Disabled people are treated not only like second-class citizens, but like babies

This week, I was in conversation with two disabled women, Sarah and Louise. When reflecting on her experience as a disabled woman, Sarah said, 'Disabled people are treated like...' and then paused. Louise quickly jumped in with, 'Babies!' Sarah clarified that she'd been about to say 'second-class citizens'. I said to them that from what I'd seen, I actually thought that Louise had nailed it!

The context of this conversation was a major protest that I was involved in organising in Abergavenny, over the proposed sell-off of the Tudor Street Day Centre (formally known as My Day My Life, a hub with services for adults with learning difficulties and mental health problems). My involvement in this came from the fact that before we met, my partner Owen worked at this day centre, helping some of society's most vulnerable adults get the most out of their lives. Owen found this a rewarding enough experience that this year, he has brought out the novel Vulnerable Voices, about a young man who does a similar job. The book is entirely fictitious, and features a day centre in North Yorkshire instead of South Wales, but some of the characters and incidents that occur within it are loosely inspired by real life events. The audiobook will be released soon, narrated by the actor Nico Mirallegro.

In addition to the nostalgia, the book also covers some of the darker side of that kind of job. Owen was aware of bullying and neglect that went on behind the scenes, and this is covered in his novel with characters whose depictions will be recognised by almost anyone who has worked in any kind of office - but it seems to happen all the time in the world of care. You can find myriads of news reports detailing unsavoury things that our vulnerable relatives have been through. I questioned recently why it is that the care profession, supposedly one that attracts the most compassionate people, so often attracts the precise opposite, and was drawn to the conclusion that it must be because it's one of the easiest industries to get into. More importantly, there rarely seems to be any sturdy and systematic process to stop these kinds of things happening - and the reason for that is very straightforward. Processes cost money, and processes that protect vulnerable/disabled people benefit people who are least likely to generate capital for the establishment - therefore, they are not considered worthy of the money. Compassion is not the goal; if compassion exists at all, it exists purely to create a smokescreen of a caring authority.

This is the underlying reason for the proposed sell-off and demolition of Tudor Street Day Centre. The My Day My Life service was closed as part of the 2020 lockdown, and has never been re-opened. The 'official' version of events is that other services have since come about which have provided new and better services for the former service-users; but this is untrue. Having spoken to numerous service users and their families, we have it on record from quite a few different people that there are now very few really decent services for them within the Monmouthshire area since the closure of the My Day My Life service. What's more, I understand Owen to tell me that the My Day My Life service was being undermined as far back at when he left in 2017, with alternative schemes being set up to take some of the funding and provide a lesser-quality service - i.e. to take people on day trips, but in a less person-centred and individualised way. The council claims that a review is currently being undertaken in regards to disability services within the county - but is selling off its greatest asset, which already has all the disability access sorted, in advance of this review being concluded. (Incidentally, the proposed sell-off is to a housing development trust, which the council claims is to house the homeless. This is patently not true; no one believes that any new homes built there will be affordable to homeless people, and saying they will is merely an attempt to pit one marginalised group against another.)

The protest was on Wednesday 7th December, and involved a large group of us, including many past service-users and their families, standing outside the building in Tudor Street holding placards and chanting. Joining us at the protest were local Labour councillors Tudor Thomas (Cabinet Member for Social Care, Safeguarding and Accessible Health Services) and Sara Burch (Cabinet Member for Inclusive and Active Communities). That these are their job titles is actually laughable, because neither of them behaved with the slightest interest in safeguarding, making social care health services accessible or inclusive in the slightest. They actually behaved in a consistently passive-aggressive manner; upon arrival, they set up a speaker system to lecture the crowd at our own protest, before attempting to leave without listening to any of the actual disabled people who wanted to speak.

Here is a picture of myself, Owen and another protester confronting Councillors Thomas and Burch as they attempted to leave. Whilst this was happening, there were service users addressing the crowd on the other side of the road:

Unfortunately I didn't get to hear much of what the service users were saying, as I felt it more important to try to reason with the councillors and try to get them to listen. We did eventually persuade them to come across to the other side of the road for a few more minutes, during which time they were confrontational, dismissive of people's concerns and, in my own humble opinion, quite rude. I think their body language in the above photo says quite a lot about what their priorities were; they had intended to come purely to represent the council to Wales Online and the South West Argus who were there on the day, rather than to listen to anyone's actual needs for that building. They couldn't have hurried away fast enough after they'd barged in to give the first speeches, and then we practically had to drag them back over.

At one point, I asked Councillor Thomas if he himself had ever actually visited any of the service users at their homes, sat down with them and asked them what they thought about all of this. He admitted that he had not. Doing this is absolutely essential to any review, because one of the most truly wrong things about this is that of all marginalised groups in society, the disabled are often the least capable of speaking out and defending their human rights. This is why disability rights so often lag behind the rights of other people - because no matter how oppressed someone is, in most cases they're easily able to network with other people who have similar experiences and band together to get their voices heard. I know from personal experience that there were a lot of interested parties who were simply unable to make it to the protest, either because they were too unwell, because they couldn't find people to bring them or because their carers had already made other plans for that day. This last was actually the basis behind the 'they treat us like babies' outburst - all too often, carers make plans for their clients unilaterally, irrespective of what the clients actually wish for. I can appreciate that on occasion someone with a severe learning difficulty will be unable to make their own decisions, but in most cases it seems to me that the whole point of having carers is to help people live more independently. If they can't do that, if they're treating their clients like children and making decisions for them like a parent, I would think that is separate from their remit).

Why am I so passionate about this, when I don't even live in the area? Well, aside from the fact that I got involved by accident through my partner, I actually believe in helping communities get the best out of their public services. We hear so often about unilateral decisions from politicians, without undertaking effective consultation from the people they are meant to serve. Disabled and mentally ill people are some of the most vulnerable in society, and it's important that we stand up for them - especially when they are unable to stand up for themselves, which many of them are.

The protest has so far been quite successful, in that it has generated a call-in of the council's decision to sell off the Tudor Street building pending a meeting in early 2023, which Owen and I will be attending. In the meantime, please sign this petition against the plans. And if you'd like to read a more impartial account of Wednesday's protest, take a look at this fantastic article in WalesOnline by the journalist Jonathon Hill.

Here are some more photographs of the protest, courtesy of photographer Annie Ward:

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Ten years since Jimmy Savile, nothing has changed

 It was about this time in 2012 when, a year following his death, it was revealed that Jimmy Savile, believed to be a beloved children's entertainer, was actually a predatory sex offender and paedophile. The case sparked probably the most talked about police investigation in the whole of the 2010s decade, and resulted in the exposure of other powerful predators, such as entertainer Rolf Harris and politician Cyril Smith.

The case against Savile in particular has always been a matter of intense interest for me ever since I first learned of it. The thing that I find deeply shocking is not so much the grotesque acts of sexual violence that he committed (which are bad enough); but more, the fact that his behaviour was so widely known within the entertainment industry. It was actually known enough that he joked about it himself on television - whilst watching a selection of old clips of him back, he often alludes to his own inappropriate behaviour. He said on television, in relation to volunteering at a hospital, he said, 'I am a voluntary helper. Sometimes, when nobody’s looking, I help the lasses'. He said on repeated occasions that he was 'barred from every girls' school in the country', and once, when asked how he thought he'd be remembered after he died, he openly laughed about it and said that he didn't care - knowing very well that allegations would only come out once he was no longer alive to take responsibility. He was able to do this without any fear of repercussions, because he knew he was untouchable. The Jimmy Savile case is so unsettling not because of the terrible things he did (as horrible as it is, we all know that there are many people out there capable of these acts); it's unsettling because it was deliberately covered up.

I'd like to be able to say that we've learned from the past - but I have not seen any evidence that that is so. In this article, Mark Williams-Thomas, who played a large part in exposing Savile's crimes, says that there are still protected sex offenders who work prominently in the entertainment industry, and one in particular, almost certainly a child molester, who he has worked very hard to get prosecuted. In this film, the broadcaster Louis Theroux interviews comedian Katherine Ryan, who talks about how she called someone out for being a predator on a panel show, and that this was cut from the broadcast version (that part of the conversation is about fifteen minutes in). I have no idea if Williams-Thomas and Ryan are talking about the same person (I think probably not, as I believe Ryan would have said if the person she was talking about had abused children - though perhaps she doesn't know that aspect). But if they're talking about different people, it almost makes it worse. It means that this is continuing to happen regularly. Since 2012, a few historical cases may have been brought to justice, but nothing has really changed systematically.

I have a bit of personal experience with this. A few years ago, a friend of mine confided to me that they had been sexually assaulted by a minor celebrity. There wasn't enough evidence to charge this person, however the story got into the media and the minor celebrity's name was dragged through the mud. The outcome was that the minor celebrity was dropped from their role as a regular on a popular BBC television programme - however, the BBC claimed that it had nothing to do with the allegations and that they were merely refreshing all the regulars on this programme. I do not believe either that this was true, or that anyone truly believed it, for a few reasons: 1) It coincided almost exactly with the celebrity's name coming out in the media; 2) None of the other regulars were dropped; and 3) They have not even repeated any old episodes featuring that person since, which they had done in the past when people had left the show.

I think that if the BBC had made clear that as a result of the allegations they were completely disassociating themselves from this contributor, that would have been reasonable. I think that if they'd said that it had nothing to do with them until the contributor was charged with a crime and that therefore they were taking no action, this would also have been reasonable. There are strong arguments for each of these reactions. However, they did neither of these things. What they did instead was to disassociate themselves from someone whose name carried baggage, but in a way that didn't actually hold them accountable for anything. This seems to me to be the worst of both worlds, as it protects neither the accuser nor the accused - all it does is allow the BBC to not take any position at all. And given that the BBC has historically been so heavily involved in covering up abuses of power by people like Jimmy Savile, I think it's important that they do take a position actually.

This kind of position from the BBC is very consistent. Time and again, we see them covering something up until it's unavoidable, then completely disassociating themselves from it - but only to protect themselves from the bad publicity. To take Savile as an example, they have removed episodes featuring him (or even referencing him) from their public archives. Essentially, the idea is to hide the fact that he was ever so closely involved with them. I find this really harmful - you cannot commit to doing better in the future unless you acknowledge and accept what you've done in the past. I've been writing this blog since I was 17 - I'm now 29 and there are some things I wrote in my early days which I certainly no longer believe. But I still keep them up, because they're a part of my history and it's dishonest to pretend I never wrote them. Likewise - the BBC should be clear not only that what Jimmy Savile did was terrible, but also that they themselves were complicit. They should acknowledge that, consistently, and only then can we have any faith that they will improve in the future.

I strongly suspect that the person who assaulted my friend was known about by those in the know before it got into the media - but no action was taken until it was unavoidable, and even then it was the most watered-down pathetic thing I've ever seen. The reason for this is largely because of our collective obsession with celebrity. Celebrity culture is utterly toxic. It creates a vibe that you should have a strong feeling about someone you don't know purely because they've reached a high place in society. I've come to realise in the last few years that I have no interest in celebrities. If someone is good at their job, fair enough, and if they're not that's as maybe - and neither of those things have any bearing on what I think of them personally as a human being, which I won't have any opinion on unless I happen to cross paths with them in real life.

I think that a lot of problems in our society are to do with the power of celebrity culture. I think about it a lot in relation to people like JK Rowling - who has gone from beloved children's author to transphobic pariah. I'm deeply disappointed in her, just as I'm disappointed in anyone with bigoted views, but the most important question I always ask is, why does she have such a big platform in the first place? She's just a person, who has managed to earn a lot of money through being good at writing stories, and we shouldn't know anything else about her besides that unless we happen to know her personally. But for some reason, being talented at entertainment or literature means that we allow complete strangers to have far greater an influence in our lives than they would otherwise have - and that gives them the ability to abuse that influence. Celebrity culture is such a powerful influence in Western society that it's actually quite hard to snap out of it and remember that - but I think it is important to, because it's the root cause of this protection of the powerful.

There are other Jimmy Saviles out there. If you happen to know about one of them, although I recognise that it may be quite difficult, I urge you to tell someone about it - but only if you know for certain, of course. Whether they're an actor, a TV presenter, a broadcaster, a teacher, a a janitor or a road-sweeper makes not one ounce of difference to their danger to the public.

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