UK Disability History Month 2012

UK Disability History Month 2012, which will run until 22 December, launched last night with an evening of speeches, videos and comedy. Now in its third year, this was easily the best attended launch event so far for the Month. As a supporter of the Month since it began in 2010, I was very pleased to see that this year, for the first time, it received national media coverage.

This year, the theme of the Month, which is once again Co-ordinated by disability activist Richard Rieser, is  Changing Lives, Changing Times; Challenging the ideas that lead to hate crime.

Speakers included Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson, who offered her support for the Month through a pre recorded video interview about her experiences as a disabled person and her hopes for the legacy of the Paralympics, and disability activist Lucia Bellini.

Rebecca Yeo from the UK Disabled People’s Council spoke about the Council’s Disability Mural project in Bristol with disabled asylum seekers. One woman who has been helped by the project, Manjeet Kaur, spoke about how disabled people’s organisations helped her to fight for her rights in this country. This was one part of the evening that will stay with me, as I had never given much thought to the experiences of disabled asylum seekers before.

Julie Jaye Charles from the Equalities Council spoke about the experiences of Black and ethnic minority disabled people. She said that this group of disabled people have, for a long time, not felt part of the disability movement, because many of them didn’t know there was a disability movement.

As a disabled person from an ethnic minority group myself, I have felt very much part of ‘the movement’ for the whole of my adult life, which I’ve spent campaigning for disability rights for disabled people of all ethnicities. So this idea stuck in my mind and made me smile to myself. However, I did understand the point, as my personal experience with people of ethnic minorities throughout my life has shown me that there is a long way to go before many of them understand disability, with or without rights.

The event, however, was well attended by disabled people and carers from ethnic minority groups. So hopefully, progress is being made in this area.

Katherine Quarmby, author of Scapegoat, a non-fictional book about disability hate crime, spoke about how the book began and what writing it taught her about the issue. She also spoke about her experiences of the Paralympics, making everyone smile as she recalled how the Games made her non disabled son want to participate in disability sport!

Entertainment at the end of the night came in the form of a comedy routine by Mat Fraser. I’ve known of Mat Fraser for several years as a radio presenter for the BBC and an actor, so I had been looking forward to seeing him as a comedian for the first time. I was disappointed not to find his jokes funny, although, of course, this was, as comedy always is, a matter of personal taste.

Overall, I hope the Month continues for many years to come, and that each year is bigger and better than the last.