World Cerebral Palsy Day: a people’s history of CP

Lucy_Scope

From Alex White Writes

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.

Read more: World Cerebral Palsy Day: a people’s history of CP

Changing Society

To mark its 50th anniversary in 2002, Scope employed a historian who was going through the committee minutes and annual reviews to create an official history.

Luckily for me, the historian was unable to finish the work. I was asked to take over. At the same time, Disability Now journalist Chris Davies approached me about creating a film. I persuaded him to do an oral history with me instead.

Chris wanted to interview chairs of the charity like Tim Yeo MP and trustees like Alex Moira. But I insisted that at least half of his interviews should be with disabled people.

The result was Changing Society: A Personal History of Scope.

Bill Hargreaves: Can You Manage Stares?

One of the people I had to persuade Chris to interview was Scope founder member Bill Hargreaves.

Chris was reluctant at first because his image of Bill was as a ventriloquist performing at Thomas Delarue School.

What Chris discovered was that Bill was also a pioneer in the fields of employment and leisure for disabled people.

Bill’s parents had been told that, because he had cerebral palsy, he would ”never walk or work or wed”. Bill’s remarkable life defied the doctor’s diagnosis. You can read Bill’s autobiography Can You Manage Stares?

This persuaded the Dictionary of National Biography to include Bill. He was one of the first people with CP featured in this important reference work.

Speaking for Ourselves

Following the success of Changing Society, Phil Mann and I worked with 16 disabled volunteers to record over 250 hours of oral history interviews with people with CP born before 1950 for the British Library Sound Archive.

Read more about Speaking for Ourselves: an oral history of people with cerebral palsy.

Disability Now

When we donated Scope’s archive at the Wellcome Library, I made the digitisation of Disability Now a priority.

Disability Now was written by disabled journalists like Peter White, Mik Scarlett and Professor Mike Oliver, and published by Scope.

Access Disability Now via the Internet Archive.

Shaping our history

We hope that disabled people will be able to shape how we make the history of cerebral palsy and disability more accessible in the future.

I’m speaking about what we have done so far and what we plan to do at the Cerebral Palsy Network on Wednesday 8 October at 6pm.