Silver linings across the cloud
On 7 November 2015, a BBC documentary by Damon Rose featured when hundreds of disabled people took to the streets of the United Kingdom to protest against the injustice they felt was being meted out to them. That was in the 1990s. Disabled people chained themselves to public transport. Wheelchair users blocked the streets. They chanted loudly. Some of them were lifted from their chairs by police and laid down on the roads, to stop them. But the police could not stop them. Those disabled people who took to the streets were determined to change the law. And so, the protesters shouted out for civil rights. On TV news, those were powerful images. The protests and the news came a long way to reposition how disabled people were often represented at the time. Not that their interests were often considered. No. If and when they were considered at all, they were portrayed as passive and grateful recipients of common charity. But the disabled wanted to be treated as equals with those who had no disabilities. They didn’t want to be discriminated against.
Their first big protest in July 1992 was against ITV's 24-hour Telethon fundraiser. The organisers were angry about what they said was a pitiful portrayal of disabled people on the programme, even when ITV claimed it had over 1,500 supporters. The protesters were also angry about the law which until 1995 allowed people to discriminate against disabled persons.
There were instances of young people being thrown out of a cinema because the manager decided that there were too many of them in wheelchairs. They had been going there for two years. But when a new manager came in, he suddenly decided they were a fire risk. There was the case of two wheelchair users who went into a cafe in Camden and were told to leave because their chairs were taking up too much space. There was a visually impaired woman from Peterborough who used to go to her favourite Indian restaurant with her guide dog. A new manager came in and said she was not going to be allowed in with her dog. There were daily occurrences of such discriminatory practices across the United Kingdom.
Take the case of Adam Thomas for example. He suffered a spinal injury at the age of 17 in 1981. He said he was fortunate enough to have experienced life as a non-disabled person first but being a wheelchair user afterwards was much harder. He recalled how travelling by train was unpleasant and uncomfortable yet he had to pay the full fare. "I had to give three days notice of travel and they would put me in the guard's van. I had to travel with the post and people's bicycles and things. There was no heating in them often and often there was no light if you were travelling at night."
On the day they protested, one of the organisers said they simply brought together people who had had enough of not being protected against discrimination. Barbara Lisicki, one of the heads of Direct Action Network (DAN) for disabled people boasted to journalists: "We blocked the whole of the Upper Ground outside the Telethon studios. We had our own PA system. We had a party. We had musicians. We had a carnival on the street." The protests inspired and motivated disabled people to realise they could exert pressure on lawmakers. Their efforts helped to bring about the Disability Discrimination Act.
In 1995 the law came into force that made it illegal to discriminate against disabled persons in the workplace. The law also brought in some consumer protections but failed to give disabled people instant access to transport. Part of the problem then was that many, including the government and some charities, could not see the barriers facing disabled people as discrimination. People considered arguments about disability differently from those about sex and race, two areas in which discrimination was better understood.
It was all about unfortunate disabled people who could not work and did not need to use transport. It was viewed in this way by lawmakers. And that was probably why it took so long in coming. The lawmakers and others did not see it in the same way as the disabled saw their predicament. But today, the door to free transportation has been opened to disabled people across Great Britain. The Disability Discrimination Act received its Royal Assent on 8 November 1995. In 2010 it was absorbed into new legislation, the Equality Act.
Twenty years on, it is obvious that the battle is not yet over for disability campaigners. Rights to independent living and social security were not part of the discrimination legislation. Reference was made to them in the aims of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which the UK signed up to, but essentially, they were not a part of the legislation. Moreover, budget cuts remain a key issue for many in the UK, with disability welfare now directed towards "those in most need".
But at least today, disabled people can now turn up at a restaurant or a night club and expect to be welcomed unlike what it was before 1995. They can expect adaptations in the workplace. They now have greater access to education. By 2020 the vast majority of train vehicles will have to be made accessible by law - though the stations they pull into do not have to be. The areas that the act covers have gradually broadened over the last two decades but the legislation has not gone as far as those early campaigners wanted. "Some people thought we've won with the Disability Discrimination Act'," Lisicki said. "We did not win. It was never a victory. All that I say to people is that at least now the government agrees with us that discrimination happens."
Be that as it may, I was motivated to write this article following the demise of Professor Stephen Hawkins on 13 March 2018, aged 76. Hawkins was one man who defied his disability to command world-wide respect because of his achievements in life. He was one of the few inspirational men who, despite their physical incapacitation, were able to rise to the pinnacle of global recognition and respect.
But what lesson do we learn from all of this?
I have heard people say that like poverty, disability is not a condemnation but a challenge. That may be true, but it will also depend largely on the way the affected individual looks at his or her disposition. While disability has been defined as a handicap which prevents a person from living a full and normal life, or from working in normal circumstances, there have been people in many countries of the world who have fared well in life despite their disabilities, or perhaps because of them. Some of them attained great heights that normal people would find difficult to attain. We will take just a few examples.
In the United States of America, there is Marlee Matlin. She became deaf at the tender age of 18 months. But despite her disability she worked hard to become one of America’s top ten actors. In 1986, she won the Best Actress Academy Award for her debut performance in “Children of a lesser God.” Marlee has garnered attention for deaf people the world over by being their advocate and role model. Also an Emmy award winner, she remains a prime example of an artist who has succeeded despite her disability. Few other actresses have had as much success even without disability.
There was Ray Charles Robinson, born on 23 September 1930. Professionally known as Ray Charles, he was not born blind but became blind at the age of seven. Despite this, he pioneered the soul music genre during the 1950s, combining blues , rhythm and gospel styles into the music he recorded for Atlantic Records . He contributed to the integration of country music , rhythm, blues and pop music during the 1960s on ABC Records . While he was with ABC, Charles became one of the first black musicians to be granted artistic control by a mainstream record company.
His father, Bailey Robinson, was a labourer and his mother, Aretha Williams, was a teenage orphan making a living as a sharecropper . They lived in Greenville, Florida with Bailey's father and his wife, Mary Jane Robinson. The Robinson family informally adopted Aretha and she took the surname Robinson. When her becoming pregnant for Bailey became scandalous, she left Greenville late in the summer of 1930 to be with family members in Albany, Georgia for the baby's birth, after which mother and child returned to Greenville.
She and Mary Jane then shared in Ray's upbringing. He was deeply devoted to his mother and later recalled her perseverance, self-sufficiency, and pride as guiding lights in his life. His father abandoned the family, left Greenville, and married another woman elsewhere.
In his early years, Charles showed an interest in mechanical objects and would often watch his neighbours working on their cars and farm machinery. His musical curiosity was enkindled at Wylie Pitman's Red Wing Cafe, at the age of three, when Pitman played on an old upright piano . Pitman subsequently taught Charles how to play the piano. Charles and his mother were always welcome at the Red Wing Cafe and even lived there when they were in financial distress. Pitman also cared for Ray's younger brother George, to take some of the burden off their mother. Unfortunately, George drowned in his mother's laundry tub when he was just four years old. At the age of four also, Charles started to lose his sight and was completely blind by the age of seven, apparently as a result of glaucoma .
Destitute, uneducated, and still mourning the loss of her younger son, Aretha Robinson used her connections in the local community to find a school that would accept a blind African-American pupil. Despite his initial protest, Charles attended school at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine from 1937 to 1945. Charles further developed his musical talent at school and was taught to play the classical piano music of J.S. Bach , Mozart and Beethoven . His teacher, Mrs. Lawrence, taught him how to use Braille music which was a difficult process that required learning the left hand movements by reading Braille with the right hand and learning the right hand movements by reading Braille with the left hand, and then combining the two parts.
While Charles was happy to play classical music, he was more interested in the jazz , blues , and country music he heard on the radio. On Fridays, the South Campus Literary Society held assemblies at which Charles would play piano and sing popular songs. On both Halloween and George Washington's birthday, the black department of the school held socials at which Charles would play. It was here he established "RC Robinson and the Shop Boys" and sang his own arrangement of Jingle Bell Boogie and performed on WFOY radio in St. Augustine.
Charles’ mother died in the spring of 1945, when Charles was 14 years old. Her death came as a shock to him. He later said that the death of his brother and mother were "the two great tragedies" of his life. Charles returned to school after the funeral but was expelled in October for playing a prank on his teacher.
In 1983, Charles signed a contract with Columbia Records . He recorded a string of country albums and had hit singles in duets with such singers as George Jones , Chet Atkins , B. J. Thomas , Mickey Gilley , Hank Williams, Jr. , Dee Dee Bridgewater ("Precious Thing") and his long time friend Willie Nelson , with whom he recorded the number 1 country duet " Seven Spanish Angels "]
Charles performed at two US Presidential inaugurations: Ronald Reagan 's second inauguration, in 1985, and Bill Clinton 's first inauguration, in 1993. On October 28, 2001, several weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11 , Charles appeared during game 2 of the World Series , between the Arizona Diamondbacks and New York Yankees , and performed "America the Beautiful". In 2003, he headlined the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington, D.C., attended by President George W. Bush , Laura Bush , Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice .
In 2003, Charles had a successful hip replacement surgery and was planning to go back on tour, until he began suffering from other ailments. He died at his home in Beverly Hills, California of complications resulting from acute liver disease , on June 10, 2004, aged 73, surrounded by family and friends. His funeral took place on June 18, 2004, at the First AME Church in Los Angeles with top musical figures in attendance.
There was Helen Keller. Blind and deaf, this American was the first person with such a severe disability to graduate from college in the United States. Famously tutored by Annie Sullivan, her life was chronicled in the play, “The Miracle Worker.” After graduation, Keller became a distinguished speaker, author and crusader for world peace, women’s right to vote and birth control among other causes. She has remained a great inspiration to many people across the world and her picture is depicted in the American currency.
There was Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only American President who served more than two terms. Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down by a form of polio known as Guillain-Barré Syndrome in 1921. While the actual disease that left him bound to a wheelchair has not been verified with 100 percent accuracy, Roosevelt was known as one of the greatest presidents in American history leading the population through many tumultuous times. The Great Depression and World War II were two of the worst periods in American history known for their volatility and the loss of both human and material resources. Roosevelt led America through these times with confidence and grace that was not marred by his disability. And like Heller, he is also currently featured on the American coin – the dime.
In Germany, there was Albert Einstein. It was widely believed that Albert was afflicted by Asperger’s Syndrome. It is documented that he did not talk fluently until he was nine. He failed his college entrance exam and had a hard time remembering simple things like his phone number or how to tie his shoes. But his disability did not deter him. By going on to win the Nobel Prize for physics, Einstein proved to be one of the most gifted minds in science and history, even when it was also rumoured that he had been dyslexic as a child which might have accounted for some of his problems with language. Einstein was known for his energy to mass-light conversion as well as the theory of relativity. Great scientists like Professor Hawking used his scientific thoughts and theories to create much of the modern world’s wonder and new theories. Truly a gifted mind, he would always be remembered as being a genius with a few loose screws. Despite those mental flaws, the man was possibly the greatest mind to walk the earth in centuries and truly deserves to top the list of those who have been an inspiration to the handicapped. Born on 14 March 1879, he died on 18 April 1955.
Also in Germany and Austria, there was Ludwig van Beethoven. Few musicians have ever made their mark when they become deaf. But this Austrian/German composer and piano virtuoso did just that after losing his hearing to tinnitus at the age of 20. Ludwig van Beethoven resorted to the use of special hearing tubes. With these aids, he could feel the vibrations of his piano as he composed music. He composed through classical, heroic and romantic periods. Beethoven learnt from Mozart and Hayden, two of the best music composers the world ever produced. One of the most well-known composers in history, Beethoven’s accomplishments are dazzling and spell-binding, especially considering that he never heard his own work.
In Nigeria, there is Lois Auta who has been widely acknowledged for her role in positively impacting on disabled communities. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Cedar Seed Foundation Nigeria, a non-profit organization formed to highlight the issues of disabled persons in Nigeria, especially women, girls and children. Having been an orphan and affected by polio at the age of 2, Lois had to endure several challenges that inspired her to want to make a difference and to ensure that the voices of disabled people in Nigeria and elsewhere were heard. Thanks to her advocacy, many disabled people have been employed and are now treated equally in matters of national development. Auta is a sports athlete and the President of Federal Capital Territory Disabled Sports Club in Abuja, and Founder of Women on Wheels Multipurpose Cooperative Society, among other key positions that she holds. In recognition of her work, she has received numerous awards, including when she was honoured with the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders award in 2014, an initiative by former US President Barack Obama.
And back in the UK, there is Ade Adepitan who was born in Maryland, Lagos , Nigeria on 27 March 1973. At the age of six months, Adepitan contracted polio which resulted in the loss of function of his left leg, and ultimately prevented him from walking. At the age of three, Adepitan and his mother emigrated to Newham in London , United Kingdom to join his father. He was educated at Southern Road Primary School in Plaistow, Newham , which he credits with helping him with his disability and problems at home. He also attended Lister Community School . From that early age, he aspired to become an international sportsman. Today, Adepitan is an accomplished wheelchair basketball player. He plays for his club Milton Keynes Aces. He was also a member of Team Great Britain which won the Bronze medal at the 2004 Summer Paralympics in Athens . In addition, he won the gold medal at the 2005 Paralympics World Cup in Manchester , United Kingdom .
Adepitan has featured on many television programmes and series as an actor, presenter or guest, particularly for BBC . He often uses television as a platform to campaign against racism and discrimination against disability. He was one of three wheelchair basketball players featured on BBC1 in 2002. He was one of the main presenters of the children's programme X-change produced for CBBC and has appeared in the soap opera East Enders . He starred as wheelchair basketball coach, "Baggy Awolowo", in the TV series Desperados . Adepitan also participated in Beyond Boundaries which was a four-part documentary in which Adepitan trekked through rainforests, deserts, rivers and mountains in Nicaragua and made his own video diary filmed in London and Spain, talking about his sporting aspirations and how he coped as a London boy living in Zaragoza , unable to speak any Spanish.
Adepitan was appointed as a main presenter on Channel 4 of the London 2012 Paralympics Games and co-presented That Paralympics Show with Rick Edwards . In 2013, he presented a Channel 4 Dispatches programme, 'Britain on Benefits', and also presented a documentary for Channel 4's 'Unreported World' about Cuban basketball players, 'Cuba, Basketball and Betrayal'. Adepitan has become increasingly involved in making documentaries for Channel 4. In 2014, he became one of the presenters of the new BBC travel series The Travel Show . He also anchored the Winter Paralympics Games for Channel 4 and Invictus Games for the BBC. In July 2016, he guest-presented an episode titled The One Show alongside Alex Jones . In 2016, Ade co-presented three-part BBC Two series New York: America's Busiest City alongside Anita Rani and Ant Anstead . He was part of the Channel 4 Rio 2016 Paralympics presenting team alongside Clare Balding . Since 2016, Ade has co-presented the BBC's Children in Need appeal. In 2017 he co-presented World's Busiest Cities with Anita Rani and Dan Snow
Adepitan does a lot of charity work, particularly supporting many charities to help other people with physical disabilities. He is a patron of Go Kids Go (formerly known as Association of Wheelchair Children). He is also a great supporter of the National Society of the Prevention of the Cruelty to Children Charity and the Wheel-Power Charity. He travelled to Ghana in support of Comic Relief . He also participated in the Disabled Motoring UK Alps 2011 Challenge. He is an Athlete Ambassador for Right to Play , the world's leading sport for development charity. He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to disability sport in 2005. He was also presented with an Honorary Doctorate from Loughborough University , in recognition of his outstanding services to, and performances in, disability sport.
In 2005 he was awarded a ‘Certificate of Excellence’ by the Champions Club UK in recognition not only of his efforts at promoting disability sport, but also for being a positive role model. He was particularly commended for his strong and persistent message of hope within the young black disabled community.
He was presented with the Lifetime Achievement award by the University of East London in 2010, and had an Honorary Doctorate conferred by the university in November 2010
There is Hon. David Blunkett, now Baron Blunkett. David was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire on 6 June 1947 with improperly developed optic nerves due to a rare genetic disorder. He grew up in an underprivileged family. At the tender age of 12 in 1959 he experienced his first and perhaps most enduring family tragedy. His father was seriously injured in an industrial accident when he fell into a vat of boiling water while at work as a foreman for the East Midlands Gas Board. He died a month later.
The Board refused to pay compensation to the family for two years, claiming that David’s father worked past the retirement age and had died at 67. This left David and his family in abject poverty. Despite this setback, Blunkett went to schools for the blind in Sheffield and Shrewsbury . He spent six years going to evening classes and day-release classes to get the qualifications needed to get into university and he went on to win a place at the University of Sheffield . With a BA honours degree in Political Theory and Institutions, David was ready to face the challenges of his handicap. Between 1973 and 1981 he lectured Industrial Relations and Politics. Thereafter, he got involved in local politics. About this time, he also gained a postgraduate certificate in Education from Huddersfield Holly Bank College of Education.
Blunkett became a politician representing Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough constituency for 28 years until 7 May 2015 when he stepped down at the general election.
Blind since birth, and coming from a poor family in one of Sheffield 's most deprived districts, he rose to become Education and Employment Secretary , Home Secretary and Work and Pensions Secretary in Tony Blair's Cabinet following Labour's victory in the 1997 general election . On 20 June 2014, Blunkett announced to his constituency party that he would be standing down from the House of Commons at the next general election in May 2015. About him, the editor of Spectator magazine, Fraser Nelson said: "He was never under-briefed and never showed any sign of his disability. He was one of Labour's very best MPs and one of the very few people in parliament whose life I would describe as inspirational." And on 11 March 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron about him: "I will never forget coming to this place in 2001 and in the light of the appalling terrorist attacks that had taken place across the world, seeing the strong leadership he gave on the importance of keeping our country safe. He is a remarkable politician, a remarkable man."
In 2014 Blunkett was made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences . In May 2015 he accepted a professorship in Politics in Practice at the University of Sheffield . And in June the same year he accepted to become Chairman of the Board of the University of Law . He is currently the President of the Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT). In August 2015 he was awarded a peerage in the dissolution honours lists. He was created Baron Blunkett of Brightside and Hillsborough in the City of Sheffield on 28 September 2015.
And last but not least was Professor Stephen Hawkins.
Professor Stephen William Hawking was born on 8th January 1942, exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo in Oxford, England. His parents' house was in north London but during the Second World War Oxford was considered a safer place to have babies. When he was eight, his family moved to St. Albans, a town about 20 miles north of London. At the age of eleven, Stephen went to St. Albans School and then on to University College, Oxford in 1952. Oxford was his father's old college.
Stephen wanted to study mathematics although his father would have preferred medicine. Mathematics was not available at University College, so he pursued physics instead. After three years and not very much work, he was awarded a first class honours degree in natural science. In October 1962, Stephen arrived at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge to do research in cosmology since there was no one working in that area in Oxford at the time. After gaining his PhD in 1965 with his thesis titled 'Properties of Expanding Universes’, he became, first, a research fellow and then Fellow for Distinction in Science in1969 at Gonville & Caius College.
In 1966 he won the Adams Prize for his essay 'Singularities and the Geometry of Space-time'. Stephen moved to the Institute of Astronomy in 1968 and later moved back to the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in 1973, employed as a research assistant. Here, he published his first academic book, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, with George Ellis.
In 1974, Stephen was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology. He became a Reader in Gravitational Physics at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in 1975, progressing to Professor of Gravitational Physics in1977. For 30 years, from 1979 to 2009, he held the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. The chair was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow and then in 1669 by Isaac Newton. From 2009, Stephen was employed as the Dennis Stanton Avery and Sally Tsui Wong-Avery Director of Research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.
Professor Stephen Hawking worked on the basic laws which govern the universe. With Roger Penrose he showed in 1970 that Einstein's general theory of relativity implied that space and time would have a beginning in the Big Bang and an end in black holes. These results indicated that it was necessary to unify general relativity with quantum theory, the other great scientific development of the first half of the 20th century. One consequence of such a unification that he discovered in 1974 was that black holes should not be completely black, but rather should emit 'Hawking' radiation and eventually evaporate and disappear. Another conjecture is that the universe has no edge or boundary in imaginary time. This would imply that the way the universe began was completely determined by the laws of science. Towards the end of his life, Stephen was working with colleagues on a possible resolution to the black hole information paradox, where debate centres on conservation of information.
Professor Stephen Hawking received thirteen honorary degrees. He was awarded CBE in 1982, Companion of Honour in 1989 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. He was the recipient of many awards, medals and prizes, most notably the Wolf Foundation prize in 1988, Copley Medal in 2006 and the Fundamental Physics prize in 2013. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
In 1963 Stephen was diagnosed with ALS, a form of Motor Neurone Disease, shortly after his 21st birthday. In spite of being wheelchair-bound and dependent on a computerised voice system for communication Stephen continued to combine family life (he has three children and three grandchildren) with his research into theoretical physics, in addition to an extensive programme of travel and public lectures. Thanks to the Zero-G Corporation, he experienced weightlessness in 2007 and always hoped to make it into space one day. Almost completely paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, British physicist Stephen Hawking is an academic celebrity known for his theories concerning black holes and his best-selling book “A Brief History of Time.” While few people could completely grasp his concepts without an in-depth explanation, his theories have become as well-known as Galileo, Newton and Einstein in the scientific community.
When Professor Hawking died on 14 March 2018, he was mourned all over the world. He will be buried in Cambridge. The Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, said: 'It is entirely fitting that the remains of Professor Stephen Hawking are to be buried in the Abbey, near those of distinguished fellow scientists. Sir Isaac Newton was buried in the Abbey in 1727. Charles Darwin was buried beside Isaac Newton. In the history of the world today, these are some of the finest silver linings across the cloud.