British Disability history masterpost:

Resources

National Disability Arts Collection and Archive

Tony Baldwinson - has documented and archived a huge amount of our history. Also has things like timelines. Based in Manchester

Disabled People’s Archive - centered in Manchester

How was school? - oral history on education

Studymore - mental health history

Social History of Learning Disability - learning disability history

Leeds University disability studies archive - a bit more academic but a good resource

British Deaf history society

The Deaf Visual Archive

Disability oral history british library

Community Deaf Archives - links to Northern Irish and Sussex Deaf community archives

History of British Sign Language

Disability activism in Bristol - oral history of the disabled people’s movement in bristol

Leonard Cheshire Disability Archive - charity archive but also set up some of the earliest independent living houses.

As a general rule try searching for location + disabled coalition to find disabled lead organisations.

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Key events in the British disabled people’s movement to 2003

1965-70: The National Campaign for the Young Chronic Sick - early campaign for independent living

1972/3: Foundation of the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) who would publish the Fundamental Principles of Disability in 1975 which formally laid out the ideas behind the social model.

1976: Grove Road Housing Scheme - Ostensibly the birth of independent living in the UK.

1981: International year of disabled people, Formation of British Council of Organisations of Disabled People

1984: Hampshire Centre for Independent Living set up, the first in the UK

1987: British Deaf Association launch campaign for the recognition of BSL

1990-93: Block Telethon protests against ITV telethon (later cancelled) and children in need.

1993: Disabled People direct action network (DAN) founded. Responsible for many protests nationwide.

1995: Disability Discrimination Act (worth noting that while this was a victory, the majority of disabled activists felt ans continue to feel that this did not go far enough)

1999: first march in the campaign for the recognition of BSL

2000: largest march for the recognition of BSL

2003: BSL is legally recognized as a language. In April 2022, BSL was finally recognised as an official language of the UK.

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Bonus: Chronic illness inclusion project - project discussing the inclusion of chronically ill people in the social model and disability activism - see this post for more details

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Please add on with more stuff, particularly on Deaf history as I don’t know much about that

por ejemplo: for as much as we talk about things like the bizarrely pro-slavery SPEW plotline, or the portrayal of the goblins in the movies in particular, I have seen very few people engage with the fact that "a monstrous, violent brute is in the girl's bathroom, where it Does Not Belong" is a plot point in the very first installment of the series. that's pretty relevant when discussing the author's transphobia and transmisogyny!

It also helps put into perspective that she did not just suddenly fall down this radical pipeline. As someone from the UK, people like JK Rowling are a dime a dozen. Her politics were vaguely progressive for the time in which she was writing, enough for her to be held up as an “empowering female author” by her fans but still safe enough for mainstream British media to not feel in the least bit threatened by her (to an extent, I’m sure there were various fearmongering tabloids about her and her books during the 90s/2000s, but nowadays the media will pretend like she’s always been their Favourite Woman because nothing about her is actually threatening the status quo anymore). This allowed her to gain the level of influence that she did, having fans on all sides of the political spectrum. She was a bit of a feminist, in the sense that she was an independent woman who supported various feminist movements, but she was centrist enough to not really offend anyone except the loudest of bigots and conservatives, to which she could easily point them out and prove that she wasn’t as bad as them! She doesn’t even despise gay people! One of her characters is even gay it’s just never mentioned in the books at all and has zero impact on the story whatsoever and never has to be forced onto you if you don’t want it!

Her lukewarm yet radical politics are extremely UK-based, rooted in our class system, colonial history and Radical Feminist marches of the 70s and 80s. Every other white, middle class English woman thinks almost identically to JK Rowling. My mother thinks identically to JK Rowling. The politics in her books are an intimate look into the politics of “progressive” British society, and that is why it’s so impertinent that we do actually discuss them. TERF ideology did not spring from nowhere. It was a product of both its time and location, and JK Rowling was right in the heart of it. She was a young adult during the Reclaim The Night Marches (prompted by a string of murders of mostly sex workers by the Yorkshire Ripper, but which was twisted by white, middle class women into a march for them while simultaneously looking down upon the sex workers who were murdered; hence the origin of SWERF ideology) and would have been heavily influenced by authors such as Germaine Greer and Julie Bindel.

It would require a thesis to explain exactly how every single questionable belief in Harry Potter is rooted in the politics and the history of the UK, and unfortunately without that context, it’s hard to discuss exactly how TERF ideology came about and why JK Rowling was so susceptible to it. We do need to discuss the contents of HP, including the homophobia, transphobia and racism that is so common amongst “progressive” Brits of that generation because otherwise we can’t protect ourselves against it. TERF ideology is rising exponentially throughout the globe without people understanding where it came from and why it specifically originated in the UK. The UK was built upon oppressive and violent systems. Our society has historically been segregated, not just by race, but also by class and gender. Our school systems are notorious for being segregated; you can throw a stone anywhere in the UK and you will hit a Boys’ school or Girls’ school. In my town alone, there’s about four. Everyone in my family went to a single-sexed school. Almost everyone I know went to a single-sexed school. Almost everyone in the government went to a single-sexed school. I cannot emphasise enough how the UK breeds bioessentialism like we will die without it. JK Rowling is not an outlier. She is white, middle class British society perfectly encapsulated into a single person, and her books are no different.

Oh this has cracked the lid on a thought I have been brewing about how girls-only and boys-only schools are framed as a sort of... Cozy? Nostalgic? Maybe specifically cozy and safe in a posh way, because they're associated with posh boarding schools more than borstal now.

It's a dangerous thing, related to other dangerous things too.

Re single sex schools something I find interesting is that in every city near me, girls schools outnumber boys schools. A lot of, in fact I’d go so far as to say certainly near me most of, what were boys schools are now co-ed in a way that doesn’t seem to be happening for girls schools. Co-ed is fine but (rich) girls should always have the ability to opt out. And certainly where I am it is very much a class thing there is only 1 state/academy single sex school near me and that is both ex private and it’s own can of worms.

I think it also links back to another significant aspect of Harry Potter which is that it draws very heavily from British children’s literature. The work of Enid Blyton in particular comes to mind when thinking about the boarding school context.