Paul Sullivan [PS] This is Paul Sullivan recording an interview with Ian Popperwell for the – Bristol People Gallery Challenging section about the Arnolfini protest by disabled people – during the bank holiday weekend of 1989. The date today is the 9th of April and we are doing this at Ian’s house in Greenbank. Ok Ian would you like to say your name? Ian Popperwell [IP] Hello, Ian Popperwell. PS The purpose of this recording is for us really to have a conversation about the Arnolfini protest and- this will then –probably or part of it will find its way onto the interactives in the Bristol People Gallery of the new Museum M Shed. Andy King who you kindly wrote to about the protest thought it would be a good idea if I interviewed you rather than just sending somebody else along because of me being disabled as well. He thought it would be good to have a disabled person interviewing another one – and – and I was really pleased with that because I don’t really know much about the protest. My background is that I came to Bristol in the early nineties to do a job at the university – and wasn’t particularly politically active and I suppose I am not in a way even now. Although I am adherent to the social model and- you know I do disability training and always train from the social model. I have never been involved in the campaigns that were a feature of the eighties and nineties I suppose, and Bristol seems to have been quite a player in those campaigns and a leader in some ways so I would really just like to draw you out about that really – so - would it be possible for us to start with just a bit of background information about yourself – as much or as little as you want to say about you know your own life experience, how you came to be in Bristol and what led up to you being involved in the protest. IP Ooh – yeah – well I’ve always been blind I went to - segregated special -boarding schools from an early age and I guess learnt that blindness was my problem and that the way that – the best way to manage was to be able to -pretend to be sighted I guess in order to be able to fit in – to - to the world. Then I came to Bristol properly – I lived here in holiday times as a teenager but I went away coming back here to do social work training I started to read about the start, the beginnings of the disabled peoples movement and some of the readings – reading some of the articles and academic and campaigning writings which was about focusing the problem outside ourselves with the way our society is constructed. I guess it was a reaction – a reaction against the making disability or impairment the problem. I became part of a small group - which we decided to call ourselves the Avon Coalition of Disabled People which was a kind of campaigning group of disabled people. PS Ok - so when did that group begin to form? IP I think - a few people had got together in eighty eight – wanting to form - a centre for an integrated – as it was called then integrated - centre integrated living – C I L – and we shift – as the group grew we shifted its emphasis – we wanted it to be more of a campaigning group than just something to set up a service providing organisation – so yeah I guess in ‘88. PS So that was in ‘88, the protest that we are interested in was in 89 – so – what was the background to that particular campaign? IP Oh – I mean – the the truth of it was I mean there would have been any number – tens or hundreds of local campaigns that we could have had – and we needed some public event - to launch this organisation and to kind of put ourselves on the map really as the first time that disabled people were campaigning for our civil rights if you like in Bristol. All the organisations that existed before and still did at the time were all the very traditional organisations for all the disabled – there a society for the blind, there’s the spastic society, centre for the deaf all these big tradition – arthritis care, all the traditional charities – and had a very dominating view of the people for whom they cared – and we set up something very different and in order to do it and to make a mark we needed to have a campaign and to do something very public – and at the time the Arnolfini had spent an inordinate amount of money on a big refurbishment that involved making their café less accessible than it had previously been - and they had also put a little charity box in the entrance to raise money for a lift – so it was kind of a perfect – er - symbol really of all the worst things of – inaccessibility of public buildings – and the kind of old charitableness of disability – and being at the mercy of whether we are grateful enough - I suppose – at the time that was all our kind of thinking. It wasn’t particularly the Arnolfini it was – it was represented all of those things and gave us a launch pad. PS So what are your memories of the day itself? IP I guess – it was kind of cold and windy, we were a bit tentative, it was the first time we had ever done anything like that. Yes in that kind of small demo, kind of slight embarrassment – but also feeling a bit strong and I remember some media coming – I am not sure one of the local radio or tv or something – and that kind of buoyed us up somewhat – kind of shouted a few slogans and things and – I think got the Arnolfini slightly embarrassed because it was going to be on the news about a disabled peoples campaign. I mean it wasn’t – it was a campaign of I dunno 16 to 20 people – it wasn’t hundreds and hundreds of people all shouting in – in - unison – so there was something very tentative about it I guess. PS Had somebody tipped the press off? IP Oh no no we – we had sent out press releases – it wasn’t a tipping off it was very much a public demonstration we had been very organised about it – so we had written – sent press releases to all the local media – etc – we had made it very public – so yeah. PS And what was the reaction of the Arnolfini staff – did they come outside and speak to you that morning or- did they try and get rid of you? IP I can’t remember it was such a long time ago they didn’t try and get rid of us I think they were more embarrassed and wanting to appease us in some way they er – I cant remember I don’t think they came out but they did talk - they did want to meet with us and a few of us did meet with them in the following week. PS And what was the outcome in terms of the access to Arnolfini itself? IP I think they made a – I think they put a little table on the flat ground level in the café area so everyone else would sit on raised tables a foot above the ground and there would be a little corner table at the end of the bar for wheelchair users – we didn’t negotiate that but that was their kind of response. PS So just stepping back a bit I mean the café had been accessible before. The seating area was all on ground level – and then they had gone and refurbished the café and raised the seating up so that it became inaccessible – particularly to wheelchair users and anybody with mobility impairments. Can you remember something of the anger that people felt at that – you know the outrage I know you said it was a useful target for a launch campaign and a public symbol if you like of Bristol disabled people uniting and taking on and challenging for their rights but was there a very real sense of outrage among people? [10:00] IP Yes there was and I think there was something very blatant about the Arnolfini doing it because it had been a very public refurbishment and I think they had spent I think then £200,000 or more on it - and the Arnolfini had been somewhere - as part of the kind of – at the time it was one of the dockside arty venues and people – and also it was accessible and wheelchair users did go there to drink or eat or whatever – and – yeah so the change from it being accessible to non accessible – yeah it was a cause of anger for people. PS So.. IP And I think also there was something that – it just symbolised that people could do what they liked really, and the charity box thing – it really didn’t matter there was no law that made it illegal to do something like that – at the time people could do whatever they liked and disabled people had no – I suppose – no influence in those decisions but weren’t thought about – I think the main thing is that disabled people with access needs weren’t thought about - aesthetics were the most important thing. Sound file 2 PS So Just going back to the Arnolfini process itself, can you tell me what… I asked what the effects were on the… of the reactions on the Arnolfini staff were, what was the… what impact did the protest have on the disabled people in Bristol? IP I think demonstrations and direct action, who knows what impact they have on creating the social change they ask for? Some clearly do, and we’ve seen some good examples recently, of at least having an impact on, I don’t know, the anti-war marches a few years ago in London and all over the country, the anti-poll tax movement has been well documented as having a big effect on or responsibility for changing what was then the poll tax and the council tax etc. But I think one of the things direct action demonstrations do is make people feel good who are involved in them and increases the sense of comradeship, status, I think it probably heightens people’s sense of importance or over-heightens our sense, so I think all those things, we gained a sense of power, we were this powerful group that could, that were going to change things and were going to shake things up really, and we caused a lot of anger, anger from, mainly from the big charities that I mentioned earlier that’d had a monopoly on gratitude in the city, they’d had a monopoly on being the experts, on holding all the purse strings, on providing the services, on being the people that the local authority and health authorities talked to about disability and suddenly there was a group of disabled people who were the very people who were ‘unconsultable’ as far as they were concerned and were the very people you wouldn’t talk to about disability, you’d talk to the experts, the professionals, these people were quite articulately voicing dissent. And that was the impact, that was I think the biggest impact, we can then plot over the subsequent decade changes that happened in local policy and indeed the Arnolfini has had its big closure and refurbishment now and is much, much more accessible than ever it was, but, you know, that’s, what, two decades later. PS What are the policy implications for Bristol after the protest? IP Well again the protest was just a… I mean it’s what we launched ourselves as the coalition with. We didn’t carry on the Arnolfini campaign afterwards, I mean there was little point, there were much more important things to do, to shift policy around social services provision, around social care, independent living etc. around accessibility of buildings, of pavements the highways if you like, public transport, the education system including special and segregated education, residential care, community development work, closure of day centres or moving towards that etc. There’s lists, there were loads of long lists that were far more important than one café-bar and art gallery by the docks. So, I mean you can tell I’m not focusing over on the Arnolfini, I’m just using it as a symbol of something rather than the most important thing, it was our launch pad but all those other things were far more important because they affected the lives, the day-to-day lives, of disabled people so that’s what we focused on as a coalition, trying to impact on the local authority and various, I can’t remember what the structures were then for the commissioning of healthcare so that was the focus of our work, consultation work, campaigning and so on. PS But I get the feeling from something that you’ve hinted at but also talking to other people that Bristol had been up there with Manchester and one or two other coalitions of disabled people in really setting the agenda for disability rights in the UK as a whole, do you go along with that view? IP Oh yeah, I mean we, there was a growing disabled people’s movement which, we weren’t the first at all, I mean it had been going for some years, I think Derbyshire and Hampshire kind of starting in 1981, so we came to it relatively late. But then very quickly, I think one of the things we had was a very strong perspective on the issues, we had a clarity, we developed a clarity about what disability was in this society and how it impacted upon people, and that then gave us a clear way of interpreting what we saw of services in order to know how they needed to change, how they need to shift, and I think we had a strong voice so we were in the vanguard of the more radical organisations, like the Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, and were quite substantially different from the more common organisations of disabled people that had a strength in terms of I suppose comradeship in terms of getting together but not of perspective. We had quite a radical perspective that helped us be leaders really. PS So can you remember any of the campaigns that you mounted as a coalition after the Arnolfini once the launch had happened, what were the big campaigns that followed? IP Well, the coalition did, occasionally, get involved in the more national campaigns and had a presence, but as I said our main campaigning was around education, there was a campaign for inclusive education for disabled children, so that became a strong campaign of ours for a long time. Local transport, for accessible public transport in terms of buses and trains. And for social care, what was social services provision and the improvements to that, particularly in relation to independent living, I guess they were kind of three of the areas that we focused upon. PS And would you say that, it’s my sense that the disabled movement has become much less radical in recent years there’s not much campaigning of the type that you were engaged in, in the early years of the coalition going on nowadays. Do you agree that there is that diminution if you like, and why do you think that is? Why are we less radical now? [20:00] IP Yeah I do agree, I suppose there’s something about radicalism with intelligence, I think a lot of the disabled people’s movement was very polarised. The social model of disability as it stood at the time, I think was quite fragile, because it was a reaction. A reaction to all the… everything about disability is about people’s impairments, so the problem solely lies with the individual, through… so the reaction… Sound File 3 PS We’re on again now, so just slightly step back, you were just saying about the social model and how it took a different view of disability than… IP It was a reaction, that’s what I’m saying I guess, it was a reaction to disability being solely seen as what impairments people have and the problem caused by those impairments. To externalising the problem to society, that is all the problem, and impairment I relatively insignificant in that. Which is in many ways is a crazy argument, because I mean my blindness is very real, the way that it impacts on my engagement with the world is very real, so that’s there, and also the way society treats me, or the way things are constructed, in all kinds of ways is also very real, so it’s much more complex than it s society’s problem or it’s my problem, I think it’s a complex relationship and somehow campaigns don’t work by promoting complexity, and also complex arguments aren’t what people often want, people want answers, they want things to be simple and I think what happened was… that for a start a lot of people have lives to lead and can’t campaign all their lives and be angry all their lives so there’s a limit to the amount of energy that any group of people can put into stuff but also if we see things as very simple and don’t understand them as complex then I guess quite simple solutions can be seen to be the answers and they’re done then there’s no ‘where do we go from there’. PS Do you think some people might say the reason why campaigning’s era was gone is that the battle’s been won. That we have- IP Yes I think that’s what I mean thank you. But I think if we see the battles as being simple and relatively straightforward, then, yes, some gloss of accessibility on buildings, more mainstream schools taking disabled children, there being a Disability Discrimination Act, etc. can be seen as being the answers, that we’ve got there we’ve won, I think, but my issue is that I guess that things are much more complex than that. But if we don’t want, or aren’t able, to look below the service and see the depth of the complexity then we’ll just see them as sort of answers… PS That suggests to me that you think the battle very much isn’t won, and there are other battles to be fought and I just wondered what do you think the battles are for today that remain? IP I suppose I’m not sure I see them as battles any more, I think probably that’s one of my differences now. I don’t know, I guess there’s, if there’s a battle, it’s a battle for intelligence and subtlety… it’s to kind of convince people that things aren’t as simple as they like to think. PS Do you think that means disabled people as well as non-disabled people? IP Yes, yes it’s the kind of… Well I’m one myself, the commissioners, it’s people who, the policy makers, that we need to put things in place that recognise the subtlety, that can have an interpretation of... I think it’s about, services may change, we may close down day-centres and so on, close down the institutions and put the money into different things, but we always need to carry on looking at what the relationships are like between the people providing the services, if it moves from people providing a service in a day-centre to a group of people giving them few choices but then you take the same attitudinal value base and take it out into the community we see it all the time, we see groups of people, I don’t know with mental health difficulties, with learning difficulties in cafes, and you get some member of staff that talks to them differently, it’s almost like taking the zoo out and making them public, I think they can be terribly stigmatising because what’s being looked at is the location, not what’s happens within the location. So you remove the location, remove the institution but you keep all the same relationships and attitudes between staff and service users and make them public. And that’s not social inclusion, social inclusion is where you look at the dynamics, the subtleties of how people react and what it means to use the service. PS Well we’ve strayed a long way from the Arnolfini protest. That’s been really interesting, I’m going to stop the recording now. IP Thank you. PS And thank you very much- IP And do remember this is my own views or thinking, it’s not some wider truth that I’m conveying. PS No we’re not regarding you as a representative of anybody except yourself, and the same goes for my opinions of course. [00:26:54 Recording Ends]