1. War and Health
“The Civilian Disabled”: War and its role in the disability rights movement
Gareth Millward – – Centre for History in Public Health
Improving health worldwide

2. Boer War field hospital, c. 1900.
Image from Wellcome images
Disabled people protest British welfare reforms, May 2011
Image from RNIB (via Flickr)

3. The Boer War
Substantial number of recruits turned away on health grounds.
Public health campaigns of the early twentieth century tied into Empire.
Driven by the state’s fear of the “degeneration” of the working classes.
A London slum, 1920s.
Image from Wellcome images

4. The First World War
John Galsworthy, author of the Forsyte Saga, in Reveille: Devoted to the Disabled Sailor & Soldier, 1 (London: HMSO, 1918)
Temporary prosthetic limb, early C20.
Image from Wellcome images
American rehabilitation during WW1.
Image from the National Medical Museum (via Flickr)

5. The Second World War
Built upon rehabilitation programmes from the First World War
Also tied into contemporary working-class demands for reform.
Creation of NHS, National Insurance and repeal of the Poor Law provided much better coverage for disabled people
A lorry leaving a Remploy factory in Springburn, c. 1978
Image from Wikicommons

6. “The Civilian Disabled”
Entitlement to support based on insurance status
No support as-of-right for married women
“Cinderella services” had been sorely neglected
Creation of Disablement Income Group in 1965 seen as the birth of the modern disability movement
Lord William Beveridge ( )
Image from Wikicommons

7. The incomes approach Support should be based on need alone
Utilised expertise of post-war social reforming academics as well as disabled people themselves
Played a central role in defining “disability” in government policy
Between 1970 and 1977, a host of new social security benefits were created, as well as the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970
Towards a National Disability Income, the Disablement Income Group’s main policy document. Taken from Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick.

8. Civil rights, not charity
Poverty seen as a symptom of the wider problems faced by disabled people
Disability framed as discrimination against those with impairments
Following the Committee on Restrictions Against Disabled People (1982), clamour for anti-discrimination legislation
Government favoured “education and persuasion”, but Acts were passed in 1981 and 1986
Book cover of The Politics of Disablement which was the first to elaborate on the “social model” with academic detail. Published 1990.

9. The Vietnam War
Vietnam veterans had secured significant concessions from Republican governments
ADA (1990) served as blueprint for UK activists
Combined with scandal over improper behaviour, a limited Act was passed in 1995
President George Bush Sr. signing the Americans With Disabilities Act Image from Wikicommons.