study of poverty, Life and Labour of the People in London, published at the turn of that century, social reformer Charles Boothe wrote that 30 per cent of the people of Britain’s capital city were living in poverty.

Around the same time, Seebohm Rowntree published a similar study, Poverty, A Study of Town Life, which reported that 43 per cent of the population of York were likewise living in poverty with 15 per cent barely able to survive.

In British cities like Birmingham, the vast majority of citizens lived in small back-to-back houses, in courtyards where living conditions were tough for everyone. In 1901 Birmingham had an infant mortality rate of more than 220 infant deaths for every 1000 live births.

The charitable organisation Birmingham Settlement was founded in Newtown, Birmingham, in 1899, as a product of the groundswell of public outrage in response to statistics like those and to the reports of social reformers like Rowntree and Boothe.

The early 1900s studies of Rowntree, Boothe and other social reformers presented a great challenge to policy and decision makers, with both academics and politicians questioning Britain’s aspiration to rule gloriously over a global Empire whilst the people in its own towns and cities lived in deprived and unsanitary conditions.

If living conditions for ordinary working class people were harsh at the beginning of the 20th century, then the quality of life and the expectation level of disabled people were especially low.

Britain’s 19th century industrialisation and urbanisation movement led to a greater segregation of disabled people. They were increasingly being viewed as not only excess to requirement in terms of the ascendant capitalist principles of manufacturing progress, mass production and profit, but their very existence was being rationalised as harmful to mankind.

The scientific enlightenment – associated with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection, first published in his book On the Origin of Species in 1859 – gave gradual rise during the late Victorian age to a darker school of thought called eugenics.

The study of eugenics was based on a belief that the human species could be improved by discouraging reproduction by people presumed to have inheritable “defects“ and “undesirable traits“ or, conversely, by encouraging reproduction by people perceived to have inheritable “desirable traits.”

Later in the 20th century, eugenics theory would provide a scientific foundation not only for government-sanctioned sterilisation programmes across Europe and the USA, but would become the core ideology of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany during the 1930s and ‘40s.

Even if gas chambers, concentration camps and human experimentation in Nazi Germany represented the most extreme and evil manifestation of eugenics theory, the basic tenet that disabled people, along with other specified minority communities, were inferior, abnormal and carried the risk of polluting the gene pool of the entire human species became the acceptable underlying basis for society’s dominant response to disability throughout the early 20th century.

Disabled people were increasingly rejected from the work force and became viewed by society as being the “deserving poor”, as opposed to the “undeserving poor” whose ranks included the work-shy and the physically-able unemployed. However, the description of being “deserving” was not the blessing it might imply – the reality was that disabled people were deserving of meagre charity rather than employment, deserving of long-term institutional residence as opposed to independent living and deserving of specialised medical scrutiny as opposed to wider social acceptance.

Institutions for the long-term residence of disabled people in Victorian and early 20th century Birmingham included the Royal School for Deaf Children (founded in 1812), All Saints Mental Asylum in Winson Green (founded in 1845), Birmingham Royal Institution for the Blind (1846), the Birmingham Workhouse at Western Road (1852), Birmingham Institute for the Deaf (1869), Marston Green Cottage Homes (1878), the Workhouse Infirmary (1888), the Joint Poor Law Colony at Monyhull (1908) and St Margaret’s Great Barr Colony (1918).

Not all of these institutions were dark and foreboding, some may have seemed progressive for the era, but the list does demonstrate the trend towards institutionalised residence across all groups of disabled people.

A change in social attitudes towards disabled people occurred during and after the Great War of 1914-1918 when it is estimated that more than 2 million soldiers across the armed forces of the British Empire were injured and returned home with a range of impairments including limb amputations, severe burns, head injuries, profound hearing impairment, visual impairment as well as mental health conditions caused by the shock of relentless trench warfare.

Rehabilitation hospitals, centres and even villages such as Enham (established by King George V in Hampshire in 1919), were set up around the country to support those who had become disabled during the course of armed service in the name of freedom.

To some degree the post war period augured a more community-based response to disabled people and in Birmingham, the Ex-Services Mental Welfare Society was formed in 1919 followed in 1920 by the launch of the Midland Societies for the Blind and similar groups. But, even with the ranks of those disabled people collectively known as the “deserving poor” being swelled by the heroic newly disabled, as a minority group in Britain disabled people remained, on the whole, desperately poor, marginalised and without social or economic opportunity.

Years after the Great War had ended and servicemen had long since become disillusioned by the broken promise of the so-called “land fit for heroes”, disabled First World War veterans begging on British streets were a common sight.

In 1987, John Hall, a disabled war veteran from the Second World War, wrote an article in the West Midlands Council of Disabled People’s magazine about his memories of seeing disabled people begging on the streets of Malvern in the 1930s:

“In the 1930s when I was a schoolboy living in Malvern, Worcestershire, I had my first encounter with disabled people, an experience which made me very sad. In the main street an ex-merchant Navy hero from the First World War with no arms and only half his legs squatted on the pavement every weekday selling matches and shoelaces. He received no pension and had no other income.

“I was old enough to not only know that his experience had been horrific, but also to treat him as a human being, with respect.

“I also recall blind George, who walked daily more than two miles to play a small organ at St Anne's Well, a building on the way to the top of the Malvern Hills, which is still standing. Although totally blind, he gave great pleasure with his music to thousands of people and, quite rightly, his name has been commemorated with a plaque as a permanent memorial. He was a good musician and always bright and cheerful, a man of tremendous strength of character.”

Chapter 1 - continued

In the bleak, impoverished years of the 1930s, disabled people started to seek solidarity through self-help type social groups which evolved into fully regulated clubs, societies and associations. The Cripple’s Car Circle and the Birmingham and District Social Club for the Hard of Hearing both started in 1930 and in 1932 the Birmingham and Midland Limbless Ex-Service Association was formed.

The trend for peer-participatory, sometimes even user-led disability associations is exemplified by an example of a group formed in Coventry in 1938. Three young disabled men in Coventry formed the Coventry Cripples’ Social Club. Len Tasker, one of the three original members, recalls life for disabled people in the early part of the 20th century:

“At the beginning of the 20th century the plight for the disabled was pretty desperate. No employment and begging in the street by playing musical instruments or trying to sell matches, reels of cotton and other small items was a common sight. The younger disabled who had no support were put into 'Institutions'.

“There were very few opportunities to enjoy a social life and entry into a place of entertainment and other public places was an impossibility for those confined to wheelchairs. They were considered a risk in case of emergency.

“However, the 20th century was to see amazing changes. It was the disabled themselves who rose up and were at the centre of this peaceful revolution. It was in 1938 that three Coventry disabled men got together and decided to try to form a social club for the disabled as no such facilities existed in the city at that time.

“The disabled trio, little realising the tremendous effect their actions were to have in enriching the lives of hundreds of people over the next 62 years, decided to give the title of their pioneering venture ‘the Coventry Cripples’ Social Club’.

“They were Eric F Gray, Harry Trustlove and Len Tasker. Other disabled friends joined them and the first meeting place was Sydenham Place. Then came 1939 and the Second World War, the terrible blitz in 1940 and the two awful blitzes in 1941. These nearly put an end to the club, but the members persevered in their efforts by meeting at the British Legion Club every Sunday morning. Although only about six members would turn up, it kept the club alive.

“In late 1941 the members discovered a bombed house at 13, Priory Street, which, they considered, would make ideal headquarters. The owner was contacted by the club's president, Councillor Harry Weston, and the premises were offered to the members free of charge, provided they repaired all the bomb damage and maintained the building.

“This wonderful offer was joyfully accepted. And, so, 13 became our happy headquarters for the next 14 years. In 1945 the club's title changed to the Enterprise Club For Disabled People, the proud title which it still holds today.”

Local groups like Coventry’s Enterprise Club went from strength to strength during the 1950s and 1960s, giving disabled people increased access to community-based activities such as social events, hobby and craft based activities and disability sport.

Some of these groups forged links with national user-led organisations such as the Invalid Tricycle Association (later becoming the Disabled Drivers Association), formed in 1947. Even so, most local groups remained on the periphery of mainstream society and were either self-supporting or raised funds through charitable appeals.

The charity model response to disability had its roots in the large national institutions such as the Royal National Institute for the Blind and the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. However, from the late 1940s onwards there was a sudden increase in charities set up by parents and carers, such as Mencap (founded in 1946), Mind (1946), Leonard Cheshire Homes (1948) and the Spastics Society (1954).

The 1944 Education Act had established the legal requirement for all British children described as “handicapped” to be educated in special schools or classes and by the 1950s this provision was becoming very specialised with an ever-increasing range of schools and colleges for children with different types of impairment.

In September 1948 a school for children with cerebral palsy opened in Victoria Road, Harborne, in Birmingham. The school was called Carlson House and was set up with support from Paul Cadbury of Birmingham’s chocolate manufacturing family, whose own daughter Margaret had cerebral palsy.

Birmingham-born David Barnsley was one of the first pupils at Carlson House and describes its early development:

“Paul Cadbury gathered together a group of people prepared to support his venture and to put up some finance. People like Ken Quayle, of Quayle Carpets in Kidderminster, as well as others. They also gained the interest of Birmingham’s Education Department which agreed to put up some money.

“They purchased a large house at 13a, Victoria Road in Harborne. It had a large garden and stables and, from 1945, the building was made suitable for the education of children with cerebral palsy.

“In those days parents didn't get grants, so they banded together. I recall going as a child of about 5 or 6 to 13a Victoria Road for weekends when my parents helped with the working parties who were converting the house. There was a covered way from the house to the stables with 17 windows along the side, which gives you some idea of the size of the area. It was converted into the physiotherapy department. Physiotherapy and speech therapy were offered on a daily basis.

“The criteria set for admission to Carlson House was based on a certain IQ level and children were vetted to see that they would benefit from what was offered. I recall that the kids used to be collected each morning by pre-war Austin taxis supplied by the All Electric Garage in Harborne – they were of dubious vintage – even the journey from home was exciting because of the tendency for the vehicles to break down at least every seven days.

“The spare car came to pick you up and then that would break down too! The back number plate would be put in the boot. It was a dubious choice between which car was most broken down!

“The cars became symbols, we were attached to them and recalled them by their registration plates. There was ‘ADA’, ‘EA’ and a rather sophisticated and beautiful Armstrong Sydney Sapphire with an unfortunate number plate ‘CAC’! And that is how we got to school.”

From an interview between David Barnsley and Peter Millington / Pinpoint Magazine – Winter 2003 edition.

Chapter 1 - continued

The more specialised and, therefore, selective developments in special school education were increasingly seen by parents and, retrospectively in many cases, by pupils themselves, as being an exciting new opportunity.

Access was not based on wealth or class-based privilege, however, the longer term expectations of disabled people still remained limited.

Two years after the National Assistance Act 1948, Birmingham Corporation published its Handbook of 1950 which set out the new duties of the local authority towards its disabled citizens. Welfare services in 1950 were based at 102 Edmund Street and the Chief Welfare Officer for Birmingham was F. Kimberley. The Handbook reads:

“The National Assistance Act, 1948, formed part of the new social legislation to bring the Poor Laws to an end on 5 July, 1948. On, and from, that date the former Public Assistance Committee was superseded by a Welfare Committee appointed by the city council.

“The council was no longer concerned with monetary assistance to persons who were without the resources to meet their requirements or whose resources must be supplemented in order to meet their requirements, and hospital nursing and treatment of the chronic sick, responsibility and, therefore, having passed to the National Assistance Board and the Regional Hospital Board, respectively, on the same date.”

The main strategic objective of Birmingham's Welfare Committee in 1950 was to provide residential accommodation for “people who, by reason of age and infirmity or any other circumstances, are in need of care and attention which is not otherwise available to them”.

In addition to residential care, arrangements were being operated to further promote the welfare of:

“persons who are blind, deaf or dumb and other persons who are substantially or permanently handicapped by illness, injury, or congenital deformity, or such other disabilities, as may in future be prescribed through instruction and employment of methods for overcoming the effects of their disabilities and the provision of workshops and residential hostels.”

The Handbook also introduced the idea that the local authority would have discretionary power to provide its services in partnership with voluntary organisations which the council would subsidise or even employ as their agents, provided that those voluntary organisations “are registered in accordance with the provisions of the Act”.

The 1950 Handbook also provides a list of Special Welfare Services which were largely aimed at people with sensory impairment. Of approximately 1,400 blind people on Birmingham's register in 1950, many were being encouraged to take up training at the Birmingham Royal Institution for the Blind in the following trades: bedding and upholstery; mat and coal-bag making; boot repairing; light engineering; knitting; brush making; basket making; piano tuning and repairing; typing.

A Home Workers' Scheme was also being developed which split trades into gender specific groups with men being encouraged to take up trades such as piano tuning, chimney sweeping, firewood chopping and shop keeping, whilst women were encouraged to be music teachers, typists and machine knitters. Where blind men were instructed in basket making, blind women were instructed in fancy basket making.

Even the advantages of some intensively resourced Special Education schools did not generally enhance future opportunities for disabled school leavers.

When David Barnsley left Carlson House School at the age of 18 in 1959 his teachers helped him to acquire immediate employment at the Lucas factory in Great King Street. But the initial novelty of finding employment as a disabled school leaver would be quickly worn away as David discovered that the manufacturing sector, like most areas of employment in those days, was largely inaccessible and fundamentally discriminatory:

“The school staff were going around local businesses looking for employment opportunities for school leavers from Carlson House and they went to Lucas's in Great King Street. Mrs Marlow was the school's second headmistress — she met with Lucas's and said they had a prospective school leaver with 'O' levels, so I was sent for interview and was given the job. I left school in July 1959 and started work at Lucas's on 7th September 1959. I was scared stiff before the interview, but they were quite pleasant.

“They said I could have a job in ‘suppliers accounts’. Unfortunately I fell foul of the fact that I was rather slow. You had to put all the goods inwards and open invoices in alphabetical order and match them by 300 a day.

“A bloke came round with a book to check if you were doing it properly and it never occurred to me to lie like everyone else – they never counted them anyway, so I was deemed to be too slow and given all the dirty little jobs in the office to do instead.

“I stuck at it though because £5 17s 6d was a lot of money in those days, of which my father took £3 for accommodation and the petrol and oil for my trike was five and four pence a gallon. So even though they gave me all the dead filing to do, at least I had a job.

“You'd see the supervisor taking people to one side and he'd tell them they'd got a rise, saying ‘but don't tell anyone’ and then they'd all go into the gents and find they'd all got a rise of 5s 5d. They put me on packing for a while which no one else ever did before or after me. I was packing orders which should have been grade 8 money, but I was still paid at grade 5 money.

“For the next few years people would come in and ask me how to do things and I'd tell them because I'd been there a long time, but then they'd get good high-powered jobs and I'd be stuck on grade 5 money.”

From an interview between David Barnsley and Peter Millington / Pinpoint Magazine – New Year 2004 edition.

Chapter 1 - continued

With more disabled people accessing at least basic education, but still feeling marginalised and rejected by a society which was otherwise becoming more affluent and equalitarian for the majority of citizens, the green shoots of a new militancy began to emerge amongst disability organisations.

In 1960 a national rights demonstration, led by the Physically Handicapped Association, took place in Trafalgar Square in London. The demonstration called for pension rights for disabled people and a delegation from South Staffordshire Disabled Association left Wolverhampton on that day with its local contribution to a national petition being presented to the Prime Minister.

Mr Pitcher, MBE, of the Darlaston Fellowship of the Disabled recalled this event, where the collective belly of disabled people was “filled with fire”:

“That day in 1960, the pathfinders, agitators, pressure groups were all there in Trafalgar Square, London. Persons in their thousands, not to ban the bomb, but demanding the right of the disabled to be integrated and to stand in society as equal, to have a good standard of living with a suitable pension to cover that ideal.

“Megan Du Boisson raised the banner that day, rallied us to the cause, filled our belly with fire and we marched on No. 10 Downing Street singing The Old Rugged Cross, handing the petitions in. The flame had been lit and the stalwarts still march on, maybe getting feeble, but knowing they played their part.”

The campaign, which started with the London rally in 1960, was given leadership in England by Megan Du Boisson, a disabled woman, and in Scotland by her counterpart, Dr Margaret Blackwood.

In 1965, Megan Du Boisson and Berit Thornberry founded a new national organisation called the Disablement Income Group which would take a leading role in campaigning for pensions and welfare benefits for disabled people as well as publishing information, conducting research, lobbying Parliament around income issues and generally highlighting the poverty endured by disabled people in Great Britain.

Megan Du Boisson was killed in a car accident on her way to the fifth annual general meeting of the Disablement Income Group in 1969. After her death, Du Boisson’s role was celebrated by activists in the West Midlands with a centre for disabled people on Beacon Way, Walsall, being posthumously named the Megan Du Boisson Centre in her honour.

The Disablement Income Group was not the only organisation in which disabled people were becoming actively involved. Len Tasker recalls being involved in the Coventry branch of the Disabled Driver’s Association and was one of a small delegation of disabled people who held a meeting with Prime Minister Edward Heath in 1973 to discuss mobility issues:

“The purpose of the meeting was to press the Prime Minister and the Government to abolish the dangerous three-wheel invalid tricycles that were issued to the disabled and replace these with allowances to enable those disabled who were eligible to have hand-controlled cars.

“Included in this important delegation were Mairwyn Meyrick, secretary of the Coventry Group at that time, her husband Alf and myself. It was from historic meetings such as this that the Mobility Scheme was born to raise the standard of living for thousands of disabled people throughout Britain.”

Also in attendance at the 1973 meeting with Edward Heath, was motor racing driver Graham Hill who added his support to the campaign for greater mobility support.

But poverty and mobility weren’t the only issues of concern to disabled people in the early ‘70s. In 1970 a group of disabled students in Berkeley, California, USA, called “the Rolling Quads” started what subsequently became known as the independent living movement.

Activist Ed Roberts and his associates firstly formed a Disabled Students’ Program on the UC Berkeley campus in 1970 and a year later established a Centre for Independent Living (CIL) in Berkeley for the community at large. In 1972, with a $50,000 grant from the city’s Rehabilitation Administration, they converted a cockroach-infested two-bedroom apartment into a user-led centre from which disabled people could support their peers to achieve independent living.

Events such as these would inspire disabled people on this side of the Atlantic to explore similar ideas. On Wednesday, September 20, 1972, a disabled person named Paul Hunt wrote a letter to the editor of The Guardian newspaper, inviting others to become involved in setting up a new national group around independent living in Britain:

Sir, - Ann Shearer’s account of the CMH conference of and not on the so-called mentally handicapped, challenges our patronising assumptions about such people.

It also has important implications for anyone who genuinely wants to help other disadvantaged groups.

For instance, practically every sentence in her article could apply with equal force to the severely physically handicapped, many of whom also find themselves in isolated and unsuitable institutions where their views are ignored and they are subject to authoritarian and often cruel regimes.

I am proposing the formation of a consumer group to put forward, nationally, the views of actual and potential residents of these successors to the workhouse. We hope, in particular, to formulate and publicise plans for alternative kinds of care.

I should be glad to hear from anyone who is interested to join or support this project.

– Yours faithfully,

Paul Hunt

The very blunt description contained in Paul Hunt’s two paragraph letter of residential care institutions being the “successors to the workhouse”, might have seemed sensational to the average reader, but struck a chord with hundreds, maybe thousands, of disabled people all over Britain, many of whom were indeed living in the situation he was highlighting.

His letter received a huge response from other disabled people and was to lead to the rapid development of a united, self-determined movement of disabled people in Britain with an agenda embracing not only the key issues around income and independent living, but an end to discrimination.

Chapter Two: When the personal became political

Two of the people who responded to Paul Hunt’s Guardian letter were Ken and Maggie Davis. Following a car accident in the late 1960s and unable to find accessible accommodation in which to move, Maggie was living in a hostel at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, a situation about which she was not entirely happy:

“Because the accident flipped me from being an able-bodied person to a disabled person in a split second, I became very aware that there was something very wrong with society because it doesn’t want me.

“I suddenly realised that I wasn’t wanted anymore and that got me thinking. I’d known Ken through a friend in the hostel. A friendship started and then we decided we’d like to be together, but we had no where to go. So that meant we had to start thinking up some sort of solution in the community. It seemed really so simple to us – all you needed was somewhere to live and somebody to help you with the physical things you couldn’t do, yet there was just no where.

“There weren’t even home helps. Probably the best you could do was a community nurse coming in. So that’s how we started working towards getting a place outside.

“It was whilst I was in the hostel and becoming very angry because I was getting persecuted for speaking out, that I saw Paul Hunt’s letter in The Guardian in which he was saying that ‘if anyone’s in the same situation as me’, because he was at Lee Court suffering the same sort of persecution and oppressiveness, ‘please get in touch with me’ and it felt as if somebody was holding out a hand of survival. I wrote to him and he wrote back and then obviously more people had contacted him and that really was the beginning of the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation.”

From an interview between Maggie & Ken Davis and Pete Millington – Proud To Be Disabled documentary film 2004.

Maggie and Ken were typical of many disabled people up and down the country whose thoughts, lives and personal aspirations were to be changed radically, firstly by the catalyst provided in Paul Hunt’s letter and then by subsequent events such as the formation of UPIAS.

As Ken Davis explained:

“UPIAS was a very important development for me personally. It radicalised me significantly and helped me, in the process of discussion that went on in that organisation, to resolve the difficulties I’d been having with the world I’d suddenly been pitch forked into as the result of the accident.

“It helped me really to get my head together about what needed to be done. So once I was straightened out, it made life a lot simpler with regard to knowing what to get on and do about it.”

From an interview between Maggie & Ken Davis and Pete Millington – Proud To Be Disabled documentary film 2004.

Another person who played a leading role in the development of UPIAS was Vic Finkelstein, a disabled person who had been jailed in South Africa for his protests about the apartheid regime. Ken and Maggie recall rigourous intellectual discussions with Vic Finkelstein, Paul Hunt, Dick Leaman from Lambeth and many others which clarified a lot of the emergent ideas around the political and social situation of disabled people. For Ken and Maggie this period represented a significant step and a turning point in their lives.

The new organisation, UPIAS, was seen as a departure from existing disability organisations such as the Disablement Income Group and the Disability Alliance, both of which were focussed around the single issue of gaining a national disability income.

According to Ken Davis the analysis within UPIAS was one of social exclusion, the problem being not to give people more money to carry on being oppressed in a society which was designed to serve and perpetuate able bodied people’s interests, the task was a far wider political one.

Chapter 2 - continued

Around this time, the members of UPIAS began to talk about the social model of disability, as Ken explained:

“It came out of a very significant meeting which was held between the Union and the Disability Alliance and the publication which emerged at the conclusion of that meeting actually set down in words, for the first time, a social definition of disability that hadn’t been seen, as far as I am aware, any where else before and it was that, reworked and re-enacted in different organisations that flowed from that point.

“In 1976, the publication of Fundamental Principles was that analysis of the meeting between UPIAS and Disability Alliance, it formed and shaped the character of the movement from that point on. Not that there weren’t later influences that were equally powerful, but the social definition of disability that developed in the union was a milestone in the history of disabled people.”

A few years later, Ken and Maggie Davis would become founding members of the Derbyshire Coalition of Disabled People during International Year of Disabled People (IYDP) in 1981. The coalition was born out of a conference in Derbyshire in February 1981 on the theme of Full Participation and Equality, which was the slogan of IYDP.

Ken Davis explained how local disabled people in Derbyshire decided to take over the county’s plans for the International Year:

“DAD, the Derbyshire Association for the Disabled, was a kind of umbrella of lots of village-based social clubs for disabled people and the main disability organisation in the county which influenced, to some extent, the county council’s policies on disabled people. It suggested that Derbyshire’s main event for the International Year should be a countywide craft competition to find out the best disabled basket weaver.

“That just seemed to be too much of a joke in the context of the slogan of the International Year, full participation and equality. Oh yeah, like who weaves the best basket?

“So, there were a lot of things going on that led to the coalition emerging and with the small organisation DIAL Derbyshire which had brought together the opportunities for disabled people locally to speak to each other.

“We were taking every advantage of that and we were bringing together a nucleus of people who were sufficiently keen to advance the idea of the formation of a Derbyshire Coalition of Disabled People.”

Closer to home in Birmingham, in 1977 another new disability organisation was formed called the West Midlands Council for Disabled People (WMCDP).

The WMCDP was launched at Prospect Hall, in Selly Oak, by a small group mainly made up of professional disabled people such as Professor Edward Marsland, who was the vice chancellor of Birmingham University and a wheelchair user, Ruth Rolfe of the West Midlands Council for Preparatory Training, also a disabled person and members of the medical profession in the West Midlands such as Dr John Harrison, a gerontology consultant whose remit included the medical direction of the region’s rehabilitation service for younger disabled people based at Moseley Hall Hospital.

Shortly after its first meeting in Selly Oak, the WMCDP moved into offices at Moseley Hall Hospital where it would stay for the next 20 years, maintaining a close relationship with the health service and, in particular, with the rehabilitation service for large amounts of that time.

With its leadership resting initially within this, perhaps unique, alliance of health and education professionals, many of whom it is fair to say were disabled, the WMCDP in the 1980s could not have been described as an organisation of disabled people in comparison to the Derbyshire Coalition of Disabled People, a grass-roots group that had grown out of the frustration and anger of disabled people, based around the principles of independent living and fully embracing the social model of disability.

Even so, many ordinary disabled people in the West Midlands were drawn to this rare beacon which offered advice, information and support across all types of impairment and on social issues such as welfare benefits and access to education, as well as the traditional medical and charitable approach to disability which was still dominating wider society.

Early members of the WMCDP included Hugh and Mary Barker. Here Mary describes the background to their involvement with the new organisation:

“I was working as a nurse for St John Ambulance and had gone to help out at the Polio Fellowship group in Westbourne Road in 1955 when I first met Hugh. We struck up a relationship and married in 1960.

Throughout the 1960s we were involved in the Polio Fellowship. When we were going out together, Hugh lived in Quinton Lane. He had one of the original old trikes in those days and I used to cycle all the way back to Dawlish Road from Hugh's house in Quinton in about 10 minutes so that I wasn't late home!”

From an interview between Mary Barker and Pete Millington published in Pinpoint Magazine May/June 2002 edition

Some years later, in 1977, Mary and Hugh attended the inaugural meeting of the West Midlands Council for Disabled People (WMCDP) at Prospect Hall. Hugh was a wheelchair user so, as a married couple, they had already developed a keen interest in disability issues, especially access issues around which they shared a strong belief that society could and should be made more accessible. Mary and Hugh decided to attend the WMCDP meeting having seen it advertised in a local newspaper.

“Hugh was one of the original executive members in the early years. The Chair back then was Professor Marsland and some of the other people I remember included Dr Beasley, John Harrison, Albert Weadle, Peter Low and Tommy Glasgow. Linda Foxall was the secretary and Theresa Jackson (Samuels) was the only paid member of staff.

“The work that everybody did in the early days of WMCDP was quite pioneering in terms of people with disability living and working in the community. With money that came from people with forward looking ideas in this field, a committee was formed with three-quarters of them being people with a disability.

“It wasn't an easy time and getting to places was always a big problem. Disabled people often had to rely on their carers to help them to get to places on time. The seeds were being sown in those days for the things that people with disabilities have today.”

The first newsletter of the WMCDP was published in February 1981 and, just like Ken and Maggie Davis and their colleagues in Derbyshire, the editor of the publication, which was called Pinpoint, took inspiration from the fact that it was International Year of Disabled People and that not a great deal was happening.

The title of the front page editorial of Pinpoint was Time To Disturb The Public and alongside it was the logo of International Year of Disabled People:

“What is happening! We read such headlines as ‘old and disabled hit by ban on centres’, ‘Social Services cuts influence the services to the old and disabled’, ‘Home helps and Meals on Wheels to be reduced’.

“This is 1981, the year designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Disabled Persons and in this country known as the International Year of Disabled People. One of the aims of the year is to increase public understanding of what disability is and awareness of the problems it brings.

“Such headlines as these only add further in reducing the quality of life of those people who need a greater degree of support for their well being. Surely we should be building not destroying.

“The second aim of the year is ‘the participation, equality and integration of disabled people’. Integration means the absence of social barriers, being treated like everyone else, the absence of segregation. Some of these barriers have occurred throughout history when it was easier to put ‘oddities’, be they homeless, poor or disabled, in an institution, our consciences were then absolved by our ‘charity’.

“It is only since the experience of the First World War that we have come to realise that disabled people can think and express themselves as well as those with no apparent disability.

“The ultimate goal would be that disabled people must have the same opportunities and equal rights as the rest of us. The right to go to work, the right to enjoy leisure time to the full and to go where they want, when they want. In fact the right of choice.

“If we are to communicate the message of the International Year, disabled people must not be seen to be seeking special treatment or privileges. They must express their views without any tendency towards self-centredness and consistently aim to overcome the problem within people of inherent ignorance. The public must be disturbed and made aware during the International Year of Disabled People.”

Another editorial on the inside page of Pinpoint, authored by Ted Marsland, Chair of the WMCDP, explained the reason for a local organisation working on behalf of all disabled people:

“There are many excellent organisations that provide advice and help for people with particular forms of handicap and others which provide a more general form of service, but those who work for the disabled in the West Midlands would, I think, readily admit that there remains a need for an effectively co-ordinated distribution of information on aids and services for the handicapped.”

Another article, Many Hands Make Light Work, written by Dr John Todd, also acknowledges this seemingly new trend for umbrella partnerships around service provision to disabled people with a nod in the direction of the participation of disabled people themselves:

“The council was seen as a group of people who either represented statutory or voluntary bodies concerned with disability, and who themselves were disabled or had a general interest in their problems.

“The early aims were to make statutory and other bodies more aware of disability, to make information available about services in the West Midlands and to encourage an educational programme for those people who may be involved.

“In the four years since the council started, it has certainly made people more aware of the needs and is now able to set up an information service; it will continue to run seminars on specific subjects. Much remains to be done particularly in support of other voluntary organisations, but this takes time and money.”

Chapter 2 - continued

But, if the resolve within the WMCDP seemed radically loud and proud back in 1981, a still stronger battle-cry was to sound in 1985 when Bob Findlay, a disabled activist, brought together a small group of local disabled people to form the Birmingham Disability Rights Group.

Bob Findlay was just 21-years-old and unemployed when he too had read Paul Hunt’s letter to The Guardian back in 1972. Born in Bedfordshire in 1951, Bob had been disabled since birth and remembered his childhood as being fairly isolated. Tutored at home in his early years, Bob was sent to boarding school when he was six-years-old, firstly to Northampton and later to one in Tonbridge, Kent:

“I missed out on basic family life which was further compounded when I was sent to the boarding school in Tonbridge run by the organisation now known as Scope, but formerly known as the Spastics Society. I never really liked school – I just seemed to lack confidence in my own ability. I've always had a big gob and I was questioning them all the time – so I wasn't popular.”

Bob’s feelings of disaffection and isolation grew heavier whilst he was at school and he recalled being the only person in the sixth form who was never picked to be a prefect. At the age of 17 this was devastating:

“Looking back I could probably have done the school for psychological abuse. I once wrote some poetry for a girl at school and the teachers confiscated it because they felt it to be offensive – I had expressed feelings about ‘love’ and ‘caring’ so it had to be censored.”

In spite of his dislike of and sense of alienation at school, Bob attained eight 'O' levels, but flunked his 'A' levels due to the pressures he felt he was under. A short spell at a Spastics Society further education college studying computer programming, which Bob describes as ‘a wrong choice’, came to an abrupt end when his father died in the early 1970s – it was a big knock and Bob now found himself unemployed and seeking direction.

Around this time Bob contacted Paul Hunt and became actively involved in the establishment of the Union for the Physically Impaired Against Segregation alongside Vic Finkelstein and other activists:

“I became involved with Paul Hunt, the founder of the modern disabled person's movement. I responded to Paul's legendary ‘letter to The Guardian’ and then I joined the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS). If it hadn't been for Paul I would never have got involved in the disability movement and wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today. Paul was my guru.”

Bob’s involvement with UPIAS was, however, short-lived. The development and public expression of his own ideas on disability from the perspective of the socialist critique very quickly proved to be, in his own view, too radical for those around him:

“I was becoming more interested in socialist ideas and I wrote a paper on disability and capitalism for the UPIAS newsletter. My critique set out to show how capitalism creates the structures which exclude and oppress disabled people.

“I, therefore, argued that disabled people need to make links with other oppressed groups, such as gay people and black people. But this was far too radical for people to deal with, so in the end I left UPIAS and got involved with socialist groups like the International Marxist Group.”

Bob's Left-wing commitment and beliefs were soon to get him into trouble. Having completed a BA degree in History and Sociology at Essex University in 1976, Bob had commenced his MA at the same university. However, the course was cut short when his extra-curricula political activities were exposed by a crusading national newspaper who published an article headlined Carry On Revolting about the Left-wing student who, they implied, was receiving a grant from the tax-payer to do a “PhD in agitating and revolting”.

Suddenly Bob was to feel the shadow of social ostracism, as universities around the country now closed their doors to him. Only the University of Birmingham would offer him a place to do his PhD:

“I studied at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Edgbaston, collaborating on the publication of a book – The Empire Strikes Back – a study of racism and race relations in the late 1970s which set out to show how state intervention at that time was based on racist structures and policies.”

When Bob first arrived in Birmingham his interest in disability rights issues was secondary to his passion for the wider politics of the Left. But, within a few years, he would start to make fresh contacts with other disabled people and, through those relationships, would bring together a new organisation to campaign for the rights of disabled people in the UK’s second city.

One of those people was Maria Mleczko, a disabled woman who nowadays reflects that what she had most in common with Bob Findlay was being “a maverick” and, like Bob, her sense of rebellion as a young disabled person was born out of the frustration of other people controlling her life and limiting her own choices.

Born in Leicester to Polish parents, when Maria left school her mother became worried about her future prospects and persuaded her to move to Birmingham to live in residential accommodation and to work in a sheltered workshop:

“I came to Birmingham in 1969 to work in a sheltered workshop called Meadway Works in Garretts Green Lane. We made wheelchairs, did laundry and we also did capstan work and printed Christmas cards for ‘the disabled’. It was run by the Spastics Society.

“A friend and I got told off once (because when someone new came, they bring you round, ‘isn’t it lovely?’ to sell it) somebody actually asked us what we thought and, without thinking about it from the workshop’s point of view or anybody else, we actually told them what we thought. We didn’t like it!

“But we were here and we put up with it. Ideally we still wanted to be at home. If you think about it, most of us had been away from home – I had been away since the age of four. It might be different now, I don’t know, I am not young enough to know. But, deep down, I wanted some kind of home life. So when she asked me I must have been feeling particularly sad. ‘I don’t like this place’, we both told the visitor! We got told off!”

Most of Maria’s work colleagues also had cerebral palsy, although she liked the fact that there were also some non-disabled employees. On the whole, she felt pleased to have a job and, in spite of her out spoken views at times, generally enjoyed the work.

However, because the work was sub-contracted from larger Birmingham companies such as Lucas, contracts had a tendency of being sporadic, there were periods when things were quiet and the employees were still paid whilst doing very little.

Such periods brought home to Maria the token gesture nature of sheltered workshops:

“I was on the assembly section and used to put things from one box into another box – that sort of thing. So it was all right when you had a job. When you didn’t have a job you still had to go to work because you were paid to go, it got a bit boring. We used to say to them ‘I am bored’ and they would reply ‘but you are being paid’.

“They didn’t seem to understand the principle, from my perspective at least, that getting paid isn’t the only thing – you need to feel proud and happy. You didn’t want to be falling asleep!”

Chapter 2 - continued

Another disabled woman destined to become a founder member of Birmingham Disability Rights Group with Bob Findlay and Maria Mleczko was Katherine Walsh.

Brought up in Birmingham, Katherine had decided not to put up with being a second class citizen from an early age. As an individual she embarked on a letter writing strategy to point out discrimination, poor access and general injustice.

“I think it has always been an issue for me. Right from the age of about 18 I was writing off to the ministry about wheelchairs and stuff because you never seem to have the right to choose what kind you had at all. I have always done the letter writing to MPs, so in that sense it has developed from that really.”

In the early 1980s, Katherine went to London to study a degree course at university and then took on a one-year training course to train as a teacher. There Katherine formed allegiances with other like-minded disabled people through which she realised the power of collective campaigning:

“I was in London in the mid-1980s and I got involved with the students union. We campaigned about access to the students union because it seemed it was a right for everybody else to be able to share social facilities at the university, but not, however, anybody in a wheelchair.

“From that we set up the campaign, Sian Vasey got involved because she was nearby in Camden and we set up a working group with different unions, staff and students with disabilities and we did quite a few different things. We got the disability responsibility tacked on to somebody’s job. I don’t know if they were thankful for it or not. Probably not.

“After we left, one person stayed on in the students union and they were able to get the access improved, which is what we had started out to do. So it was quite an eventful year – although probably not in terms of the actual course that I did!

“I did meet quite a lot of people and found attitudes towards disability in London quite different to those in Birmingham. A lot more flexibility, certainly amongst the people that I worked with. They were more receptive to changing ideas.”

As well as the campaigning work that Katherine was directly involved in at university, she also became aware of external organisations in London and wider national issues and campaigns:

“I met Bert Massey during that year at university and we invited him to speak – I think it was probably one of his early years in RADAR. I think people, non-disabled people, liked listening to him. We took over the lectures on the morning that he came.

“I wasn’t very knowledgeable about disability issues and language and stuff at the time, but he seemed OK. I was in the process of learning as well.

“Really and truly there wasn’t a lot of knowledge about disability issues or looking at the situation for teachers – particularly special needs – amongst anyone at the Institute of Education, which was housed in an inaccessible building.

“My feeling was that here I am in the GLC area and the Inner London Education Authority which had published the Fish report. It was supposed to be the most progressive about disability and yet, when it came to teaching practice, they couldn’t find anywhere for me to go, except somewhere where the head of department didn’t really want me. They just wanted a token gesture of a disabled person in the school to say that they were keeping up their Equal Ops, that is what I felt about it.

“That seemed to me to go right the way through the education system. That if they could have somebody on a temporary part-time basis to do a little bit of work, they had fulfilled their requirements for Equal Ops. There is a lot of noise made about special needs and access to schools for disabled children or children with disabilities and they have never thought in terms of anybody being a teacher or anything like that. That wasn’t thought of at all.”

During this period of time, whilst Katherine was campaigning for greater access at university in London and Maria was becoming increasingly frustrated by the limitations of work in the sheltered workshop at Garretts Green, Bob Findlay had begun to consider the idea of setting up a disability rights group in the city.

Living permanently in Birmingham, Bob's active interest in disability politics had become rekindled by 1983. His personal experience of discrimination led him to look around the city for a group to join, but nothing seemed to stand out:

“I remember at that time there was the West Midlands Council for Disabled People. I regarded them as a well-meaning group of disabled and non-disabled people, but working very much within a ‘charity model’ of disability. Instead I joined the national Liberation Network for People with Disabilities and then, pulling together a small group of disabled and non-disabled people, we set about starting up a new group in Birmingham.”

Fate was on their side, a funding opportunity came through the Inner City Partnership Fund and as Bob and a colleague, Marion Bowles, sat down to draft a funding proposal, in a flash of inspiration Bob came up with a name for the group and Birmingham Disability Rights Group (BDRG) was born.

Following the International Year of Disabled People in 1981, a number of key events occurred which were to add further momentum to what was increasingly being termed ‘the disabled person’s movement’. The following year many of the UPIAS organisations came together to form a new umbrella organisation – the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP).

Chapter 3 - Defining moments and Building Bridges

In the same year an agency in America, the Committee on Restrictions against Disabled People, recommended that the US government adopt Anti-Discrimination Legislation whilst in the UK, well-known Member of Parliament Jack Ashley, who was deaf, made the very first attempt to introduce Anti-Discrimination Legislation into British law. Jack Ashley’s efforts were not successful, but they inspired a growing, and relentless, campaign which eventually led to the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995.

Also in 1982 the United Nations (UN) adopted a World Programme of action concerning Disabled People and the following year the UN General Assembly proclaimed a Decade of Disabled Persons to 1992. In 1984, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights was amended to specifically include the rights of disabled people and so it was that by the mid-1980s, the disabled people’s movement was not only firmly established in Great Britain and North America, but had now taken on global dimensions.

Bob Findlay summarised how many disability activists and academics now view the early 1980s:

“So the early ‘80s were for disabled people, the equivalent of the late ‘60s for the radical agendas around Vietnam, black power and women’s liberation. I would say that the early ‘80s was actually a defining moment for that political culture to suddenly come on over.

“The International Year got people thinking and it certainly showed some shred of light that people picked up on. But here it was more about rights of individuals to begin with, one disabled person and one non-disabled person who was very supportive, actually sitting down and you know saying ‘yes this sounds sensible’.”

To coin a well-known phrase of environmental activism which was first attributed to David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth in 1969, rather pertinently in the context of this book, most probably originated in concept from the writing of a town planner named Patrick Geddes in 1915, in the early ‘80s Birmingham was about to become a very good example of a place that was ‘thinking globally and acting locally’.

After leaving the University of Birmingham and working with young people in Brierley Hill, in the West Midlands borough of Dudley, Bob Findlay landed some work as a researcher looking at the needs of disabled people in Birmingham:

“What the project did was to make me realise how much ignorance and prejudice existed in society around disabled people.

“One day when I went to visit the Trade Union Resource Centre in the Jewellery Quarter, I got a ticket for parking too long on a yellow line. That infuriated me and again galvanised my feelings that disabled people are not only discriminated against, but oppressed by the system.

“That had been my view for about 15-20 years, but I had felt that I couldn’t go down the route that UPIAS had gone, because it was too inward looking so I switched off and took, if you like, my eye off the ball. But my own personal experience of getting this ticket, of constantly going for a job, not getting interviews etc really started to hit home.”

In 1983, returning to live and work in Birmingham from his short spell in Brierley Hill and driven by both his own personal experience and by the wider findings of his research, Bob took a hard look around to see what existed for disabled people. Largely unimpressed, it dawned on him that something new was going to be needed if disabled people in the city were to achieve greater freedom and rights:

“In fairness to the West Midlands Council for Disabled People, I think it was trying to break out of the individual tragedy model, but was surrounded with people who were still very greatly into that.

“It was more geared around what I think we all know as the traditional building blocks: care, information, benefits. Very much the independency model of what we can do for disabled people without actually analysing why disabled people would be excluded or marginalised within the mainstream sector.

“So an organisation existed and was recognised which, in its own way, was a very traditional charity-type model. I felt that that was not going to resolve the issues that I felt were being raised by society’s attitudes and practice for all disabled people.”

Bob’s personal thinking in terms of the direction of the emergent disability rights movement and what could be developed locally in Birmingham, continued to be based around the Marxist viewpoint, an analysis in which for him very firm links could be made between the emerging disability movement and his recent research around racism, race politics and trade unionism.

“There are several things that came together as a set. If you recall I said I had visited the Trade Union Resource Centre when I got my ticket so I got them immediately on board to support my individual campaign against the ticket.

“I also discussed with them what was wrong with society and why disabled people got such ‘a shit deal’. I asked a colleague with whom I went over the pub ‘why isn’t there a movement of disabled people under your umbrella?’ He replied that he had read about BCODP, so I said ‘OK I will try to find out more about them’.

“Curiously enough, a few weeks later I picked up a copy of Disability Now (I am not sure what it was called then) and there was an advert in there about a meeting in London. It was a meeting of a liberating network of people with disabilities.

“I went to the meeting and learned that they were establishing a disability nerve centre in London which I thought ‘that sounds like what I want to do in Birmingham’. Then during a discussion on social oppression I thought ‘that’s funny that’s what I wanted to do’ and I immediately got involved in the network.”

Following an advertisement in the Birmingham Evening Mail, Bob went to see a funding advisor named Marion Bowles who was providing mentoring support to new organisations on behalf of Birmingham City Council. Marion helped Bob to complete a grant application to provide the funds needed to launch Birmingham Disability Rights Group.

Bob’s next objective was to hold meetings around the city to promote the idea of a new group and also to measure the general feelings of disabled people in the city at the time. Would other people share his frustration and anger and, if so, would they share his aspiration for a new group run by disabled people?

It was a long haul. Personal computers and desk-top printers were not widely owned in the early ‘80s, even so, Bob managed to produce a leaflet about the group and a flyer which could be used to promote meetings. He booked the group’s first meeting at Tindal Street School in Balsall Heath and began distributing the promotional flyers everywhere and to everyone he met.

In spite of Bob’s greatest evangelical efforts, the first meeting of Birmingham Disability Rights Group was not a terribly great success:

“I booked a room and I waited there on the night and nobody else came! So BDRG didn’t get off to a very good start!”

Undeterred, Bob continued to distribute leaflets and slowly began to meet individuals who were expressing an interest in the group. Within a few months BDRG membership grew from three people to five then to 12 and soon to 50, as slowly the word of mouth went round that once a month a group of disabled people were going to meet to discuss various ideas, the main one being a campaign group, but at the centre of it all would be the establishment of a disability resource centre.

Chapter 3 - continued

One of the earliest members of the BDRG, Maria Mleczko, recalls her initial involvement:

“That is what started me off, because I actually got fed up with the way people treat us. Not everybody, but the majority. You know, if you are with your carer they will talk to the carer and not to you first. Sometimes when you ask for something they look at you as if to say that you shouldn’t have it. So I got involved – I was quite innocent when I was 19 and 20.

“Originally it was just a monthly meeting and we talked about demonstrating, about public transport and whatever issue was around at the time.

“I can’t remember how I first got involved. When it started they used to do a lot of mailing and there were things in the library. Once a month we met in various meeting rooms in Birmingham, a couple of times it was the voluntary place in Digbeth.

“I remember feeling quite scared actually because, like anything, when you join a new group a lot of people are experts and they are all talking and, initially, you are thinking ‘I don’t think that this is for me’.

“So you gently have to be led in – even if it is something stupid. I remember Bob saying to me ‘say something – even if I disagree with it, say something to me, as you have got to learn to try to express yourself’. Bob made quite a good impression on one, I would say, as he started the ball rolling. I often wish that he was around to kick a few people now.”

An early BDRG flyer of 1985 invited potential members to attend monthly meetings and to join the new organisation. The flyer was illustrated with cartoon images representing disabled people in both positive and negative situations, including images of wheelchair racing and disabled people living independently, alongside images of people being discriminated against and being given poor access to public places.

The editorial of the flyer was written in a very forthright manner, terms which seem perfectly reasonable 25 years later, but, at the time, were without doubt very radical:

“Over the last few years, a new uncompromising mood has developed where people with disabilities have seen it as important to reject the passive acceptance of our situations. Instead, we have started taking a pride in ourselves and our bodies and coming to see ourselves as handicapped, not by the nature of our conditions, but by a society which is still not prepared to cater for our needs or regard us as equals.

“It is time to destroy the myths and assumptions made about people with disabilities. It is wrong to reduce people to an all-inclusive label: The Disabled.

“We are people who happen to have disabilities which may or may not affect our lifestyles. We believe society’s division between those classed as disabled and those who regard themselves as normal or able-bodied is based upon values which are oppressive to the majority of people within our society.

“Such divisions lead to false expectations, the under-evaluation of people’s capabilities and the denial of basic rights and needs.”

The flyer went on to deal very directly with inferences from the wider community that disabled people organising their own groups must have chips on their shoulders, but also emphasised that the BDRG was ‘not anti able-bodied people’.

Ultimately though, what was very radical, both in a local and national context, was that the BDRG was going to be run by disabled people:

“We feel it is important that BDRG is run by people with disabilities and that meetings where policy is made are not open to the able-bodied. Full membership is open to people with disabilities which includes voting rights and associated membership for our able-bodied supporters.”

Amongst the intended activities of the newly-formed Birmingham Disability Rights Group, expressed on this early flyer, was to publish a newsletter which would keep members informed and ensure that those unable to attend meetings could, nevertheless, participate in decision making. Within a few months Bob and his growing team published Building Bridges, the newsletter of BDRG.

Produced in its early years on a very tight budget, sometimes two or three sheets of typed and photocopied A4 paper held together by a staple in the top left-hand corner, Building Bridges generally made up in content what it lacked in design impact.

The editorial of the September 1986 edition drew parallels between apartheid, which still existed in South Africa at that time and the experiences of disabled people in Britain. Such a powerful comparison may still be difficult for many people to understand, even today:

Britain's Apartheid?

Many of us must have seen the awful pictures from South Africa and felt that terrible pain of helplessness when we see what is happening there. We, the majority of us, have no idea what it is like to live in such an oppressive environment, but most of us have witnessed a form of oppressive apartheid in Britain.

People with disabilities are still treated like second-class citizens. We see access and opportunities denied us. Some are exploited as cheap labour or refused enough money to meet our needs. We are, therefore, an oppressed group living in a society which fails to allow us a voice and adequate resources.

BDRG was formed to help to change this situation and to fight for equal opportunities and rights for all people with disabilities. We feel that it is time to let the public know the truth about our position within society.

We believe we should organise a lobby of a council meeting where we can explain to the city councillors why we feel we live under a form of apartheid.

All over Britain local groups of disabled people were expressing similar ideas to those written in Building Bridges. Sheffield-based rights activist Linda Laurie explained her moment of enlightenment as a disabled person:

“I met somebody, who I suppose was my mentor, his name was Simon Brisenden, unfortunately he is no longer with us, but he was an amazing person, a disabled guy, a writer and poet. I went along to a meeting, I think I was cajoled into it by him.

“At that meeting people were speaking from Hampshire Centre for Independent Living and they talked about the social model of disability and about the discrimination against disabled people being a civil rights issue and it was just like ‘wow, well yes of course it is’. Once I knew about the social model and began to learn about it, there was really no going back, you can’t accept being treated as a second class citizen any longer.”

Chapter 3 - continued

The Building Bridges newsletters of the late 1980s provide a fascinating record of the BDRG’s activities, campaigns, meetings, members and workers from 1986 onwards. Bob’s articulate, outspoken and candid campaigning style inspired others in the group to take up issues in a very public way, writing letters, organising events and lobbying external organisations and individuals. Some key activities included:

November 1986: BDRG members join a television discussion on language and disability on the LINK programme; Maria Mleczko and Alun Davies attend a national conference on Centres for Integrated Living.

December 1986: Alun Davies and Bob and Brenda Findlay attend a national meeting of the Liberation Network of People With Disabilities.

March 1987: A protest from BDRG about medical model representation of disabled people by the Manpower Services Commission is taken up by the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People.

May 1987: BDRG attends a lobby of Parliament on the issue of the Disabled Persons Act.

September 1987: BDRG supports a disabled couple fighting for custody of their child in the High court; BDRG challenges the use of the term “spastics“ by a member of the royal family and by The Sun newspaper which repeated the term in its headline when reporting the incident; BDRG criticises the use of the term ‘disabled people’ by the LINK television programme and the underlying politics.

October 1987: BDRG sets out why it is a political organisation and, therefore, does not seek charity status.

December 1987: BDRG enters into a debate with Birmingham City Council around the right of a local disabled couple to buy their adapted council house.

February 1988: BDRG challenges West Bromwich Albion on its assumption that all disabled supporters must be wheelchair users; A debate continues between Anne Rae of BCODP and Bob Findlay of BDRG about the use of the terms ‘disabled people’ (preferred by BCODP) and ‘people with disabilities’ (preferred by BDRG); BDRG joins a debate around the closure of Martineau House, a seaside school, by Birmingham City Council.

April 1988: Discussions begin with both the Birmingham Evening Mail and BBC Radio WM about the use of language to describe disability.

Throughout this increasingly intensive period of campaigning on different issues by BDRG members, one underlying issue remained a constant, right from the Group’s very first meetings and newsletters. This was the aim to establish a Disability Resource Centre run by and for people with disabilities.

In November 1986, BDRG published a special edition of Building Bridges calling for a lobby of Birmingham City Council:

SUPPORT BDRG GIVE A VOICE - TO PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Help Build the Lobby

We are now only days away from holding our first major public event as an organisation and there is still much to be done. BDRG is holding the lobby to increase public awareness of the needs of people with disabilities to give ourselves a voice and to press for a new Disability Resource Centre.

Our lobby will only be a success if we, the members of BDRG, make it worthwhile. The more people we have there the greater will be the impact. Members should try to attend if at all possible and we must try to get our friends to join us. Some people will need transport – please let us know as soon as possible so that we can arrange it.

It has not been possible to get a show off the ground and a display of posters and photographs still needs putting together. We have organised a meeting between a BDRG delegation and city councillors to be held:

One o'clock in Room three at the Council House.

We are also hoping for support from national organisations of people with disabilities. Placards are being prepared with these agreed slogans:

DISABILITY IS AN ISSUE

PUT PEOPLE FIRST

SPEAK TO US NOT FOR US

WHAT'S “NORMAL” ANYWAY?

ATTITUDES HANDICAP PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

WE NEED A DISABILITY RESOURCE CENTRE

DISCRIMINATION KEEPS US APART

Maria and I are keen to know who among our members are able to attend the lobby so we can finalise our plans. Please let us know if you are coming.

The time has come to stand up and be counted – can we count on you?

Bob Findlay explained the development of the ideas behind the Disability Resource Centre:

“Just to put things together, I went to London and met a network who were discussing a resource centre; but I want to make it clear that although I thought that was a good idea it wasn’t simply ‘nicking’ the idea from somewhere else.

“My raison d’etre (which I think is still valid today) is that if disabled people are isolated and marginalised and not actually visible then how the hell do you bring them together? How do they know each other exists outside of being bunged into a day centre or isolated in their residential home or whatever? So I thought the Resource Centre would have three functions.

“One, to raise the visibility of disabled people to announce to Birmingham ‘hey we’re here!’ to both disabled and non-disabled people.

“Secondly, to bring in this trade union aspect, I saw it as an organising centre, ie a physical locality where disabled people could come and self-identify, self-organise and, therefore, start to develop a positive self-image of who and what they were.

“And thirdly, of course, is that by having a centre which has various activities that would build the confidence and the ability of the local disabled people to take some control over their own life. Very much a worked out view of what role the Resource Centre would have.

“You had the material badge of the Resource Centre, but the social political aspect and the campaigning and the awareness raising would be done by the Group. That was, if you like, the two-pronged attack.

“So, from 1985, we began to sell our idea to the council, to our organisation and to disabled people and in September 1986 we began our feasibility study by holding a day-long meeting in a day centre in Birmingham.”

Chapter 3 - continued

Two other early members of BDRG were Alun Davies and Carl Freeman. Here Carl, who was working for RNIB at the time, describes how he first met Alun and became involved in BDRG following the highly unusual catalyst of a bar room brawl in a Birmingham pub:

“The first I became aware of Birmingham Disability Rights Group was when I attended a one-day disability awareness course on the Birmingham University Campus in the 1980s. It was facilitated by Bob Findlay.

“I was struck by his approach and I guess the session helped to move on my thinking – giving an equality and human rights dimension to disability and to my own disability awareness. I passed on my address to Bob so he could send me more information on the work of BDRG, but I assumed he lost it as I didn't hear anything.

“Some months later I was standing at the bar of the Kings Arms at the top of Harborne High Street. It was relatively early on a Saturday night, but it was quite busy in there. I had noticed a blind guy at the other end of the bar talking to the barman – pint in one hand and folded long cane in the other.

“Suddenly the most almighty fight began between what I assumed to be two gangs – but other drinkers seemed to be joining in with enthusiasm. Fists, glasses and chairs began to fly.

“At this point an exit seemed appropriate. I have never been clear in my own mind as to whether my offer of help to the blind guy was an altruistic act, or whether I felt my chances of self-preservation would be enhanced if I had a blind bloke on my arm (assuming that no one would hit me)!

“Whatever the motivation I found myself performing sighted guide ‘under fire’. It is, perhaps, worth noting that we were both clutching our respective beers as we sought refuge at the top of the stairs that led to the pub's function room.

“This was also the first and only occasion when I have ‘audio described’ a punch-up as the fight spilled out from the bar, into the foyer, past the foot of the stairs and then out on to the street. Introductions did not occur until after the last of the combatants had left the premises and the manager and staff had begun the clean-up operation.

“And so that is how I first met Alun Davies. On discovering his involvement with BDRG, my growing interest in disability rights once again had direction and momentum. This time my contact details made it to the BDRG office and I received an invitation to the first of many committee meetings.

“Now that we have Google and other search engines it is relatively easy to track down ‘shadowy groups’, to read all about their activities online and use the ‘contact us’ link to do just that. But back in the 1980s it was much harder.

“You may have half a name or a rough idea of what an organisation is called, but how do you track them down if that's all you have – no address or phone number and the internet and email yet to become part of everyday life?

“I suspect that many of those who were actively involved in the brawl at the Kings Arms that night ended up with cuts and bruises and a sore head (not to mention a ban from entering that particular pub again).

“The outcome for me was much more positive. I got myself education and the chance to participate in a very different sort of fight. The fight for equality and civil rights for disabled people.“

Alun Davies now chairs the Disability Committee of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and Carl Freeman is Health and Social Care Policy Manager with The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association.

Katherine Walsh joined the fight for equality and civil rights in a slightly different, though no less memorable way, following what she describes as “an exciting and mind blowing day conference” at Tilton Road Day Centre in Small Heath:

“There were quite a lot of people there. Certainly Alun Davies was there as well and Bob Findlay and Geraldine Egan, who did quite a lot of work for the Rights Group. She worked for NUPE at the time and was very supportive.

“Geraldine was instrumental in providing a lot of the kind of procedures that were necessary to form a group because of her union experience. It was quite a different group, it didn’t structure itself in the same way as other groups and it was quite radical really.

“It was interesting to move on from physical access. It is not really about physical access at all – it is about the way society treats you. That is just a by-line. Anybody can do access, but as a disabled person only you know how you feel about the way you have been treated and even ostracised.”

Chapter 3 - continued

In an article about the history of the BDRG published in the newsletter of the Birmingham Coalition of Disabled People in 2006, Katherine summarised the early years of the group:

“BDRG had been set up by a quartet of people and some radical views. Of particular importance was the use of language. Among the members were the more Left-wing oriented members of Social Services department, some trade unionists and others from around the city.

“Bob Findlay was, at that time, Development Worker and, later, Co-ordinator and Alun Davies was the Disability Awareness Trainer. The organisation was funded via Social Services and from equality training.

“The organisation met monthly, often at BVSC in Digbeth, but chose to move meetings around to give as many disabled people as possible the chance to participate in lively debate.

“The choice of terms was people with disabilities as opposed to the prevailing usage of disabled people and there were some particularly acrimonious disputes around this. Because of this Birmingham remained isolated from the rest of the Disability Movement until the early 1990s when BDRG became a member of BCODP (then known as the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People).

“BDRG was, from the beginning, a campaigning organisation and the local media bore the brunt of this. A regular monthly newsletter, written in columnar fashion like a newspaper, called Building Bridges was important to the wider membership in a city where transport posed an enormous problem in getting to meetings.

“Patronising images of disability in the newspapers and on the television were challenged and the use of appropriate terminology was also introduced. In this case, in line with the policy of BDRG, the term people with disabilities was introduced into the media. The STOMP campaign (Stop Their Offensive Media Propaganda) was one such campaign.

“Following the precedent set with the International Marxist Group, the organisation kept to a draft constitution and did not register as a company limited by guarantee. There was much interesting academic discussion that followed at other day conferences and this is an area that is non-existent in Birmingham at the moment. The lack of theoretical debate is greatly missed.

“A long-term aim of BDRG had been to set up a disability resource centre following a model already in existence in Waltham Forest, East London. Some of us visited this centre and some of the city councillors were also treated to a day trip there during the campaign to get a resource centre both revenue and capital funded.”

In 1987, having left the sheltered employment at the Scope factory in Garretts Green and now working at the BDRG, Maria Mleczko was asked to produce a business plan for the proposed Birmingham Disability Resource Centre project. The document contains a draft constitution, proposals around funding and other recommendations.

Shown the document in 2009, Maria said:

“I recall being the author of this because this was the six-month project that I was in. I never thought about how substantial it was at the time. It was wonderful – I just know that it was wonderful. You don’t think about it at the time. You are just busy working at it.

“I had mentoring support from the Birmingham Voluntary Services Council, but not much. A few people came in and I spoke to one of the two teachers who were on this course. I remember getting angry with this poor woman and she would say ‘Maria you shouldn’t be telling me this, you know you should be taking it to your Group’.

“When our monthly meeting was in the same building as this project I would leave home at 8 o’clock in the morning and I wouldn’t return until 10 at night. I thought ‘why come home?’ I did go out after I had done my day’s work for an hour or something, but why come all the way home and then back into town for the meeting? I am glad that somebody has still got some of the work that I did because that, in itself, makes me feel proud.”