Chapter 7 - continued

In fairness to Alan Holdsworth, behind the defiant guitar-strumming stage persona was a very considered strategic agenda for Birmingham’s disability community. In an interview in Pinpoint in Autumn 2000, Alan laid out his two key objectives which were closely connected to the new national agenda of the DAN network, the ‘Free Our People’ campaign:

"The ‘Free Our People’ campaign is about getting people out of institutions, but trying to make sure that our own homes don't replace those institutions. I came to the realisation that the way to do this won't always be about direct actions on national targets, we have to start developing strong, local activity to assure long-term success.

“My aim in Birmingham is to see if we can build a disabled community in a city which has, in the past, had a reputation for being fractured and disparate in terms of the local movement."

The Pinpoint article when on to explain that, on the whole, Alan had been encouraged by the willingness he had found from people in Birmingham to make a new start:

"There is a realisation that the issues which might be dividing the community can be put aside while we all try to find out what unites us. I see my job as helping that community come to fruition and develop it's own expectations."

Alan explained that the two central objectives he had for Birmingham were, firstly, to facilitate the establishment of a new Coalition of Disabled People:

"Power comes from people working together. Disabled people in Birmingham must be involved in identifying key issues affecting our lives in order that the council begins to work on our agreed collective agenda.

“The idea in the past that some elitist 'super crip' comes to town and can change everything internally on their own doesn't work. For instance, you can't force social services to radically change themselves around the social model of disability through policies or committees alone. Change must be driven by the community and people can only do this if they come together.

“A central part of how the Coalition intends to address change will be through issue based forums around the core aspects of full participation and equality. As I understand it, the Roman concept of a forum was to create a place where people meet, it wasn't the actual meeting itself.

“The forum is about the process of people meeting and sharing from their own personal experience, it's an on-going thing. We want it to be an outreach thing too, so invitations don't just go to the ‘usual suspects’, but we get people in who are currently experiencing difficulties, maybe with housing or independent living.

“As all of these forums begin to kick in, the disabled people of Birmingham will not only create a blueprint for Brum, but they will own it and the ownership of this blueprint will be central to the strategy of changing council policy and practice."

The second of Alan's key objectives, describing them as the things on which he would personally either stand or fall, was to be the establishment of an Independent Living Centre run by disabled people and providing services that disabled people had, he went on, been asking for over many years:

"We are involved in drawing up a business plan for a new centre at the moment. This plan will have been put before the council by December 1, the day that Birmingham celebrates the International Day of Disabled People at the Drum in Aston.

“The theme of the event at the Drum will be ‘Independent Living’, so we need to get people there in order to use this as an opportunity to ram home the need to have independent services in the city run by disabled people.

"Our International Day of Disabled People celebrations will have huge significance this year. I hope that all disabled people reading this interview will come together and join us at the Drum on this very historic occasion for Birmingham.

“We need all disabled people to be part of this change, so eventually we can help those of our brothers and sisters currently locked away to become free.”

Whilst there remains to this day many shades of opinion about Alan’s relatively brief period of influence whilst working for the Disability Equality Division in Birmingham, and his detractors came from both the political Left and the Right, it is difficult to dispute his strategic astuteness and the major personal impact he subsequently had on the disabled people’s community across the city – the very direct ramifications of which lasted for at least the next five years.

The IDDP event he was promoting in his Pinpoint interview turned out to be very successful, attracting disabled people from across the city, many of whom were new faces to either engagement or activism, or both, and even to the very notion of actually ‘celebrating’ disability for that matter.

Alan’s team at the Equalities Division, notably including Jon Coleman and Stuart Malpass, alongside members of the new Birmingham Coalition of Disabled People being given leadership at that time by individuals such as Rob Punton, Paul Green, Christine Chidzomba, Mark Lynes, Tom Comerford, Sam Brackenbury and Sandra Daniels, supported by other user-led groups, such as People First, People in Partnership, Disability West Midlands and the Black and Ethnic Minority Disability Partnership, quite literally pulled out the stops to make sure that the event had impact.

The event was a complete departure from anything similar that had previously happened in Birmingham on this scale, especially an event funded by the local authority. There was a strong emphasis on disability arts with stage performances from well-known artists such as Mat Frazer.

There were also a number of very engaging and innovative participatory activities throughout the day, such as a huge walk-or-roll-across Monopoly board on the theme of independent living and a giant wall on to which members of the public could post their issues of concern. Comments left on the wall were later incorporated into a blueprint for disability services in Birmingham published by Birmingham Coalition of Disabled People.

One of the other notable features about this symbolic event was the high profile presence of DAN whose uncompromising display materials and tables piled high with t-shirts bearing the loud and proud slogans of the disabled people’s movement, took pride of place in the main exhibition area.

It was an unquestionably overt statement which highlighted a clear and strong connection now existing between the newly formed Coalition of Disabled People, the DAN network and, whether they approved or not, Birmingham City Council.

Birmingham had suddenly gained a notoriety within the disabled people’s movement nationally which it had largely lacked since the peak years of Bob Findlay’s leadership of BDRG and his well-known public debates over language and philosophy (particularly with the Lancashire and Yorkshire based members of the UPIAS hierarchy in the late 1980s).

For the next few years the Coalition of Disabled People went from strength to strength, opening offices in the Custard Factory in Digbeth before moving to offices at the Southside Business Centre on Ladypool Road, which was by interesting coincidence the same building in which Birmingham Disability Rights Group had been located prior to the launch of the Disability Resource Centre.

Throughout this period the BDRC itself, for want of a better phrase, kept its head down. Reconciled to the position which had been adopted almost from day one of its opening, staff and trustees at BDRC remained focussed on service delivery and were, as far as outward appearances were concerned, happy for another organisation to be giving a collective campaigning and consultative voice to disabled people and taking on the political cut and thrust of policy and planning debate with the local authority.