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BBC’s ‘Silenced: The Hidden Story Of Disabled Britain’ – A Study In Dismantling Oppression

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Disability rights in modern Britain were hard-won and represent a triumph against ableist ignorance and bigotry which, for a long period of history, saw disabled people dismissed as second-class citizens and a lower form of humanity.

Even today, such precious rights remain fragile and tenuous. Requiring active participation on behalf of successive governments to evolve and sustain them, it would be all too easy for treasured freedoms to just slip away and the public at large might not even notice.

That is the stark key takeaway from the BBC’s disturbing but insightful documentary, “Silenced: The Hidden Story of Disabled Britain,” which aired last night on BBC Two.

The hour-long documentary is presented with poise, empathy and sombre reflection by writer, actor, and former children’s television presenter Cerrie Burnell.

Burnell was born without the lower part of her right arm and the film’s opening scene consists of her recollecting how in 2009, when she was a presenter on CBeebies (the BBC’s children’s TV channel), she was the subject of angry letters from parents, complaining that her appearance would scare their children.

The documentary does an excellent job of delving into the interlacing strands of history. It outlines precisely how each epoch of disability oppression, and subsequent attempts to modernize, flowed logically into the next phase.

It also explains how the history of disability in Britain was not linear, nor did it take place in a vacuum, but was instead, broadly shaped by wider forces of social change.


Victorian workhouses and segregated institutions

We learn how the seeds of mass institutionalization were sewn in the eerie, dank and airless corridors of the Victorian workhouse.

Many of the so-called “defectives” and “feebleminded” ended up here due to not being able to compete in the rat race to the bottom that saw thousands of workers migrate to the large cities to work in the factories and mills of industrial Britain.

The film explains how social reformers and benefactors, like Mary Dendy in the the late 19th and early 20th century, sought to promote more compassionate living arrangements for disabled children through the creation of self-contained residential communities, such as the Sandlebridge Colony in Cheshire.

Yet, a chilling foreshadowing of what was to come is perceptible through Dendy’s written observations on her great “experiment.”

According to Dendy, “It is perfectly easy to make the great majority of the weak-minded happy without ever letting them see anything of the outside world. Above all, I should like to emphasise the fact that it is easy to keep the feebleminded children if they are never allowed once to indulge animal passions.”


The 20th-century eugenics movement

The eugenics movement may have reached its horrific nadir within the mass sterilization of the disabled in Nazi Germany and ultimately, the death camps but the film shows that this was not just a fringe movement.

In fact, the documentary reminds us that eugenic principles of selective breeding for the purposes of strengthening the stock of the human race received the support of the likes of Winston Churchill and celebrated philosopher Aldous Huxley.

We see footage from the 1930s produced by the British Eugenics Society. When listening it is difficult to determine what is more unnerving – the words themselves or the casual but authoritative tone of the British Pathé-style voice used to convey them.

“Once they have been born, defectives are happier and more useful in these institutions than when at large,” affirms the narrator. 

“If carefully trained, they can be taught simple routine tasks but it would have been better, by far, for them and for the rest of the community if they had never been born.”


Learning from diverse voices

What the documentary does exceptionally well is succeed in blending quotes and interviews with luminaries from Britain’s disability rights movement alongside the accounts of ordinary everyday people.

In addition to hearing the recorded words of Dr. Ludwig Gutman, a Jewish medic who fled Nazi persecution to live in Britain and become the father of the modern-day Paralympic movement, the viewer is also drawn to the wonderfully eloquent writings of the 1960s and 70s care home resident and disability activist Paul Hunt.

Hunt’s philosophy and activism were to later underpin the emergence of the social model of disability and is augmented by first-hand interviews with John Evans.

Evans had no option but to live in a care home in his twenties after suffering a spinal fracture. He later campaigned during the late 1970s and beyond for the authorities to provide direct payments to allow disabled people to pay for their own carers, so they could live independently in the community.

But, we also hear the heart-breaking story of Jean Gambell in the words of her brother David. Sectioned as a teenager under the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act due to suffering the after-effects of meningitis, Jean spent her entire adult life (some 70 years) detained in an institution.

Her brothers only found out that she was still alive a few weeks before her death due to a chance discovery of a letter from the care facility she was residing in.

Burnell additionally interviews Ann Macfarlane, who as a child in the 1940s suffered from a type of arthritis known as Still’s Disease and had her legs repeatedly broken by doctors and reset in plaster.

Eventually, Ann was encased in a plaster bed statuette. A body-sized torture chamber designed to restrict all movement.

“They wanted perfect people,” says Ann. “They didn’t want disabled people. They wanted us to be perfect, which is, I think, why I experienced the torment of trying to be perfect and all the treatments were to lead to that.”

What Ann is describing is the hey-day of the so-called medical model of disability. Following the Nazi atrocities during World War II, the eugenics movement lost traction within civilized society but was replaced with a myopic focus on attempting to fix broken non-conformist bodies.

At this point, Burnell too, recalls as a young girl, resisting the instructions of a doctor at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton to wear a prosthetic resembling a doll’s hand but with no functional benefit.

When questioning why she needed to wear the prosthetic, the doctor replied, “The other children might not like it if you don’t wear it, or you might not have any friends.”


The social model of disability and civil rights

The latter part of the documentary is taken up with the civil rights struggle against oppression and marginalization. Direct action flowed off the broad acceptance of the social model of disability within the disability rights movement.

The Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation, of which the aforementioned Paul Hunt was a founding member, made a profound declaration in 1976.

“In our view, it is society which disables physically impaired people. Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society. Disabled people are, therefore, an oppressed group in society.”

The social model of disability reframed disability as a civil rights issue, rather than a purely medical one and the documentary is laden with footage of direct-action protests, such as disabled members of the public stopping traffic in central London to protest against inaccessible public transport.

One of the most striking protests is seen in response to the Telethon in 1992.

A national television event screened on ITV, the Telethon was intended to raise millions for charity but was lambasted and subjected to vociferous condemnation outside the TV studio by disability rights protestors.

Their message was a simple one – charity was entirely the wrong lens through which to view the plight of disabled people in Britain.

Full integration into society could not be brought about by the goodwill of the British public pledging donations, it could only be achieved through legislative reform.

To quote the colorful language of Baroness Jane Campbell, one of the original architects of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act, the Telethon protests reflected the determination of disabled Britons to “piss on pity.”

Throughout the protests, the rumbling manta of “rights not charity” can be heard and outside the studio, a man with a megaphone summarises the sentiments of the demonstrators.

“Those people in the building opposite are begging on our behalf. We want to tell you - you don’t have our permission. We don’t want your patronage, what we want is your support for our equal rights as disabled people campaigning against segregation.”

Civil disobedience and direct action helped pave the way for the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act and its successor the 2010 Equality Act.

A simple glance at the timeline shows how very young these sapling articles of legislation really are.

What has followed has been a decade of government austerity in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, which has seen disability services and benefits cut down to the bone.

As John Evans explains in the film, “We are almost firefighting now to try and keep what little we have.”

Despite the continued vigilance of Britain’s 14 million-odd disabled people, the pandemic has assailed this segment of the population disproportionately in relation to financial provision, legislative protection and mortality outcomes.

Worryingly, this has taken place in an environment where the attention of the wider public is understandably focused elsewhere.

As Burnell aptly summarizes in her closing remarks, “if we look at the huge achievement, all of the rights that have undoubtedly been won that’s where we have to remain vigilant really.

“To make sure that those rights suddenly aren’t taken away in the middle of the night when no one is looking.”

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