If the 1980s was the decade in which the seeds of radical change were sown and nurtured, language, values and ground rules debated and action plans drawn up across the emergent disabled people’s movement, then the 1990s would be the decade when many of these plans came to fruition.
Disabled people remain diverse in their opinions as to whether those changes and actions were the right ones, were enough, or even went too far, but most will agree that visibly significant things began to happen from 1990 onwards.
As the chimes of Big Ben augured in the final decade of both the century and the millennium, change was on its way for disabled people across the world. In the United States this change was to come sooner rather than later.
The year, 1990, would witness the passing into statute of the Americans With Disabilities Act, an important piece of legislation giving equal rights to disabled people in the States for the first time in history. Similar legislation would not be introduced in Britain for another five years, until the controversial Disability Discrimination Act of 1995.
However, the agenda of the disabled people’s movement in the UK remained radical and was about to become more so. In 1990, Mike Oliver, a disabled academic and rights campaigner, published The Politics of Disablement. Becoming identified as one of the key writers of the movement and developing the social theories of disability of Finkelstein and UPIAS. Mike Oliver’s writing had much in common with Bob Findlay’s thinking, the exploration of the historical position of disabled people within a capitalist society.
But disabled people were becoming less preoccupied with academic debates and increasingly mobilised into action. A watershed took place on May 27, 1990, when thousands of disabled people from all over the country gathered outside London Weekend Television Studios to protest against the patronising way that disabled people were being portrayed by the television fund raising programme Telethon.
The protest helped to change both the media and public attitudes towards disabled people, making the statement that disabled people were no longer willing to be viewed as passive recipients of charity and were now demanding equal human rights alongside the rest of society. Rights activist Mike Higgins recalls the event:
“Prior to the events around Telethon, there were a number of direct action events associated with the Campaign for Accessible Transport (CAT) and other such activities, including events organised to campaign against patronising tv programmes like Telethon.
“However, the Block Telethon event was perhaps the culmination of our success in that area and the high point of the disabled people’s movement’s activity in proclaiming the obscenity of charity and the outraged character of our movement, when all we were demanding was equality.
“What Telethon, and similar events did and continue to do, is to trivialise the experience of disabled people, suggesting that by sitting in a vat of baked beans or by doing other such stupid stunts you can actually address the very serious discrimination faced by disabled people is offensive to say the very least. It also misses the point entirely that the cause of the discrimination we face is the way that society is organised.”
During this period, Birmingham Disability Rights Group were becoming more firmly established, increasingly more vocal and their campaign for a Disability Resource Centre was gaining momentum. Terry Vincent joined the group in 1989, initially through her friendship with Bob Findlay’s wife Brenda, but before long she was a fully committed disability rights campaigner:
“I had just finished a sociology degree when Brenda and Bob came to visit me. I thought that it was just a social call, but it turned out that Bob had a purpose – he invited me to join the Disability Rights Group.
“I’ve thought about that evening a lot, Bob knew I was a feminist and activist and he raised my consciousness of my disability identity which was a real awakening. My learning curve was steep and for the next 15 years I was able to get involved in some brilliant campaigns and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I actually always so much loved the women’s suffrage movement that I saw disability rights issues as being equivalent to suffrage issues so I was really ripe and ready to get involved.
“They invited me to a meeting in Vincent Drive in Ladywood and what I remember most about the meeting (which was very well attended) was that what people wanted from a resource centre was literally if a light bulb went, that there would be somebody that they could call upon instead of having to book someone from Social Services; or arrange for somebody special to come in ¬– that there would be a bank of people who disabled people locally could ring up. It was really about being a service provider to disabled people. So I remember that meeting really well.”
Terry began to attend the meetings of the Disability Rights Group, which at that time was based in an office near Aston Expressway, with some of its meetings taking place at Southside in Sparkhill, Birmingham. She recalls that active members of the group alongside Bob and Brenda included Dave Nugent, Robin and Tracy Surgeoner, Katherine Walsh and Maria Mleczko.
Terry remembers that it was often very difficult for the Group to maintain continuity in its proposed activities because of the challenges presented in things like trying to find suitable premises or obtain funding:
“BDRG moved offices three times within four years and this took up so much of our energies and time that would otherwise have been spent campaigning, holding meetings and getting new members.
“Each move was to more accessible and bigger premises, but each one also threw up new problems as none were central to the city centre, buses weren't accessible, there were problems with taxis and most members didn't have transport or personal assistants. We also had to contend with funding issues and investigating charitable status, to which we were opposed.
“It is important to emphasise the difficulties we faced each time. A lot of people had high expectations of us, but the reality was all this was done with next to no experience on the part of the two employees and very many members and volunteers.”
In 1990 she applied for the job of Project Officer with the BDRG – a post which Bob Findlay had recently resigned from. Prior to Terry’s first day in post, the group moved into new offices at Southside on the Ladypool Road in Sparkbrook.
Having resigned from being a paid worker, Bob himself had resumed his original role of unpaid BDRG chair: Terry recalls feeling a mounting sense of disquiet at having to step into Bob’s shoes and continue to meet the high expectations of the group, especially about having to be its very public spokesperson on controversial issues. Bob was going to be a hard act for anybody to follow:
“Bob had left me tons of written material on his perspectives and things he had written for various other things. Bob would usually give me tasks to do and one of them was to organise members at very short notice to go to the studios for a live programme called Central Weekend, which was on late in the evening. It was an era when disabled people were not given a voice on television. My initial reaction was to say ‘no, I don’t feel comfortable being a spokesperson!’ But as always I went along.
“So we went off to Central Weekend. I think Katherine Walsh and Jackie Johnson were there. Both Jackie and her friend were small women and also both wheelchair users and they were part of the Group at that time. So there were about four of us sitting in the front row of Central Weekend where we were to hijack the meeting and point out how inaccessible society was, even the fact that the television studio itself was inaccessible.
“I can’t remember what the actual topic being discussed was on Central Weekend that night, but there we were and I was charged with raising the issue, but we had all been given something to do. Then what did the bloody camera person do but they entirely focused on me and they ignored all the other people from the Disability Rights Group and just kept asking me questions and I was going ‘errmm’. It was awful.
“It was a baptism of fire and I was very hesitant for a good while after that to do any sort of public speaking on behalf of the Group. But again Bob would frequently come in and say ‘you need to go off to this event, you need to go off to that place or that conference and you must give the Disability Rights perspective and must educate people and must stand up and if necessary halt whatever is going on and speak up’.”
But in spite of the rigours of reluctantly becoming, at times, a very public rights activist, Terry was not easily dissuaded from her involvement with BDRG and began to throw more and more of her energies into the more practical mission of establishing a disability resource centre:
“Because the meeting at Vincent Drive indicated this was at that embryonic stage and Bob had met with Councillor Albert Bore from the city council, there had been some agreement in principle that a disability resource centre would be funded, but I think that it had gone really not much further.
“Yes, so the other task, apart from doing the social stuff, the publicity stuff, was to start looking at the funding for a DRC.”
Monday, 22 March 2010
Chapter 4 - continued
In the late 1980s, current leader of Birmingham City Council’s Labour Group and former leader of the council, Sir Albert Bore, was chair of the city’s Economic Development Committee. Sir Albert explains why the council supported the calls for a disability resource centre and also why funding was identified by this committee, as opposed to the traditional source of local authority funding for disability projects from social services:
"You might find it surprising that in many respects this came out of an Economic Development Unit and not out of a Social Services Department and I think that that is the context that you should explore to begin with.
“What’s that about is, that for a period in the mid to late 1980’s, the Economic Development Unit as it first was (it later became the Economic Development Department) was setting up a number of centres to help to push enterprise type activity and to assist with different groupings.
“Some of it, such as the Disability Resource Centre is still around and also the Credit Union Development Agency which was an initiative developed roughly in the same period. There were a number of Enterprise Centres assisting, for example, those in the black community.
“So there was some more specialised or focussed activity. You have to put that long gestation period up to the beginning of the 1990s into that context where there were a lot of resources going in to setting up centres serving different functions within the community.
“It was the lack of Government encouragement in the previous decade – this was the 1980s and it was a period of Thatcher government and unemployment. In Birmingham in 1984/85 there was an unemployment average rate of 25% and in some of the inner city wards it was more than 50%. So there were a number of council initiatives to try to put resource into communities, driven from the community base in that environment of a citywide economic crisis, if you like.”
As chair of the Economic Development Committee from 1984 to 1993, the negotiations, funding and planning of the proposed centre fell under the stewardship of Sir Albert’s committee with Susan O’Shea being one of the principle EDU officers liaising with Terry, Bob and the members of BDRG.
Sir Albert is asked whether he thinks the development of a user-led centre back in the early ‘90s was more successful because it was viewed as an entrepreneurial enterprise as opposed to a social care service. Was the development less bureaucratic than it might have otherwise been?
“It is hard to say really. What my memory tells me is that you had a number of champions around who wanted to see this as a resource led by the community and the community of people with disabilities.
“It was possibly also because it was Economic Development Unit driven that it had a less bureaucratic (your choice of words) form. Perhaps if it had come through a Social Services lead it might have taken a different form – we will never know will we?”
Susan O’Shea worked closely with Terry and the BDRG board on the development, not just of the proposed Centre, but in terms of the Rights Group itself. Susan explained:
“Well there was a dual approach really. There was work to support the core group (which was the Birmingham Disability Rights Group) to develop its own organisation to put in place things like constitution; to run its own affairs; to develop itself as an organisation in its own right and to develop a membership base.
“Flowing from that there was a wider plan (being the enterprise side) which was to develop activities and projects that were services and activities that members wanted to utilise.
“Things like, for example, the Information and Resource Centre and Employment were key things always mentioned in consultations.
“But there was a lot of planning to do, a lot of work to actually move from a Group which was running an organisation to the point where you would run a full-scale project and building as well as manage staff and budgets.
“So a process needed to happen and that was a lot of capacity building and developmental work alongside the research itself to see if a centre was feasible, how it could be funded and how it could be managed and organised. It took time to do that.”
Robin Surgeoner was working for Birmingham City Council as a Sports Development Officer when he first encountered BDRG. As a paralympic athlete he had been appointed to work in the city and was visited by Maria Mleczko on behalf of BDRG.
He recalls that Maria was on a fairly resolute fact finding mission and needed reassurance that he was ‘on the good side’ in spite of working for the city council.
A few months after the meeting, in 1990, Robin’s wife Tracy became involved in the group and, before long, they were both full blown members.
In common with many disabled people, Robin recalls arguing for change from a social model before he had actually heard the term being used to describe this perspective:
“As early as 1985 I was arguing about access to sport and recognition of athletes, access to participation and all sorts of things, as a political issue, not just as a sports sort of nice thing, that was the whole point.
“I received my MBE in 1988 which was for services to disability sport, but was primarily about the fact I had been arguing and fighting for equality of recognition.
“Recognition that performance of excellence is personal and individual, it can’t necessarily be measured against able-bodied or non-disabled world records and things like that. So I’ve always come from that angle.
“I worked with what was then the London Disability Resource Team in piloting the very first National Disability Equality Training Package through the then British Sports Association for Disabled People, which was as it sounds, a sports organisation, but part of their vision was about access to participation as well.
“At a political level they had contacts which reached up to a ministerial level. I guess becoming known as the social model gave it a much more easily deliverable definition if you like. Although it’s astonishing how few people still really understand, or want to understand the issues.
“I came to the BDRG already pretty angry, for want of a better word and I’m now known by many people, as an artist known as Angry Fish. I wrote lots of prose, poetry, stories and articles that used to go into the BDRG newsletters. Then I met Bob.
“I have always had a good relationship with Bob as, for the majority of the time, we sing from the same hymn sheet. When we had the first International Day of Disabled People in ‘93, we were well established and BDRG effectively ran the majority of that day’s events in terms of disability arts and stuff like that, we were going to British Council of Disabled People (BCODP) conferences all over the place in the early ‘90s as well.
“I think that BDRG was probably one of the most powerful disability organisations Birmingham ever had. It was a thorn in the side of the council, it was a thorn in the side of the Evening Mail but, if there was ever something going on that was remotely about disabled people and wasn’t human interest stories, but actually took it to the next level, it was BDRG who the papers, who the BBC, who ITV Central... they came to us.”
Given the average age and the left of centre political convictions of the majority of BDRG members during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, perhaps an unlikely contributor to the long development phase of the Disability Resource Centre was a former George Dixon Grammar School pupil and RAF intelligence officer, Len Sutton.
After completion of his service with the RAF in the early 1950s, Len had embarked on a university degree course in engineering, followed by a long career in technical drawing and training management. In 1980 he was made redundant after nearly 30 years, but he soon landed a new post as supervisor of a Manpower Service Commission City Centre Access programme through Birmingham Voluntary Service Council.
His subsequent work, overseeing access surveys in the city, led to his appointment as Access Officer for a new group called Access For All in 1983. In 1987 he became the Director of the Access Committee for Birmingham, overseeing a substantial project to conduct access surveys across the city, with particular attention to the inner city wards of Birmingham.
Len’s technical expertise, along with his commitment to making the built-environment fully accessible, would be of great value to the BDRG. During the planning process for the Disability Resource Centre, Len worked closely alongside Bob Findlay, Katherine Walsh, Maria Mleczko, Robin and Tracy Sugeoner, Terry Vincent and other BDRG members to prepare documents such as reports and plans.
His expertise gave the Group an edge in its negotiations with the city council and his contribution was such that following his death, a room at the Disability Resource Centre was named in his memory in 1996.
"You might find it surprising that in many respects this came out of an Economic Development Unit and not out of a Social Services Department and I think that that is the context that you should explore to begin with.
“What’s that about is, that for a period in the mid to late 1980’s, the Economic Development Unit as it first was (it later became the Economic Development Department) was setting up a number of centres to help to push enterprise type activity and to assist with different groupings.
“Some of it, such as the Disability Resource Centre is still around and also the Credit Union Development Agency which was an initiative developed roughly in the same period. There were a number of Enterprise Centres assisting, for example, those in the black community.
“So there was some more specialised or focussed activity. You have to put that long gestation period up to the beginning of the 1990s into that context where there were a lot of resources going in to setting up centres serving different functions within the community.
“It was the lack of Government encouragement in the previous decade – this was the 1980s and it was a period of Thatcher government and unemployment. In Birmingham in 1984/85 there was an unemployment average rate of 25% and in some of the inner city wards it was more than 50%. So there were a number of council initiatives to try to put resource into communities, driven from the community base in that environment of a citywide economic crisis, if you like.”
As chair of the Economic Development Committee from 1984 to 1993, the negotiations, funding and planning of the proposed centre fell under the stewardship of Sir Albert’s committee with Susan O’Shea being one of the principle EDU officers liaising with Terry, Bob and the members of BDRG.
Sir Albert is asked whether he thinks the development of a user-led centre back in the early ‘90s was more successful because it was viewed as an entrepreneurial enterprise as opposed to a social care service. Was the development less bureaucratic than it might have otherwise been?
“It is hard to say really. What my memory tells me is that you had a number of champions around who wanted to see this as a resource led by the community and the community of people with disabilities.
“It was possibly also because it was Economic Development Unit driven that it had a less bureaucratic (your choice of words) form. Perhaps if it had come through a Social Services lead it might have taken a different form – we will never know will we?”
Susan O’Shea worked closely with Terry and the BDRG board on the development, not just of the proposed Centre, but in terms of the Rights Group itself. Susan explained:
“Well there was a dual approach really. There was work to support the core group (which was the Birmingham Disability Rights Group) to develop its own organisation to put in place things like constitution; to run its own affairs; to develop itself as an organisation in its own right and to develop a membership base.
“Flowing from that there was a wider plan (being the enterprise side) which was to develop activities and projects that were services and activities that members wanted to utilise.
“Things like, for example, the Information and Resource Centre and Employment were key things always mentioned in consultations.
“But there was a lot of planning to do, a lot of work to actually move from a Group which was running an organisation to the point where you would run a full-scale project and building as well as manage staff and budgets.
“So a process needed to happen and that was a lot of capacity building and developmental work alongside the research itself to see if a centre was feasible, how it could be funded and how it could be managed and organised. It took time to do that.”
Robin Surgeoner was working for Birmingham City Council as a Sports Development Officer when he first encountered BDRG. As a paralympic athlete he had been appointed to work in the city and was visited by Maria Mleczko on behalf of BDRG.
He recalls that Maria was on a fairly resolute fact finding mission and needed reassurance that he was ‘on the good side’ in spite of working for the city council.
A few months after the meeting, in 1990, Robin’s wife Tracy became involved in the group and, before long, they were both full blown members.
In common with many disabled people, Robin recalls arguing for change from a social model before he had actually heard the term being used to describe this perspective:
“As early as 1985 I was arguing about access to sport and recognition of athletes, access to participation and all sorts of things, as a political issue, not just as a sports sort of nice thing, that was the whole point.
“I received my MBE in 1988 which was for services to disability sport, but was primarily about the fact I had been arguing and fighting for equality of recognition.
“Recognition that performance of excellence is personal and individual, it can’t necessarily be measured against able-bodied or non-disabled world records and things like that. So I’ve always come from that angle.
“I worked with what was then the London Disability Resource Team in piloting the very first National Disability Equality Training Package through the then British Sports Association for Disabled People, which was as it sounds, a sports organisation, but part of their vision was about access to participation as well.
“At a political level they had contacts which reached up to a ministerial level. I guess becoming known as the social model gave it a much more easily deliverable definition if you like. Although it’s astonishing how few people still really understand, or want to understand the issues.
“I came to the BDRG already pretty angry, for want of a better word and I’m now known by many people, as an artist known as Angry Fish. I wrote lots of prose, poetry, stories and articles that used to go into the BDRG newsletters. Then I met Bob.
“I have always had a good relationship with Bob as, for the majority of the time, we sing from the same hymn sheet. When we had the first International Day of Disabled People in ‘93, we were well established and BDRG effectively ran the majority of that day’s events in terms of disability arts and stuff like that, we were going to British Council of Disabled People (BCODP) conferences all over the place in the early ‘90s as well.
“I think that BDRG was probably one of the most powerful disability organisations Birmingham ever had. It was a thorn in the side of the council, it was a thorn in the side of the Evening Mail but, if there was ever something going on that was remotely about disabled people and wasn’t human interest stories, but actually took it to the next level, it was BDRG who the papers, who the BBC, who ITV Central... they came to us.”
Given the average age and the left of centre political convictions of the majority of BDRG members during the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, perhaps an unlikely contributor to the long development phase of the Disability Resource Centre was a former George Dixon Grammar School pupil and RAF intelligence officer, Len Sutton.
After completion of his service with the RAF in the early 1950s, Len had embarked on a university degree course in engineering, followed by a long career in technical drawing and training management. In 1980 he was made redundant after nearly 30 years, but he soon landed a new post as supervisor of a Manpower Service Commission City Centre Access programme through Birmingham Voluntary Service Council.
His subsequent work, overseeing access surveys in the city, led to his appointment as Access Officer for a new group called Access For All in 1983. In 1987 he became the Director of the Access Committee for Birmingham, overseeing a substantial project to conduct access surveys across the city, with particular attention to the inner city wards of Birmingham.
Len’s technical expertise, along with his commitment to making the built-environment fully accessible, would be of great value to the BDRG. During the planning process for the Disability Resource Centre, Len worked closely alongside Bob Findlay, Katherine Walsh, Maria Mleczko, Robin and Tracy Sugeoner, Terry Vincent and other BDRG members to prepare documents such as reports and plans.
His expertise gave the Group an edge in its negotiations with the city council and his contribution was such that following his death, a room at the Disability Resource Centre was named in his memory in 1996.
Chapter 4 - continued
Birmingham Disability Resource Centre eventually opened in 1992, but only after a prolonged seven-year process of campaigns, meetings, reports, surveys, promises, offers and ample amounts of head shaking, door knocking, site visiting and form filling.
If disabled people were going to get their own centre in Birmingham, it was not about to arrive on a plate and the proverbial level playing field certainly existed in the sense that the Group were destined to inch slowly, though relentlessly forward, through the same local authority hoops and around the same pitfalls of official procedure as everyone else.
1985
August 1989
Operational Policy produced by BDRG setting down details for the running of the organisation. Completion date of refurbishment of Bierton Road stated as January 1992.
November 1991
September 1992
March 7, 1994
BDRC registered as a charity.
Sir Albert Bore recalls that the central driving force for everyone concerned was a spirit of perseverance that had been engendered by the 1980s:
“And in my opinion it was a spurious argument as they said ‘what if there is a conflict of interest between the BDRG, the host organisation, and the DRC itself?’
“It was around that time of the debate that the separation took place. But one of the big problems with that (which I think you can guess) was that all the money went in one direction – it went to DRC and BDRG had nothing.”
If disabled people were going to get their own centre in Birmingham, it was not about to arrive on a plate and the proverbial level playing field certainly existed in the sense that the Group were destined to inch slowly, though relentlessly forward, through the same local authority hoops and around the same pitfalls of official procedure as everyone else.
There would be no special treatment and no charitable handouts on this journey.
Some of the key milestones along the way included:
1985
Birmingham Disability Rights Group established, first discussion at BDRG on the idea of a resource centre run by and for disabled people:
Research carried out by BDRG suggested that the best plan for achieving its aims would be to set up a Disability Resource Centre (DRC) which will provide:
- a social meeting place
- training opportunities
- a comprehensive information and library service
September 1986
BDRG begins a feasibility study into the need and support for a Disability Resource Centre run by and for disabled people.
October 1986
A report submitted to Birmingham City Council by BDRG titled Disability (Resource) Centre with an additional Resource and Finance Breakdown
November 4, 1986
Birmingham City Council gives all-party support for the establishment of the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre (Resolution 8478).
April 1987
A response issued by the Economic Development Committee titled A Disability Resource Centre for Birmingham.
May 15, 1987
The report of the feasibility study is published from the BDRG office at Birmingham Tribunal Unit, Cornwall House, Lionel Street, Birmingham.
December 1987
BDRG publish a follow up to the feasibility study titled Why Birmingham Needs a Disability Resource Centre?
1988
Bob Findlay writes an article, Kerbing Disability Rights in Brum, for Birmingham Campaign News. The article looks at the cutbacks in council spending and its impact on disabled people.
February 1988
Disability Projects – A Report of Evaluation published by Economic Development (Community Enterprise Sub Committee).
April 1988
Joint report – A Disability Resource Centre for Birmingham – by the Director of Development Committee and the Director of Social Services to the Social Services Committee and the Economic Development Committee.
July 1989
Disability Resource Centre report by joint Economic Development / Education (Training and Employment Support Sub-Committee).
Tilton Road School designated as the site for the DRC. BDRG start investigations and assign an architect.
August 1989
Birmingham Disability Resource Centre – Feasibility Report by Emma Woolf of Radius Project Development brings together previous research and ties the development of the Tilton Road School plans to an action plan by a Working Party.
September 1989
Architect reports on unlikelihood of using the site. A new search begins for alternative premises.
October 1989
Architect reports that Tilton Road School will cost £1.5 million to repair and that the city is unlikely to provide the finance.
December 1989
Other buildings are considered, such as Ladywood Neighbourhood Centre and Bierton Road School.
September 1990
Programme of conversion of Bierton Road to office accommodation commenced with end date of December 1991.
February 1991
Operational Policy produced by BDRG setting down details for the running of the organisation. Completion date of refurbishment of Bierton Road stated as January 1992.
November 1991
The Birmingham Disability Resource Centre report by Radius Project Development.
September 1992
BDRC officer Anne Boothe writes an article in Pinpoint Magazine on the newly opened Disability Resource Centre.
February 11, 1994
Memorandum and Articles of Association incorporated.
March 7, 1994
BDRC registered as a charity.
Sir Albert Bore recalls that the central driving force for everyone concerned was a spirit of perseverance that had been engendered by the 1980s:
“It was perseverance on all sides really, but it was the environment of that decade where there were ideas bubbling up and where you had a political establishment, if you like, which was keen to run with ideas. You had people from the Disability Rights Group who persevered; you had officers of the council who persevered and the politicians persevered with the idea.
“Yes, it took a long time but, as we have already said, aspects of this had to be worked up, things were knocked back, resources were not available etc, etc, but in the end it happened. And I think that we just have to accept that this was one project which took a long time in gestation, but which, eventually, ended up very much in the vanguard, if you like, of what was happening anywhere in the country. And that is as a consequence of the perseverance on all sides.”
Perseverance was certainly what drove the members of BDRG, especially in response to some fairly significant knock-backs along the way such as the withdrawal of the provisional offer of the Tilton Road School site in October 1989 on the grounds of expense. Former BDRG management board member Katherine Walsh remembers that Tilton Road was a favoured site being closer to the city centre than the site they eventually settled on at Bierton Road in South Yardley.
The Group’s senior paid worker during this time, Terry Vincent, maintains that perseverance was more often than not reigned in by compromise, especially as the reality of the centre drew nearer and some staff and committee roles, therefore, began to metamorphose from the auspices of the freely acting and passionately autonomous Rights Group to the more measured and publicly accountable Resource Centre:
“BDRG was adamant about things, DRC were more pragmatic. So the same people on two committees could hold separate feelings. I did. I was torn a lot of the time between what is negotiable and what is non-negotiable.
“But, of course, the funders being so well versed in their own field were very good at saying why it had to be this, or that and the choice in the end was probably Hobson’s choice – no choice. It led to a lot of unhappiness because the people at BDRG were saying ‘we’re supposed to be running this’ and then we would come back from the meetings and say ‘yes, well the funders said this’.”
Bob Findlay also recalls this period of mounting division between the expectant parent organisation, BDRG and its imminently due off-spring, the Disability Resource Centre (DRC). Tensions began shortly after BDRG moved into its Sparkbrook office base at Southside, during the latter stages of the DRC’s development at Bierton Road:
“It was shortly after the move into Southside that the decision was taken to split the two projects into the BDRG and the DRC. I think it was partly to do with pressure from a number of sources.
“Personally, I think mainly from again officers in the council who were discussing the legality of setting up a board of directors for the DRC and whether they would be a company limited by guarantee, a charity; and the BDRG saying that we didn’t want to be a charity or anything to do with that.
“And in my opinion it was a spurious argument as they said ‘what if there is a conflict of interest between the BDRG, the host organisation, and the DRC itself?’
“It was around that time of the debate that the separation took place. But one of the big problems with that (which I think you can guess) was that all the money went in one direction – it went to DRC and BDRG had nothing.”
Chapter 4 - continued
Birmingham Disability Resource Centre opened its doors in the late summer of 1992. The following article introducing the new centre was written by BDRC worker Anne Boothe and was published in the September 1992 edition of Pinpoint, the magazine of Disability West Midlands:
Birmingham Disability Resource Centre
In this article Anne Boothe details the role of the Disability Resource Centre and describes some of the services available at the recently opened facility.
The Disability Resource Centre is a centre of excellence, encouraging the self activity of people with disabilities. The centre is run by and for people with disabilities, offering people the opportunity to become involved in management and training, support, advice and social activities. A range of services are offered from the centre and a number of groups have offices on the site.
A Reference Library and Information Service
The library is open from 10.00 am to 4.00 pm, Monday to Friday. It contains a comprehensive range of periodicals and a growing library of videos, tapes, Braille and printed matter.
The Information Service covers all areas and issues associated with disability and can be contacted by phone, tape and letter.
Information can be translated on to tape and into Braille and interpreters in spoken and sign languages will be arranged if requested.
Birmingham Disability Rights Group
The BDRG was the founder member of the Disability Resource Centre and still maintains a controlling interest. BDRG is a pressure group run by and for people with disabilities aiming to promote the rights of people with disabilities. Group membership entitlements include a monthly newsletter.
The Strawberry Studio Restaurant
The restaurant will be offering hot and cold drinks, snacks and hot food from September 2nd. The restaurant is staffed by people with disabilities. It can also provide catering for conferences held at the DRC.
An Equipment Pool
The equipment pool offers a range of aids and equipment available to hire for students and trainees with disabilities on Local or National Government training schemes.
Birmingham Information Federation
BIF is committed to improving information services to people with disabilities, those who care for them, and those who provide services. BIF will achieve this by improving access to services and promoting choice of services.
For more information, contact:
The Birmingham Disability Resource Centre, The Bierton Road Centre, Bierton Road, South Yardley, B25 5PY.
Irene Wright, who was to become a chair of the management board of the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre, recalls her first impressions of the centre in the early ‘90s:
“My very first experience of actually coming into the centre was of going into the resource library and someone called Trevor Bailey, a volunteer who later became an employee, made me so welcome.
“I used to use my manual chair going through the city centre and, on one occasion – on my return from a union meeting – someone actually spat in my face and said ‘people like you shouldn’t be out’ and then to be able to come into a centre like this where nobody took any notice, I could be just me. It was amazing.
“It wasn’t anything to do with my disability or anything else, I was me and I think that that is very important. I think that what was given back from here nobody can explain or tell you what its value is.
“It’s something that’s really important to disabled people because here we are looked at as people first and the disability is just something that is different, we are looked at as people with abilities rather than disabilities and I think that’s important.”
Birmingham Disability Resource Centre
In this article Anne Boothe details the role of the Disability Resource Centre and describes some of the services available at the recently opened facility.
The Disability Resource Centre is a centre of excellence, encouraging the self activity of people with disabilities. The centre is run by and for people with disabilities, offering people the opportunity to become involved in management and training, support, advice and social activities. A range of services are offered from the centre and a number of groups have offices on the site.
A Reference Library and Information Service
The library is open from 10.00 am to 4.00 pm, Monday to Friday. It contains a comprehensive range of periodicals and a growing library of videos, tapes, Braille and printed matter.
The Information Service covers all areas and issues associated with disability and can be contacted by phone, tape and letter.
Information can be translated on to tape and into Braille and interpreters in spoken and sign languages will be arranged if requested.
Birmingham Disability Rights Group
The BDRG was the founder member of the Disability Resource Centre and still maintains a controlling interest. BDRG is a pressure group run by and for people with disabilities aiming to promote the rights of people with disabilities. Group membership entitlements include a monthly newsletter.
The Strawberry Studio Restaurant
The restaurant will be offering hot and cold drinks, snacks and hot food from September 2nd. The restaurant is staffed by people with disabilities. It can also provide catering for conferences held at the DRC.
An Equipment Pool
The equipment pool offers a range of aids and equipment available to hire for students and trainees with disabilities on Local or National Government training schemes.
Birmingham Information Federation
BIF is committed to improving information services to people with disabilities, those who care for them, and those who provide services. BIF will achieve this by improving access to services and promoting choice of services.
For more information, contact:
The Birmingham Disability Resource Centre, The Bierton Road Centre, Bierton Road, South Yardley, B25 5PY.
Irene Wright, who was to become a chair of the management board of the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre, recalls her first impressions of the centre in the early ‘90s:
“My very first experience of actually coming into the centre was of going into the resource library and someone called Trevor Bailey, a volunteer who later became an employee, made me so welcome.
“I used to use my manual chair going through the city centre and, on one occasion – on my return from a union meeting – someone actually spat in my face and said ‘people like you shouldn’t be out’ and then to be able to come into a centre like this where nobody took any notice, I could be just me. It was amazing.
“It wasn’t anything to do with my disability or anything else, I was me and I think that that is very important. I think that what was given back from here nobody can explain or tell you what its value is.
“It’s something that’s really important to disabled people because here we are looked at as people first and the disability is just something that is different, we are looked at as people with abilities rather than disabilities and I think that’s important.”
Chapter 5 - Rights Now!
When the Disability Resource Centre opened in Birmingham in 1992, the national campaign for disability discrimination legislation in the United Kingdom was well underway and within the next three years it would culminate in the passage of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.
Since the early 1980s there had been several attempts to pass anti-discrimination legislation through parliament but, whilst generally receiving cross-party support, all of these attempts had failed.
Discrimination and Disabled People in Britain, a book by Colin Barnes and published by the British Council of Disabled People (BCODP) in 1991 laid out the case for fully comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Legislation and gave fresh impetus to a mounting national campaign.
The call to enshrine the proposals arising from Barnes’s book into UK legislation was answered by MP for Manchester Wythenshawe, Alf Morris. His motivation was led by his childhood experience of watching his own father’s slow deterioration in health and eventual death and the subsequent struggles of his widowed mother in the 1930s and 1940s.
As an MP Morris had led the movement that brought in the Chronically Sick & Disabled Person’s Act in 1970, becoming the world’s first Minister for the Disabled in 1974. In 1991 he introduced a Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill which was very much in line with the new BCODP campaign.
The opening of the Disability Resource Centre (BDRC) therefore coincided not just with a ground swell of public opinion and a wave of new activism, but the formation of a national alliance of disability organisations called Rights Now! The unique thing about the Rights Now! Group was that it was a partnership of both user led organisations, such as BCODP, and many of the big national charities, such as Scope, RNIB and RNID.
In spite of the inherent antagonisms which existed within what was at the time a very unlikely alliance of the organisations ‘of’ and ‘for’ disabled people, by pooling both commitment and resources Rights Now! was very successful in countering government arguments that sought to dismiss or minimise the case for anti discrimination legislation.
Irene Wright, a committee member of the newly created BDRC, conveys the sense of pride that local people felt when they participated in campaigning activity on a national level:
“Yes, I think when I first came here it made me realise how important the anti-discrimination law that we needed should be. Before getting involved with the Resource Centre itself, I became involved as a volunteer with Birmingham Disability Rights Group, so it all marries into one another in the end.
“I can remember that from here we as a committee of the Disability Resource Centre actually sponsored one of the banners that went down to London on July 9, on that famous day when there were so many disabled people in Trafalgar Square, that was when the first part of the DDA actually got started.
“That’s something to do, I think, very much with the history of the DRC and Birmingham Disability Rights Group, that they were actually part of something positive that came out of the government for disabled people.”
An interesting connection between the new Disability Resource Centre and the aforementioned MP for Manchester Wythenshawe, Alf Morris, was that his niece Estelle Morris had been elected as Labour MP for the Yardley constituency in 1992.
Looking around for somewhere to base her constituency office, Estelle Morris’s team had made an approach to the new Yardley based Disability Resource Centre, asking if she could rent office space from them. After consultation, the request was turned down as the centre did not want to be seen as being partisan and the Member for Yardley moved into alternative accommodation on the Bierton Road site.
Many of the people who were involved in the early days of the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre recall a period of forming, storming and norming on many different levels.
Some of these challenges were around practical access issues such as the locking systems on windows, the layout of toilets and the height of light switches. Some things involved general tenancy and building issues which had to be resolved through long-running negotiations with the city council as the landlord.
For instance, the building was a constant target for burglars and vandals for months on end until security measures were put in place which resulted in the feeling that the centre looked and felt like Fort Knox with heavy duty anti-burglar features around what was intended to be a user-friendly, inclusive and inviting environment.
The launch of the new user-led centre may have represented a successful end to BDRG’s seven year campaign, but new questions were now arising on a daily basis around operational, funding and management issues. Terry Vincent recalls the realisation felt by the employees that operating the BDRC was going to be a very different proposition from working for the Rights Group:
“We had a collective lack of experience as entrepreneurs running anything the size of the DRC. Mostly all we had done up to then was hold discussion meetings and plan campaigns. Now we had gone to managing a huge budget and managing a building that was vandalised from day one.
“You had the funders wanting you to do it their way and the BDRG wanting you to do it its way and whichever way you turned there was a problem. In the end it was the “service users” who were failing to get a service because there were obstacles to getting in the building, there were un-set up projects.
“For quite a while when people came in the only thing that they could do was go to the library – that was really it.
“We were constantly being given deadlines to meet and if they weren’t met then the funding didn’t come and if the funding didn’t come… Also each quarter the payments would come late so we struggled from the beginning.”
Robin Surgeoner recalls a very definite split around this time between the Rights Group and the Resource Centre. Things came to a head when people met to appoint the new management board for the centre:
“Rather than BDRG becoming the managing body it kind of got sidelined and all of a sudden there was a new management committee on the board of directors of the DRC. It wasn’t BDRG and it sort of changed its essence really. Perhaps the real sticking point was the funding and the fact that the council gave so much money and wanted to have a huge influence on the board.
“I remember coming to one particular meeting, in what’s now the Len Sutton Room when the building was still a shell, and there was a big discussion of who could be a board member. It was as if you’re BDRG you’re not a board member. BDRG isn’t part of this anymore. That was when there was a big kind of parting of the ways.
“It ended up with a board and a new set of employees. Even though the inception of the Resource Centre was BDRG’s, the lead started to be dictated rather than being organic. If BDRG had been given the money, the management and had become the employer, that would have been a different story.
“I don’t mean that in a sour grapes way, I just think that wasn’t allowed to happen. It became the council’s baby, it became the council’s Disability Resource Centre. It lost that organic, that dynamism that came from BDRG.”
Since the early 1980s there had been several attempts to pass anti-discrimination legislation through parliament but, whilst generally receiving cross-party support, all of these attempts had failed.
Discrimination and Disabled People in Britain, a book by Colin Barnes and published by the British Council of Disabled People (BCODP) in 1991 laid out the case for fully comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Legislation and gave fresh impetus to a mounting national campaign.
The call to enshrine the proposals arising from Barnes’s book into UK legislation was answered by MP for Manchester Wythenshawe, Alf Morris. His motivation was led by his childhood experience of watching his own father’s slow deterioration in health and eventual death and the subsequent struggles of his widowed mother in the 1930s and 1940s.
As an MP Morris had led the movement that brought in the Chronically Sick & Disabled Person’s Act in 1970, becoming the world’s first Minister for the Disabled in 1974. In 1991 he introduced a Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill which was very much in line with the new BCODP campaign.
The opening of the Disability Resource Centre (BDRC) therefore coincided not just with a ground swell of public opinion and a wave of new activism, but the formation of a national alliance of disability organisations called Rights Now! The unique thing about the Rights Now! Group was that it was a partnership of both user led organisations, such as BCODP, and many of the big national charities, such as Scope, RNIB and RNID.
In spite of the inherent antagonisms which existed within what was at the time a very unlikely alliance of the organisations ‘of’ and ‘for’ disabled people, by pooling both commitment and resources Rights Now! was very successful in countering government arguments that sought to dismiss or minimise the case for anti discrimination legislation.
Irene Wright, a committee member of the newly created BDRC, conveys the sense of pride that local people felt when they participated in campaigning activity on a national level:
“Yes, I think when I first came here it made me realise how important the anti-discrimination law that we needed should be. Before getting involved with the Resource Centre itself, I became involved as a volunteer with Birmingham Disability Rights Group, so it all marries into one another in the end.
“I can remember that from here we as a committee of the Disability Resource Centre actually sponsored one of the banners that went down to London on July 9, on that famous day when there were so many disabled people in Trafalgar Square, that was when the first part of the DDA actually got started.
“That’s something to do, I think, very much with the history of the DRC and Birmingham Disability Rights Group, that they were actually part of something positive that came out of the government for disabled people.”
An interesting connection between the new Disability Resource Centre and the aforementioned MP for Manchester Wythenshawe, Alf Morris, was that his niece Estelle Morris had been elected as Labour MP for the Yardley constituency in 1992.
Looking around for somewhere to base her constituency office, Estelle Morris’s team had made an approach to the new Yardley based Disability Resource Centre, asking if she could rent office space from them. After consultation, the request was turned down as the centre did not want to be seen as being partisan and the Member for Yardley moved into alternative accommodation on the Bierton Road site.
Many of the people who were involved in the early days of the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre recall a period of forming, storming and norming on many different levels.
Some of these challenges were around practical access issues such as the locking systems on windows, the layout of toilets and the height of light switches. Some things involved general tenancy and building issues which had to be resolved through long-running negotiations with the city council as the landlord.
For instance, the building was a constant target for burglars and vandals for months on end until security measures were put in place which resulted in the feeling that the centre looked and felt like Fort Knox with heavy duty anti-burglar features around what was intended to be a user-friendly, inclusive and inviting environment.
The launch of the new user-led centre may have represented a successful end to BDRG’s seven year campaign, but new questions were now arising on a daily basis around operational, funding and management issues. Terry Vincent recalls the realisation felt by the employees that operating the BDRC was going to be a very different proposition from working for the Rights Group:
“We had a collective lack of experience as entrepreneurs running anything the size of the DRC. Mostly all we had done up to then was hold discussion meetings and plan campaigns. Now we had gone to managing a huge budget and managing a building that was vandalised from day one.
“You had the funders wanting you to do it their way and the BDRG wanting you to do it its way and whichever way you turned there was a problem. In the end it was the “service users” who were failing to get a service because there were obstacles to getting in the building, there were un-set up projects.
“For quite a while when people came in the only thing that they could do was go to the library – that was really it.
“We were constantly being given deadlines to meet and if they weren’t met then the funding didn’t come and if the funding didn’t come… Also each quarter the payments would come late so we struggled from the beginning.”
Robin Surgeoner recalls a very definite split around this time between the Rights Group and the Resource Centre. Things came to a head when people met to appoint the new management board for the centre:
“Rather than BDRG becoming the managing body it kind of got sidelined and all of a sudden there was a new management committee on the board of directors of the DRC. It wasn’t BDRG and it sort of changed its essence really. Perhaps the real sticking point was the funding and the fact that the council gave so much money and wanted to have a huge influence on the board.
“I remember coming to one particular meeting, in what’s now the Len Sutton Room when the building was still a shell, and there was a big discussion of who could be a board member. It was as if you’re BDRG you’re not a board member. BDRG isn’t part of this anymore. That was when there was a big kind of parting of the ways.
“It ended up with a board and a new set of employees. Even though the inception of the Resource Centre was BDRG’s, the lead started to be dictated rather than being organic. If BDRG had been given the money, the management and had become the employer, that would have been a different story.
“I don’t mean that in a sour grapes way, I just think that wasn’t allowed to happen. It became the council’s baby, it became the council’s Disability Resource Centre. It lost that organic, that dynamism that came from BDRG.”
Chapter 5 - continued
One of the early members of the BDRC board was Derek Farr. Even those who share Robin’s perception that a powerful sense of organic dynamism had gone with the passage of control of the project from the Rights Group to a more pragmatic committee of disabled people functioning in close partnership with the local authority, acknowledge the contribution and commitment made by Derek Farr.
Robin describes Derek as “a fantastic character” and Andy Beaton, who joined the BDRC board initially as a representative of Birmingham City Council, conveys the importance of Derek’s role in establishing the middle ground as far as service delivery and funding were concerned:
“Derek Farr, as Treasurer and Chair, moved the centre along the route of a service delivery model whilst he was always very strong about the campaigning side of it and respected other people’s views on that which may be different to his own. However he wanted to see the centre move forward.
“He brought something to the centre which I think is essential. Probably more essential nowadays with the move towards sustainability and more self-sustaining trading. Derek brought business skills having run his own business and I think it was on that premise that he took on his roles. Derek was a very committed individual.
“You wouldn’t always agree with him, but you could never take away what he put into the centre and he had a massive positivity towards his role.”
Having a strong interest in computer technology, Derek Farr was highly innovative in ensuring that its use was fundamental within the delivery of services at the BDRC. His achievements included the development of the organisation’s website at a time when other voluntary and community sector groups were only just discovering the potential of things like the internet and email.
It was Derek who had the foresight to attain the URL “www.disability.co.uk” for the organisation several years before other community groups would realise the expediency required to bag the best website names.
Derek was also instrumental in establishing an ICT room in the building which would, for a while, operate as a Cyber Café type of facility for disabled people wishing to access the internet and learn about ICT. Long after Derek’s death, perhaps his legacy is the fact that a room remains in the Centre to this day which is well-stocked with computers and is used for both training and job search opportunities.
A very early Chair of the BDRC was Mary Smith, a retired nurse from Sutton Coldfield, who had previously been instrumental in establishing a forum of disabled people in north Birmingham.
Like most disabled people Mary was committed to making society generally more equalitarian and accessible, though it is fair to say that she was one more of a growing number of disabled people attracted to the BDRC from across Birmingham who did not come from the rights perspective. Terry Vincent recalls this challenge to widen the membership:
“I would do my best constantly to explain BDRG’s perspective. Apart from the fact most people coming to the DRC were not political and did expect some ‘services’, we were not in agreement with the national disability rights movement on the issue of terminology and I would find myself in intense discussions with activists and new members about how we defined ourselves and why.
“Mary Smith was having none of it because, she was of a certain generation, a certain mind set and a certain value system that it sort of meant nothing to her. But, I genuinely felt (and to this day still do), that really it is not for me to say ‘you don’t speak the party line so you can’t come in’.
“So we, at the DRC, were much more welcoming and open-armed than BDRG would have been because you would have found it too uncomfortable to stay at BDRG. But obviously the DRC was for people with disabilities and not just people with disabilities who agreed with a particular standpoint.”
An early project based at the BDRC which Mary was instrumental in driving forward for a number of years was the Birmingham Information Federation. Launched at the Birmingham Medical Institute in Edgbaston in March 1992, the BIF was a pilot project funded by the Department of Health through the National Disability Information Project.
BDRG founder Bob Findlay worked for the BIF for a period alongside George Rowley, a former senior manager with the Automobile Association. George continued to work at the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre long after the closure of the BIF project, running an equipment pool for disabled people and then playing a lead role in setting up and running a new training organisation at the centre called Enable.
George recalls his work as a trainer and coach with Enable:
“I worked with people who, for one reason or another, had been given the labels of not being able to do stuff, like education or employment. People are really interesting and helping them gives me a buzz. Seeing people reach their full potential and goals is really satisfying.”
From an interview between George Rowley, Clenton Farquharson and Pete Millington published in Pinpoint magazine / New Year 2002 edition
A few years later, George’s experiences working for BDRC and Enable would inspire him to set up a training business called Gallant2000 in partnership with Clenton Farquharson and Christine Sarginson. For his part, Clenton’s collaboration with George in the fields of equal opportunities, diversity and Neuro Linguistic Psychology began at the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre whilst he was using the services of Enable.
Clenton went on to become a board member of BDRC and, more recently, became the representative of Equality2025 for the West Midlands region.
His particular perspective as a black disabled person, as well as his experience as a service-user whose personal experience of disability had begun in adulthood, gave Clenton valuable subjective insight and the motivation to support other disabled people and to challenge and educate service providers, not just around disability, but around wider diversity issues:
“I had the experience of being attacked and stabbed numerous times. This led me to acquire my disability. Since this time I have gone through an emotional roller coaster, firstly of feeling absolutely desperate, that my world was at an end and that I was completely useless.
“But, over the last few years, this has completely turned round and I now have a mission to promote Equal Opportunities and Diversity. I have enormous passion and emotion for this subject.”
From an interview between George Rowley, Clenton Farquharson and Pete Millington published in Pinpoint magazine / New Year 2002 edition
Robin describes Derek as “a fantastic character” and Andy Beaton, who joined the BDRC board initially as a representative of Birmingham City Council, conveys the importance of Derek’s role in establishing the middle ground as far as service delivery and funding were concerned:
“Derek Farr, as Treasurer and Chair, moved the centre along the route of a service delivery model whilst he was always very strong about the campaigning side of it and respected other people’s views on that which may be different to his own. However he wanted to see the centre move forward.
“He brought something to the centre which I think is essential. Probably more essential nowadays with the move towards sustainability and more self-sustaining trading. Derek brought business skills having run his own business and I think it was on that premise that he took on his roles. Derek was a very committed individual.
“You wouldn’t always agree with him, but you could never take away what he put into the centre and he had a massive positivity towards his role.”
Having a strong interest in computer technology, Derek Farr was highly innovative in ensuring that its use was fundamental within the delivery of services at the BDRC. His achievements included the development of the organisation’s website at a time when other voluntary and community sector groups were only just discovering the potential of things like the internet and email.
It was Derek who had the foresight to attain the URL “www.disability.co.uk” for the organisation several years before other community groups would realise the expediency required to bag the best website names.
Derek was also instrumental in establishing an ICT room in the building which would, for a while, operate as a Cyber Café type of facility for disabled people wishing to access the internet and learn about ICT. Long after Derek’s death, perhaps his legacy is the fact that a room remains in the Centre to this day which is well-stocked with computers and is used for both training and job search opportunities.
A very early Chair of the BDRC was Mary Smith, a retired nurse from Sutton Coldfield, who had previously been instrumental in establishing a forum of disabled people in north Birmingham.
Like most disabled people Mary was committed to making society generally more equalitarian and accessible, though it is fair to say that she was one more of a growing number of disabled people attracted to the BDRC from across Birmingham who did not come from the rights perspective. Terry Vincent recalls this challenge to widen the membership:
“I would do my best constantly to explain BDRG’s perspective. Apart from the fact most people coming to the DRC were not political and did expect some ‘services’, we were not in agreement with the national disability rights movement on the issue of terminology and I would find myself in intense discussions with activists and new members about how we defined ourselves and why.
“Mary Smith was having none of it because, she was of a certain generation, a certain mind set and a certain value system that it sort of meant nothing to her. But, I genuinely felt (and to this day still do), that really it is not for me to say ‘you don’t speak the party line so you can’t come in’.
“So we, at the DRC, were much more welcoming and open-armed than BDRG would have been because you would have found it too uncomfortable to stay at BDRG. But obviously the DRC was for people with disabilities and not just people with disabilities who agreed with a particular standpoint.”
An early project based at the BDRC which Mary was instrumental in driving forward for a number of years was the Birmingham Information Federation. Launched at the Birmingham Medical Institute in Edgbaston in March 1992, the BIF was a pilot project funded by the Department of Health through the National Disability Information Project.
BDRG founder Bob Findlay worked for the BIF for a period alongside George Rowley, a former senior manager with the Automobile Association. George continued to work at the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre long after the closure of the BIF project, running an equipment pool for disabled people and then playing a lead role in setting up and running a new training organisation at the centre called Enable.
George recalls his work as a trainer and coach with Enable:
“I worked with people who, for one reason or another, had been given the labels of not being able to do stuff, like education or employment. People are really interesting and helping them gives me a buzz. Seeing people reach their full potential and goals is really satisfying.”
From an interview between George Rowley, Clenton Farquharson and Pete Millington published in Pinpoint magazine / New Year 2002 edition
A few years later, George’s experiences working for BDRC and Enable would inspire him to set up a training business called Gallant2000 in partnership with Clenton Farquharson and Christine Sarginson. For his part, Clenton’s collaboration with George in the fields of equal opportunities, diversity and Neuro Linguistic Psychology began at the Birmingham Disability Resource Centre whilst he was using the services of Enable.
Clenton went on to become a board member of BDRC and, more recently, became the representative of Equality2025 for the West Midlands region.
His particular perspective as a black disabled person, as well as his experience as a service-user whose personal experience of disability had begun in adulthood, gave Clenton valuable subjective insight and the motivation to support other disabled people and to challenge and educate service providers, not just around disability, but around wider diversity issues:
“I had the experience of being attacked and stabbed numerous times. This led me to acquire my disability. Since this time I have gone through an emotional roller coaster, firstly of feeling absolutely desperate, that my world was at an end and that I was completely useless.
“But, over the last few years, this has completely turned round and I now have a mission to promote Equal Opportunities and Diversity. I have enormous passion and emotion for this subject.”
From an interview between George Rowley, Clenton Farquharson and Pete Millington published in Pinpoint magazine / New Year 2002 edition
Chapter 5 - continued
Another individual who brought the personal perspective of wider diversity to the BDRC was Tim Philips. Tim joined the board of trustees of the BDRC in 1996. He had just completed a Diploma in Social Work Studies and landed his first job with Birmingham Social Services which had opened up offices in another part of the Bierton Road site.
In the early ‘90s it is fair to say that, being a wheelchair user, Tim was not typical of the average social worker, although he probably did represent a growing number of disabled people who were considering a career on the other side of the ‘professional / service-user’ divide.
Neither was this Tim’s first contact with BDRC. After giving up a secure job with the Electricity Board in 1990 to pursue a career in social care, Tim had decided to gain some community work experience for a year before embarking on his Social Work diploma.
Working in the office of Birmingham Disability Rights Group at Southside as it entered the final phase of its campaign to attain the Disability Resource Centre, Tim was introduced to the philosophy and terminology of the social model of disability:
“Basically, whilst working with the Electricity Board, for me it was around personal development through employment. It wasn’t really until 1990-91 when I took a year out to have that original association with the BDRG that I actually came to know about the social model as a philosophy and the medical model as another philosophy.
“I think it was certainly absorbing. Certainly, I remember having conversations and discussions with Terry Vincent as well, so I think she gave me some context of the two models verbally as well as written. She was doing a research project at the time and I was able to hear it at first hand from Terry, but also the discussions in board meetings. I was able to pick it up through those kind of avenues really.”
In common with Robin Surgeoner and other people mentioned in previous chapters, Tim was a disabled person whose life had always been affected by different ways of looking at disability and, whilst the social theory was enlightening, ultimately it backed up what he already knew from personal experience:
“What happened after you left the hospital – say after a spinal injury or spinal damage or whatever – in terms of a transition to become a disabled person or more severely disabled person? The medical change was effectively left at the door of the hospital unit.
“What we understood in being more aware of the social model within the BDRC is that the social model became relevant at the time you left the hospital or an injuries unit. How do you fit into society as a whole? How can you, as a disabled person, access fairly all of the things that a non disabled person accesses without seemingly any concerns?
“I was able to ally my experience as a non-disabled person as a child being at school until my 17th year (the year when I acquired my disability through an historical back problem) together with my knowledge of being a disabled person in subsequent years. There is an element, as a non-disabled person, of taking things for granted.
“You go to school, you can access for example the swimming baths, cinema, all those things. As a disabled person, all of a sudden these things have become an issue.
“Back then it was difficult to access a lot of public facilities because, as a wheelchair user, you were seen as a fire risk. I remember in 1978 going with my brothers to the old ABC Cinema on Bristol Road to watch an Elvis film (I am a big Elvis fan and he had died a year or so earlier) and being turned away because the film we wanted to watch was on the middle screen which was up steps.
“I did not go to a cinema again until the first of the regional Multiplex screens opened in Solihull, I think it was 1979 or 80. For the first time you were able to arrange to go to a cinema with the family or a friend and you were not getting turned away because, now, it was all flat and accessible.
“From those early years of the late ‘70s when I made my transition there are now a lot more buildings and facilities which are accessible to physically disabled people.
“In terms of the medical and social models, I was able to relate to being a non-disabled person as well on a more lengthy basis and see that, yes, it is all very well coming out of hospital with the medical staff saying to you ‘we have done our bit’, and then as an out-patient what happens to you after that? How do you pick up a meaningful life?”
Long before Tim learnt the terminology of the different models of disability, he had, therefore, experienced the full range of personal emotions engendered by being on the receiving end of exclusion and marginalisation. What membership of disabled people’s organisations was giving to people like Tim in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s was the realisation that things didn’t have to be that way and the resolve to do something about it on a myriad of different levels.
The reason Tim had not been able to watch Elvis Presley at the movies had far less to do with him being an individual with mobility impairment and much more to do with the fact that the cinema was inaccessible. To reference another slogan of the disabled people’s movement, it was no longer about changing or curing the individual person, but now it was about altering the environment and changing the attitudes and practices of society.
The social model of disability simultaneously confirmed for tens of thousands of disabled people and their growing army of allies that, contrary to the prevailing logic of the past few centuries, the non-participation of disabled people in society actually had a lot more to do with discriminatory design and practice than with the impairments and health conditions of individuals.
As both Bob Findlay and Ken Davis have pointed out, whilst disability organisations up until the early 1980s had drawn attention to specific symptoms of discrimination, most had continued to contribute to the status quo of the medical and charitable models. For the first time in history organisations led by disabled people were now challenging and changing that status quo.
In the early ‘90s it is fair to say that, being a wheelchair user, Tim was not typical of the average social worker, although he probably did represent a growing number of disabled people who were considering a career on the other side of the ‘professional / service-user’ divide.
Neither was this Tim’s first contact with BDRC. After giving up a secure job with the Electricity Board in 1990 to pursue a career in social care, Tim had decided to gain some community work experience for a year before embarking on his Social Work diploma.
Working in the office of Birmingham Disability Rights Group at Southside as it entered the final phase of its campaign to attain the Disability Resource Centre, Tim was introduced to the philosophy and terminology of the social model of disability:
“Basically, whilst working with the Electricity Board, for me it was around personal development through employment. It wasn’t really until 1990-91 when I took a year out to have that original association with the BDRG that I actually came to know about the social model as a philosophy and the medical model as another philosophy.
“I think it was certainly absorbing. Certainly, I remember having conversations and discussions with Terry Vincent as well, so I think she gave me some context of the two models verbally as well as written. She was doing a research project at the time and I was able to hear it at first hand from Terry, but also the discussions in board meetings. I was able to pick it up through those kind of avenues really.”
In common with Robin Surgeoner and other people mentioned in previous chapters, Tim was a disabled person whose life had always been affected by different ways of looking at disability and, whilst the social theory was enlightening, ultimately it backed up what he already knew from personal experience:
“What happened after you left the hospital – say after a spinal injury or spinal damage or whatever – in terms of a transition to become a disabled person or more severely disabled person? The medical change was effectively left at the door of the hospital unit.
“What we understood in being more aware of the social model within the BDRC is that the social model became relevant at the time you left the hospital or an injuries unit. How do you fit into society as a whole? How can you, as a disabled person, access fairly all of the things that a non disabled person accesses without seemingly any concerns?
“I was able to ally my experience as a non-disabled person as a child being at school until my 17th year (the year when I acquired my disability through an historical back problem) together with my knowledge of being a disabled person in subsequent years. There is an element, as a non-disabled person, of taking things for granted.
“You go to school, you can access for example the swimming baths, cinema, all those things. As a disabled person, all of a sudden these things have become an issue.
“Back then it was difficult to access a lot of public facilities because, as a wheelchair user, you were seen as a fire risk. I remember in 1978 going with my brothers to the old ABC Cinema on Bristol Road to watch an Elvis film (I am a big Elvis fan and he had died a year or so earlier) and being turned away because the film we wanted to watch was on the middle screen which was up steps.
“I did not go to a cinema again until the first of the regional Multiplex screens opened in Solihull, I think it was 1979 or 80. For the first time you were able to arrange to go to a cinema with the family or a friend and you were not getting turned away because, now, it was all flat and accessible.
“From those early years of the late ‘70s when I made my transition there are now a lot more buildings and facilities which are accessible to physically disabled people.
“In terms of the medical and social models, I was able to relate to being a non-disabled person as well on a more lengthy basis and see that, yes, it is all very well coming out of hospital with the medical staff saying to you ‘we have done our bit’, and then as an out-patient what happens to you after that? How do you pick up a meaningful life?”
Long before Tim learnt the terminology of the different models of disability, he had, therefore, experienced the full range of personal emotions engendered by being on the receiving end of exclusion and marginalisation. What membership of disabled people’s organisations was giving to people like Tim in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s was the realisation that things didn’t have to be that way and the resolve to do something about it on a myriad of different levels.
The reason Tim had not been able to watch Elvis Presley at the movies had far less to do with him being an individual with mobility impairment and much more to do with the fact that the cinema was inaccessible. To reference another slogan of the disabled people’s movement, it was no longer about changing or curing the individual person, but now it was about altering the environment and changing the attitudes and practices of society.
The social model of disability simultaneously confirmed for tens of thousands of disabled people and their growing army of allies that, contrary to the prevailing logic of the past few centuries, the non-participation of disabled people in society actually had a lot more to do with discriminatory design and practice than with the impairments and health conditions of individuals.
As both Bob Findlay and Ken Davis have pointed out, whilst disability organisations up until the early 1980s had drawn attention to specific symptoms of discrimination, most had continued to contribute to the status quo of the medical and charitable models. For the first time in history organisations led by disabled people were now challenging and changing that status quo.
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