Tag: oral history

When I joined Scope’s disabled graduate scheme in November 1994, I knew very little about cerebral palsy.

I joined the UK disability charity at a historic time, the Monday after it changed from The Spastics Society to Scope.

Early on, I met Bernard, an older man with cerebral palsy who was looking for help to write his life story. From my work for the York Oral History Project, I knew the power of oral testimony. This encounter with Bernard made me realise how important is it that history hears disabled people’s voices.

In later life, Bill Hargreaves found a new kind of equality:

“What, then, has growing older meant to me? Firstly, a much fuller and more interesting life than I could have imagined. Secondly, because most people of my age suffer from, or are beginning to suffer from various physical ailments and joint and back difficulties, there is now no difference between us. I am as able-bodied as they are, perhaps even more so, for throughout my life I have had difficulties in moving, which they are only now coming to terms with and cannot understand why I can be so cheerful!”

After visiting a school for pupils with cerebral palsy (CP), Bill Hargreaves said:

“It’s all very well giving people a piece of paper to say they’ve got an examination pass, but have you told them how to deal with buses? Have you taught them how to use an outside phone? Have you taught them how important it is to get the work done on time? Academic learning is not enough.”

One of the common misconceptions about disabled people is that they are somehow not sexual beings. The reality, of course, is that relationships are just as important to disabled people as they are to everyone else.

At the first Annual General Meeting of the National Spastics Society in 1952, Bill Hargreaves asked parents to think beyond schooling their disabled children. What would happen next? How would they earn a living?

Valerie Lang MBE found the medical label of cerebral palsy (CP) followed her into her education.

“The diagnosis was not helpful. They just followed the book, which said cerebral palsy included what was then mental handicap, and therefore they were constantly telling my parents I was ineducable.”

The doctors’ pessimistic prognosis about cerebral palsy made it difficult for parents to find a suitable education for their children.

Michael Wilkinson’s childhood experience of operations and long stays in hospital (in an attempt to make him walk) were typical of the 1950s:

“I had 4 operations altogether. Before that I used to crawl everywhere. After that because my legs were different, I couldn’t crawl again for ages afterwards… It was autumn and I was getting really anxious that I was not going to get out before Christmas.”

For many children with cerebral palsy, the medical obsession with walking ‘normally’ was the cause of much frustration and agony.

In the 1950s, doctors were white-coated gods who would pronounce on a disabled child’s future and set the course for the rest of their life.

The well-rehearsed diagnosis would go something like this:

“This child is spastic. Take her home. Forget about her. She’ll never be any good. You’re wasting my time, your time and everybody else’s.”