Formation of Birmingham Disability Rights Group

BDRG was formed in 1985 by Bob Findlay. This is from an early promotional flyer from the early days, written by Bob who talks of a new uncompromising mood amongst disabled people: 

BIRMINGHAM DISABILITY RIGHTS GROUP

The Birmingham Disability Rights Group is a new organisation of and for people who regard themselves as having disabilities. We have come together as a pressure group with the aim of increasing people's awareness of disability issues, to oppose the oppres­sive and discriminatory ways in which many of us become seen and treated, to work towards creating instead a new and positive identity where we no longer feel or are made to feel inferior or useless.

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 peoples capabilities and the denial of basic rights and needs.

Yes, we want to change the world! We want a world where people with disabilities can have a say and an active part in it. We want to discover our own needs and capabilities rather than wait for others to impose their views on what our needs and capabilities might be.

To achieve these things we need to discover our­selves and to break down the barriers which have been built up over the years. We have so much to learn from each other and yet so much to teach each other too!

There will be those among us and in the wider community who will feel scared that people are orga­nising into groups and planning their own affairs. We can be independent, but not too independent! Those who are demanding change must of course, have chips on their shoulders! Such comments are not new nor should they be worried about. We are the ones who will decide what independence means and we ourselves will decide whether our demands are just or not.

For too long we have been forced to live in the cold and wait for others to offer help and support. It is time for us to come in from the cold and to be proud and not ashamed of who or what we are.

If you are a person with a disability who wants to help improve the world in which we live then why not join us? We are here to support you and we need your support.

The aims of the Birmingham Disability Rights Group can be summed up in four basic ideas:

1.To bring together people with disabilities from across the City with the aim of organising to extend and promote their needs and rights.

2.To organise activities with and for people with dis­abilities, including those who remain at home or who cannot travel far. Our project will include investigating the feasibility of a DISABILITY CENTRE run by and for people with disabilities.

3.To help build self-confidence and activity through the development and promotion of Disability Aware­ness.

4.To ensure that the local communities are aware of the needs and interests of people with disabilities. This will require making links with organisations which serve those communities.

Our hope as an organisation is to work alongside the existing representatives of people with disabilities as we see our role as being complementary to theirs.

B.D.R.G. will be a campaigning organisation and will seek to influence various bodies such as the Birmingham City Council, Social Services and Trade Unions etc.

We want to organise monthly meetings of sup­porters so that campaigns and activities can be planned. A newsletter will be vital to ensure that those of us unable to attend meetings can nevertheless participate in the decision making and be kept informed of what is happening.

B.D.R.G. is not anti-able bodied people. However, we feel it is important that B.D.R.G. 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 abled bodied supporters.

If you want some more information, a visitor or a speaker for your organisation, please contact us. Birmingham Disability Rights Group, c/o 33 Cyril Road, Birmingham B10.

25 Years of Disability West Midlands - part two

A Brief History — Part Two from Pinpoint Magazine 2002

In celebration of our 25th birthday, Pinpoint editor Pete Millington, returns to the first years of our history:

In the first part of this history we outlined the early years of the West Midlands Council For Disabled People (WMCDP) which evolved into Disability West Midlands in the early 1990s. In the light of further research into the archive and very comprehensive presentations at our 25th Celebration event by John Harrison and Ken Bales, I hope that readers will allow me to back-track slightly so that all significant events can be acknowledged.

Amongst the founding members of the West Midlands Council For The Disabled back in 1977 were the first two chairs of the organisation, Ted Marsland and John Harrison. Ted, remembered more grandly as Professor Edward Marsland, was the vice chancellor of Birmingham University in the 1970s and provided both a credible figurehead for the organisation in it's early years as well as being an effective and committed chair person. Ted Marsland retired as chairperson in 1983 and sadly died in 1996.

John Harrison was another major influence in the early days of, what was then WMCDP. At that time John was a consultant at Moseley Hall Hospital in Birmingham, with responsibility for Hillcrest - the West Midlands' only purpose-built Health Service unit for younger disabled people. John was approached by Ted Marsland and Ruth Wolfe who were seeking support for a new group which could spread knowledge and understanding of disabled living. It was seen as an opportunity to improve liaison across the boundaries traditionally imposed by professionalism, public administration and particular impairment groups.

Recognising that some of the Black Country boroughs in particular also wanted to become involved in an umbrella organisation, WMCDP members resisted setting up an organisation restricted to the city of Birmingham. Hugh and Mary Barker from Dudley and Tom Glasgow from Solihull were amongst a core group of people from around the West Midlands County who supported the regional remit.

The challenges of a region with a population the size of Denmark or Scotland might have been immense but the founder members remained undaunted. Two part time staff were employed in 1978 and the organisation set out to establish some sort of public image, staging conferences and study days and starting a quarterly newsheet which later became known as Pinpoint.

The organisation's first grant of £3000 from the Regional Health Authority dates back as far as the late 1970s and finances were to improve markedly during 1981, the International Year of Disabled People, owing an increase in staff levels for a short period. However, the following year was to be less optimistic with a downturn in funding which saw WMCDP almost go out of business with it's small staff group having to be made redundant.

Thanks to the continuing commitment of it's growing membership and a substantial new source of funding coming from the Manpower services Commission through it's Community Programme, seminars, study days, publications and information services were reinstated and the newsletter was developed into a highly professional looking glossy magazine with a circulation of 4000.

Whilst some of the language and jargon has changed over the years, Pinpoint always had strong user involvement and increasingly reflected the wider sense of militancy amongst disabled people's movement. In the Spring 54 edition of Pinpoint, the introductory editorial highlighted a desire for WMCDP to view itself as a 'minority pressure group':

"But we shall never forget that we speak for all those handicapped men, women and children who are concerned about their futures, and we shall fight for their interest. In a healthy society everyone is equal".

In terms of the changing voice of disabled people within WMCDP, the Orwellian year of 1984 could almost be seen as a watershed, with Pinpoint continuing to move towards a debating and campaigning stance with an increasing amount of discussion within its pages around social security, legislation, community care and government policy. The editorial  panel at that time consisted of Theresa Jackson, Hugh Barker, Jacqueline Cameron and the curiously named Cyril Spector.

Incidentally, the latter named member of the 1984 editorial panel, Mr Spector, appears to have been somewhat of an unsung hero in the annals of DWM history. His participation on the editorial board was short lived and in 1985 his place was taken by Betty Cohen. My belief is that Cyril Spector could have been a pseudonym of either Hugh Barker or Tom Glasgow - perhaps older members will know answer?

By the summer of 1986, the organisation's information service was operating on a full time basis and employing Francis Fontaine as the new information officer, assisted by Doris Spiers and based in a room at Moseley Hall which was later to become the hospital chapel (auspicious origins?) The good omens continued with the appointment the following year of Edward Murtagh as Information Officer and then, in the spring of 1989, Joe Hennessy as the organisation's Director.

During this period, John Harrison had retired as chair of WMCDP, to be replaced in this role by Bob Taylor. Often cited as one of our region's best known disabled people, Bob was the director of Birmingham International Airport for many years and is now the Lord Lieutenant of the West Midlands, often to be seen hosting members of the Royal Family on visits and walk-abouts in our region.

In the next edition of Pinpoint we conclude the history of Disability West Midlands by looking at its development throughout the 1990s, examining both the highs and lows of a symbolic decade in which anti­discrimination legislation was first introduced in the UK and DWM became an organisation constitutionally controlled by disabled people.

 

 

An article from the 1980s by John Hall of Edgbaston

John Hall was a disabled person from Edgbaston who was a member of the West Midlands Council of Disabled People in the early to mid 1980s. John wrote this article for Pinpoint magazine with some interesting memories of disabled war veterans who would beg for money in Malvern in the 1930s and also his experience joining a Community Health Council in the 1970s and 1980s, an organisation through which he felt health service users were empowered at that time.  

From 'cripples' on the pavements to the Community Health Council: Experiences of disability

In the 1930's when I was a schoolboy living in Malvern, Worcester shire, I had my first encounter with disabled people, an experience which made me very sad. In the main street and 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 2 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.

Little did I know at the time, that within 10 years, I too would become disabled and that, even later, my interest in the cause of disabled people would be strengthened by activities as a member of the Central Birmingham Community Health Council.

I make no apology for referring now briefly to my war experience, this part of my story has a bearing on the social work which has become an important part of my life.

Like many teenagers, I joined the R.A.F. in 1940, hoping to do my 'bit' for the country, with no thought of what might lie ahead. But in 1942 my flying days came to an abrupt end, when I was shot down into the English Channel, and picked up by a naval air-sea rescue boat. After a short time at Dover Hospital, I was transferred to Halton R.A.F. Hospital in Buckinghamshire, where I was given immense care and attention, after countless operations, by consultants, doctors and not least by the nursing officers of Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service. I shall never forget or fail to appreciate their love and help to enable me to tackle civilian life, when initially I had to learn not only to walk again, but to integrate into a society, which barely understood or could face physically crippling disablement. I had to learn that to accept that sport and running would never again be possible, but with the coming of a happy marriage, and later children, and a good job to return to, life began to look up. For whatever the pain and anguish of my war experiences I was lucky to be alive, and appreciate that there were many men and women far more disabled than I.

I was soon to meet a man blinded in the R.A.F., and to become a personal friend. He was probably the most brilliant man to pass through St Dunstan's, and with his immense six sense has done more for the blind people than any living man today. He is one of many disabled people that I've met over the years and it is encouraging to know how much is being done by the growth of so many caring organisations.

Since my retirement, I have been able to further my interest in this activity through the Central Birmingham Community Health Council, one of many Councils formed in 1974, which has statutory powers within the National Health Service. The Council, which is non-political and non-sectarian in its outlook, consists of appointed members of all classes and races, nominated by the City Council, the West Midlands Regional Health Authority, and various charitable and social work bodies. It is known as the patients' watchdog, and that simply is its brief.

The activities are varied: regular checking visits to hospitals, membership of health care planning teams, representation as observers on their District Health Authority, and the Family Practitioner Committee. The Council has a say in any proposed substantial change to the local Health Service, e.g. the closure of wards, or even whole hospitals, to which they have a statutory right to put forward counter-proposals. They can even organise campaigns e.g. for the improvement of interpreting services in hospitals, to set up working parties to look at health care for disabled, elderly and handicapped people. They have advised patients and their families how to seek information and how to make complaints.

For disabled people, the Council was instrumental in the issue of the booklet "And how am I supposed to get in?", is constantly campaigning for better access and services, and continues to campaign for equal opportunities for employment in the Health Service.

Never let it be said again that a disabled person is no use in the community. Believe me, in all walks of life they are offering much, and still have more to offer, and I hope that those of you who have no impairment of health or limb, who read this article, will have learnt something of their efforts and in turn consider what they can offer to help many thousands of people who are less fortunate than themselves.

John Hall

Edgbaston

Birmingham

Eurof Lloyd Osmend - an inspirational Birmingham teacher

Mr Osmend was born in a mining community in South Wales and as a young boy he had polio which left him with a lifelong mobility impairment. Unable to go into the mines he studied to be a teacher. At the start of the 2nd world war in 1939 he tried to join the army but was refused because of his disability. Instead he joined the staff of a Birmingham grammar school which had been evacuated to Wales. In spite of his impairment Mr Osmend became an inspirational teacher and as well as his academic subjects he also took a very hands-on approach to teaching PE, including gymnastics and trampoline, and ran the school rugby department which produced a number of professional and international players. Mr Osmend died in 2013 and this is an online tribute which includes part of our interview with him. 

An interview with Jerome Chen-Bachus - Raising Awareness About Learning Difficulty

Jerome 28 years old and has a learning related disability. At the time of the interview he was training to be a chef at a working restaurant called Strawberry Studio funded by Birmingham City Council.

Jerome wants to raise awareness about people who live with the label of learning difficulty and dispel some of the myths and stereotypes which too often become barriers that stop people from progressing in life.

Jerome was first given the label of learning difficulty when he was at primary school. Teachers noticed that Jerome was slower than most of his friends with things like writing, reading and maths. He was therefore transferred to a special school. Jerome looks back on this experience with some sense of sadness about losing his friends:

“The teachers said to my parents “Jerome can do things but he has a learning difficulty”. But what I don’t understand and can’t find out is why I couldn’t stay in mainstream school with just a bit more time for copying from a black board or more time doing maths, English,
science, etc.

My mom told me I may have to move school. From primary school I moved to a special school and then to special secondary school. Moving school I felt upset about leaving my friends who understood me. I am happy that I have kept many of my friends from primary
school”.

Even though Jerome acquired the label of having a learning difficulty and moved into a segregated education system at an early age, he has maintained friendships with many non-disabled childhood friends, some of whom have gone onto to university:

“Half of my friends are in university or doing high jobs that I couldn’t do. I never get jealous, I just ask questions about what it is like and always show an interest in their lives. My friends at university love that about me because I ask questions and I don’t let anyone knock me. I have known one close friend who is now at (university) for 17 years, some one else is training to be a professional tennis player and another friend is training in photography”.

Something that Jerome is keen to express is the great amount of difference that exists amongst people with learning difficulty. His recent experience in the training kitchen and restaurant at (training restaurant) backs up his view that the term learning difficulty is a huge umbrella that covers many different people from different backgrounds and with different abilities and skills. Jerome believes that other people are too quick to make assumptions about anyone with this label.

“First of all it’s a shame that people could have the same rights as other people but they are being judged because they have a learning disability and secondly I feel everyone with learning difficulty is put under the same umbrella. I mean, if you are working with someone
who has the same disability as me, they are not necessarily exactly the same. We can each be better in our own way.

"There are good qualities in everyone but employers don’t see this and just want to give you a job and let you just do that job until you get bored, when they should be encouraging you to learn new skills. I think employers are noticing someone with a learning disability and
thinking that they know nothing, they are not aware and they should be aware. I would like to write an article to tell people more about learning disability – aimed at employers and businesses to try and educate them”

Jerome believes that people with learning difficulty shouldn’t be treated differently unless it’s necessary. In other words, rather than refusing to employ someone, employers should try to come up with a solution so the person can do the job. He feels that he is achieving a lot personally but could do a lot more with support and encouragement. For instance he worked for four and a half years at a well-known fast food chain and was promoted to the position of
dining area host within 6 months but after that was never considered for further promotion such as manager training.

“I got promotion to dining area host, which basically means customer care, customer service and cleaning. But I wanted to go higher in the company but felt that they weren’t willing to delegate a manager or supervisor to have 1 to 1 sessions with me to go through it so I could
get promoted higher. It was a case of “if you don’t like it then get another job”.

"As soon as I finish my catering course I would like to go travelling to see more of the world and use my food skills as I travel, learning about other cultures and the way they cook, then maybe come back and say to my family I’ve found a place to try out. If I try and fail at least I’ve had a go”.

“Since I’ve been working at (training restaurant) I’ve been finding out more about people with learning difficulties. Maybe one day I could open a restaurant they could come to and get a good wage instead of being on benefits”.

Jerome has recently been sharing his knowledge and skills with young people at a special school in Birmingham. He feels that cooking and catering are good careers for disabled young people. Jerome also believes there’s more to catering than just working in the kitchen and restaurant areas, he is keen to do some marketing as well. Part of his job entails going around the offices on the site with a trolley and while doing this he promotes the restaurant to staff he meets:

“ At this place because of the trolley I can work in the offices, meeting customers: what’s your name? What do you like? Trying to get customers to recognise there is a restaurant here and you are welcome to have your food and sit in the restaurant. That’s what I like about catering – I like the customer care, cleaning, basically making sure everything is suited for everyone”.

So the next time you meet someone with a learning difficulty, don’t be too quick to put them under one umbrella, as Jerome says, everyone is completely different:

“Basically, people probably moan saying you shouldn’t put them in different categories, but people do need to realise we are all different, even people without a learning disability – we’re all different”.
 

An interview with Abbey Paseda about disability in Nigeria

 

PM      23^rd January 2014, an interview with Abbey Paseda.

           Abbey could you tell us where you are from and your early life?

AP:     My name is Abbey Paseda, I am from Nigeria. I was born in the 1970s in Lagos. I had my secondary education at a military school at Basaria and went to university in Nigeria.

PM:     What made you become interested in the lives of disabled people in Nigeria?

AP:     I have a passion for supporting disabled people as I am not really happy with the situation in Nigeria because disability is the most neglected area of human rights in our country. We blame the government for this because they are not really doing much to support disabled people in Nigeria. But the question is also what are we all doing as individuals to support disabled people? Because some of us are more privileged than others and we therefore need to show disabled people that they are loved and not neglected by society.

           These people that we call ‘disabled people’, personally I believe that they can contribute to society so why can’t we just give them support to live their potential lives?

PM:     Can you tell us more about what the lives are like of people in Nigeria?

AP:      Like I said, disability is the most neglected dimension of equal rights in Nigeria. It is very common in Africa to see disabled people begging by the roadside, they are begging for money but the government is not doing much, so I and other disability activists have been working to raise awareness of how the government can go about supporting disabled people because the situation is very, very bad compared to the UK and other countries.

PM:     Is there a benefit system? Do people get disability pensions or benefits?

AP:     There is no programme for disabled people in Nigeria. The Nigerian government ratified the United Nations convention on the rights of disabled people since 24^th September 2010 but since then nothing has been done to put a smile on the faces of disabled people, like in Ghana and some other African countries there has been an introduction of a weekly grant, like the UK government are doing, supporting disabled people with some grant every week.

            So if African countries like Ghana have been doing that, what have the Nigerian government been doing? There has been a Bill passing around for about 4 years now at the National Assembly and they haven’t yet reached any agreement on the Bill. So what are they doing? So for me the Nigerian government need to do a lot.

PM:     You mentioned Abbey about the fact that disabled people are having to beg on the streets of Nigeria, is there any form of health service? Do people get wheelchairs from the health service or other mobility aids?

AP:      There is nothing like mobility aids from any government agency or from any group. The only thing for disabled people to rely on in Nigeria are the charity organisations, so that is why I founded the Focus on Disability Foundation. It started three years ago and during this time we have distributed over 100 wheelchairs to disabled people.

            But in Nigeria we have about 22 million disabled people. We are only trying our best but we have been helped by the generosity of people like the Disability Resource Centre in Birmingham who have supported me in many ways. I want to encourage more people in the UK to support us so that we can work together to put smiles on the faces of disabled people in Nigeria. I can say openly that there are no statutory services, such as providing people with wheelchairs in Nigeria, but we are trying our best. There a lot of schools for children with special needs and children who are blind, which we have been supporting for years and we hope to still keep supporting them.

            Recently we held our International Day of Disabled People on the 3^rd of December and I found out that is only in the capital city of Nigeria, Abuja, that the International Day is being celebrated. Why? Is it just in Abuja that they have disabled people? So this is what my good friends and I wanted to do, we wanted to bring disabled people together to put a smile on their faces.

            We took about 80 wheelchairs, 20 white canes for blind people and lots of other disability aids and gave them to people on the 3^rd December 2013, International Day of Disabled People.

PM:     Now you are based here Abbey in the West Midlands, UK, and you collect the wheelchairs and equipment, some of it is second hand, and all of this you do with your volunteers. It must be a massive challenge to collect so many wheelchairs and so many white canes and books of Braille and sign language, how long did take to collect all of that equipment and how did you go about getting it from the West Midlands to Nigeria?

AP:      I can’t thank our supporters enough and people who use wheelchairs and mobility aids for making donations. It wasn’t easy transporting the equipment to Nigeria. My good wife and I have been using our money to send those things to Nigeria. We are very glad of some good people in Nigeria who have been supporting the organisation and we really appreciate them all.

PM:     How do you go about selecting the people in Nigeria who will benefit most from the support? That must be a challenge to do that from England?

AP:      We have a lot of demand from disabled people. We ask them to call our office in Nigeria or even go there to register their names and contact numbers. We send out one of our members to visit them to see their situation, what they need and when they need it. So we selected the beneficiaries on the basis of their needs. As I said previously, the demand is very high with 22 million disabled people in Nigeria. On the day we couldn’t give mobility aids to everyone but we promised people that they may benefit from our next programme.

PM:     Abbey, can you tell us more about the event you held in Nigeria on International Day of Disabled People 2013? How many people turned up to receive the aids and equipment that you were distributing? Can you tell us about any of the people who received aids and the impact it had in their lives?

AP:      On International Day of Disabled People, it’s about promoting and understanding the lives of disabled people and encouraging support, dignity, rights and well-being. So in our organisation Focus on Disability Foundation we try our best to put smiles on the faces of disabled people. We were surprised at the turn-out on the day, we expected about 200 people but to our surprise about 400 disabled people turned up. People we were not even expecting turned up and we were so glad, we danced together, we sang songs and later we distributed the disability aids to them.

I think people really appreciated what we did for them and for those that could not benefit that day we promised them that very soon we will try to support them. This is 2014 and it’s just the beginning of the year, we have a lot to do.  For those who could not benefit last time we have a programme starting in the next few months where we can give out more wheelchairs, white canes, elbow crutches, any kinds of disability aids.

PM:     Tell us more about Nigerian society Abbey. Do you see many disabled people in employment? Are disabled people able to climb the ladder to become managers or can they access university? Are there many prospects or opportunities?

AP:      Well I can’t say that there are many prospects or opportunities for disabled people in Nigeria.  Things have not been easy for disabled people in Nigeria. As I said earlier, disability is the most neglected dimension of equal rights in Nigeria. Many people see disabled people as a burden. So when a disabled person approaches you to ask you a question, the answer is “don’t talk to me! I can’t talk to you!”

Why is it like that? It shouldn’t be like that. It is not a person’s own wish to be like that. I know this from my observations of Nigerian society, disability is not given any respect, but it can happen to anybody at any time or in any financial situation.

So we at Disability Foundation will be trying to advocate more on behalf of disabled people in Nigeria. Very few disabled people are in employment, but as I said, we have about 22 million disabled people, so let’s say there be about 1000 people in employment out of 22 million, that’s a big difference. I think that the government has a lot to do.

The Nigerian government have failed disabled people in Nigeria. I can say it, they have really failed them and something needs to be done.

PM:     What about public transport? Getting on buses or trains, is that easy? Are there low floor vehicles so that disabled people can travel?

AP:      That’s so funny. On my next trip to Nigeria I’d like you to come with me because you cannot compare the experience of disabled people in the UK with the experience of Africa. I can’t blame you because you haven’t been there but I am sure you will have seen a lot of things on television. I can’t lie to you, there is not a lot of support or access for disabled people in Nigeria.

            It’s very hard, there is no access. Even at the entrance of banks there is a security check so someone in a wheelchair cannot even get in. There are metal detectors at the front door which prevent someone in a metal wheelchair getting into the bank. Most offices in Nigeria are inaccessible to disabled people, all of these things need to be done.

If a disabled person wanted to go out of their house or wanted to go on public transport, the driver has to come down from a bus, help them to fold the wheelchair and put it to the back of the bus or car. That is very hard and I think we have a long way to go in Africa.          

PM:     I know that it isn’t just the distribution of wheelchairs and white canes that you do in Nigeria Abbey and some people received things like materials to do basket work and make things that they can sell. Is this part of a philosophy of empowering people to earn a living? Rather like the phrase “give a man a fish and he can eat for one day, but give him a fishing rod and he can feed himself for life”?

AP:      Yes and we have been back to visit the people that we have empowered in this way so far and were happy to find that many people are doing well with their jobs. We still have a lot of people on our list that we want to empower.

            So we try as much as possible to empower people, for instance we have some students there who were doing well in their education, so we decided to support them with scholarships and also giving support where there are children at school whose parents can’t afford to pay school fees. We have also been buying school books, giving children meals in the school.

PM:     You are in the process at the moment of trying to get your charity registered with the Charity Commission in the UK, can you tell us what you want the charity to do in the UK? What support would you like from the public here?

AP:      The reason we want to register the charity in the UK is that there a lot of opportunities here for disabled people. Unlike in Nigeria where there is nothing like ‘fund raising’ as you know it here. If you try to do ‘fund raising’ in Nigeria, it’s hard because people don’t believe in it. But apart from money, in the UK we hope to get donations of materials. So registering it in the UK could be a great way to get more support from the public.

PM:     It’s going to be called Focus on Disability Foundation UK. Do you have an email address?

AB:      Yes the email address is focusondisability@gmail.com and we also have a website which is www.fodfoundation.org and we would appreciate it if people could visit it and see the services that we are providing to disabled people in Nigeria.

PM:     Abbey thank you very much and good luck with your future plans.       

       

Coleshill Man Jack is World's Oldest Cochlear Implant Recipient

An article written by Pete Millington in October 2007

The world’s oldest cochlear implant recipient, Jack Walley was born in Nether Whitacre near Coleshill, North Birmingham, on 17 February 1908, in the same room where he still sleeps today.

As well as running a busy 200 acre farm, Jack was also a member of the National Farmers’ Union, parish councillor, part-time special police inspector, and church warden for 44 years, before he lost his hearing in the 1970s.

Jack struggled on with the help of his wife Mabel. But after she died in 1975 he found himself more and more isolated by his deafness. Feeling too old to learn sign language, he carried a pad of paper with him everywhere in order to communicate with people, which made social situations difficult.

Then, in December 1991, at the age of 83, Jack had an operation at the University Hospital Birmingham, to fit a cochlear implant, a small electronic device that bypasses the inner ear and transmits sound waves directly to the auditory nerve. Jack received a Cochlear Nucleus CI22M implant, which has turned his life around.

At the time, there was some debate over whether a man in his eighties would really benefit from the expensive technology, which was still in its infancy - Jack was only the13th person to receive a cochlear implant at the hospital.

However, Jack’s daughter Pat says: “The cochlear implant changed his life completely. Dad has always been keen on music and electronics, mending televisions and radios was his hobby. Once he found out about cochlear implants, there was no stopping him from having one. When he first got it, he kept taking the processor to bits to see how it worked!”

"Having the implant has allowed Jack to live a more normal life in the family farmhouse with my sister Gillian.”

Jack’s surgeon David Proops, a Consultant Otolaryngologist at University Hospital Birmingham, feels that there is a serious message behind Jack’s success. He says: “Jack’s story just goes to show that you’re never too old for a cochlear implant. There is a whole cohort of severely deaf individuals in the 70+ age bracket whose quality of life could be greatly improved but who are not putting themselves forward, or not being put forward, for cochlear implants. As life expectancy is increasing by two years every decade, a baby girl born now could expect to live to 104. We seriously need to reconsider the way that older generations are viewed.”

Now 99, Jack is physically very well. His implant is working just as well as when it was put in and he doesn’t need any regular medication or walking aids – Pat jokes that he is healthier than she and her sister are!

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID BARNSLEY - PART TWO

PART TWO- FROM CARLSON HOUSE TO JOSEPH LUCAS’S

After 11 years of his childhood spent at Carlson House School in Harborne, at the age of 18 David Barnsley left school and went to work at Lucas’s. David told us:

“The school staffs 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 told them 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 7^th September 1959. I was scared stiff before the interview, but they were quite pleasant. They said I could have a job in ‘supplier’s 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 five pounds seventeen and sixpence was a lot of money in those days, 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”.

After only a few months in his first job, David was to experience the dreaded cold shoulder of discrimination familiar to many disabled people of his generation. When new floor which could only be accessed by stairs. He was left virtually on his own:

“I stayed on M3 and they moved to G7. We were on the clock and I used to come up in an old lift to sit on my own. The supervisor would come in just to see if I was in then leave again and after 6 months I was pretty cheesed off sitting on my own. Eventually they all come back down and I was glad and I was glad of the company again. We had a merit rating to see if you were satisfactory at your job. The supervisor told me “you’re close to getting the push- you don’t know the section and you talk too much, so I ‘m going to have you sitting next to me where I can keep my eye on you”. Well of course I didn’t know the section as it was up on another floor!”

During his early years at Lucas’s, David got fed up seeing his colleagues being given promotion whilst he remained on a low grade:

“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 they’d all go into the gents and find they’d all got a rise of 5 shillings 25 pence. 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”.

A friend of David‘s who was a union rep eventually convinced him that the company were taking him for a ride and he demanded an interview with personel. After making his own enquiries about accessible parts of the company, David pushed himself forward for a move to Great Hampton Street and was finally put on grade 8 money:

“A manager there told me that because I’d been so patient they would give me the grade 8, an increase of £2 after 5 years with the company- actually the minimum for the grade. I recall that he was so pleased with himself that he came down three times that day to tell me I’d got the £3 rise”.

In spite of his shabby treatment, David was a loyal employee of Lucas’s, staying with them for 28 years. Eventually he became a supervisor, working at Great Hampton Street until 1976 before moving to Lucas Aerospace in Shirley. He left in 1988: “Looking back I enjoyed it and overall it was a pleasant time, but it was a different era. My life has been good and I put the basis of all that down to my childhood years to Carlson House school.

Blogging the project - coffee with Bob is never dull

It's always a delight to meet up with Bob Williams-Findlay for a coffee at Bebo's in Birmingham city centre and even more enjoyable when disability history is high on the agenda of our meeting. Even the café itself has a historic relevance for Bob and I as it was the place in which a small group of us met on the eve of the 2010 Conservative conference and conceived a new national network called Disabled People Against The Cuts. Bob has been a long time activist in the disabled people's movement for many decades and was the prime facilitator of the Birmingham Disability Rights Group in the mid-1980s and the city's Disability Resource Centre launched in 1992.

Going right back to the early days of UPIAS, Bob has continued to be one of the movement's sharpest thinkers, whose ideas, definitions, concepts and critiques around disability have been right up there with the more well-known champions of the modern movement, though he hasn't always been in receipt of the same accolades. Anyone, like me, who has attempted to keep up with the thoughts of Mr Williams-Findlay over the years will share my observation of the general pattern whereby Bob comes up with a radical idea, a lot of people object, dismiss, ignore and argue against it ...then five years later we all agree with it.

So when Bob invited me for a coffee to mull over his latest thinking about disability history, I found myself harbouring a feeling somewhere between intrigue and foreboding - intrigue about Bob's latest thinking and foreboding that by the end of the meeting I might well be having to re-think my own position on disability history right in the middle of an HLF funded project.

Thankfully Bob's latest critique was not a radical departure from what I already knew to be his take on what is meant by 'disability history', in fact the discussion today could be better described as a development of his previous thinking.

I knew already, for instance, that Bob is critical of the approach which puts an equal emphasis on recording the personal achievements of disabled people in history, such as Beethoven composing symphonies after he became deaf or Julius Caesar being a great Roman emperor in spite of his epilepsy, etc., as it does on the history of the disabled people's emancipatory movement in the late 20th century. Bob had previously indicated to me that he views the first of these approaches as 'the history of people with impairment' as opposed to 'disabled people's history'.

It is a very good point and one that is difficult to argue with in terms of the purpose of researching disability history which, surely, is about understanding the social and political history of disabled people both globally and locally, at any specific point in history and within a particular cultural context.

 

Highlighting the impairments of Beethoven and Caesar might be of passing general interest and useful trivia information for quizzers - a bit like knowing that Harold was shot by an arrow in the eye in 1066 without knowing any of the wider context and significance and subsequent impact of the conquest of Britain by the Normans. But were any of these individuals (Beethoven, Caesar, etc.) representative of the lives of disabled people at the time and do these examples tell us anything about society's position on disability?

 

But Bob's latest thinking goes further than just drawing the distinction between the study of miscellaneous examples of people with impairment in history versus the story of the modern disabled people's movement and, in a similar way to how Mike Oliver took Vic Finkelstein's social model of disability ideas and built into them a fuller oppression model critique, Bob suggests that the history of disability as we understand it today actually began from the industrial revolution, as this was around the time that very specific processes of social oppression began for people who were from thenceforth identified as disabled people.

 

We know for instance that with the industrial revolution came massive changes for people in Britain, as Alan Ereica wrote in The People's England:

 

"Industrial society seemed to have taken away men's control over their own lives, without guaranteeing them growing wealth after all. The change from workshop to factory had created a new civilisation - the average Englishman was no longer a countryman, but lived in a heavily built-up suburb and worked in industry. The transformation had brought him material goods, though no security - it was a disaster to lose a job - and a feeling that he had less control over his life. Every aspect of his life was becoming, like his home, depressingly uniform in pattern."

 

There are some interesting points in this passage which back up Bob's theory. "It was a disaster to lose a job" and no doubt even more of a disaster not to get that factory job in the first place due to impairment? People having less control over their work, lives and homes, "life was becoming depressingly uniform". Those people with impairment who would have survived with a great degree of autonomy and independence in the traditional workshops of rural Britain now had recourse only to the Union workhouse, the asylum and the charitable institution.

 

Ereica goes on to describe how the new class of factory workers organised into Unions to protect their individual rights but also to have a collective political voice. With industrialisation therefore came the development of the 'working class' - a term very specific to post-industrial history. We would never use the same term to talk about the peasants of medieval England. Bob's point being, similarly, the concept of 'disabled people' has it's roots in this same era of industrialisation. They were members of the new working class who for reasons of impairment could not hold down jobs in factories or fit easily into the "depressingly uniform" pattern of urban life. Their destiny was therefore less likely to be Union membership or even factory ownership, but much more likely to be admission into the workhouse infirmary or the charitable basket workshop.

 

Disabled people were therefore a new subclass which was defined by the specific circumstances of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, specific economic and social policies supported by new medical, eugenic and psychiatric theories and leading to specific government and local legislation which would define and control the lives of disabled people within this wider industrial and urban environment.  

 

My only difficulty with Bob's theory is not with his very sound analysis, but with the new challenge that it presents us in terms of the language we use to record and talk about disability history. For instance, there are many other very significant events and social policies affecting 'people with impairment' throughout history. The persecution of women with mental health impairment during the European witch hunts; the reaction to people with leprosy or plague; the treatment of returning soldiers from the crusades; the response to impairment in the world's biblical texts or the writings of philosophers and theologians. Isn't it just a lot easier to talk about all of these things under the one discipline of 'disability history'?

 

If the wider public still don't understand the difference between the social and individual models of disability 40 years after its conception, are they likely to understand a theory which says that disabled people didn't exist before 1760?   

 

Acknowledging my genuine puzzlement, Bob drained his coffee mug and giving me that customary smile I have come to know and love, added "yeah, I'm working on that". 

 

As always, coffee with Bob is never dull.