Chapter 10 — Losing acceptance of radical groups
Our reputation in the radical disabled world was not doing too well in the 80’s. BCODP, the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People, refused to accept us as members because, they said, we were not run by disabled people. We claimed that we were into integration, and our disabled members already had a big say about how the club was run. We had a democratically elected steering committee. One of these meetings involved somebody who could not speak, somebody who could not hear, and somebody who could not see, as well as many other impairments. We still got things done. But BCODP would not budge. They seemed to hate us, especially me.
The radical feminists were spreading hateful things about Outsiders too. Our poster was labelled sexist (where was their sense of humour?) and I was described as someone encouraging disabled men to behave as badly as non disabled men! A highly critical article about us appeared in Spare Rib.
We decided to improve the club’s image by holding an Open Day. We invited professionals and media as well as the disability groups. Despite a zoomy invite, only two of these invited people came along. We were very hurt. However, the project was useful internally, as I had prepared a report on the club and produced some statistics on our members. Here’s the breakdown: note: some members have more than one of the following:

back | next