The other tradition: From personal politics to disability arts
Allan Sutherland, Edward Lear Foundation
Abstract
At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, two organisations, the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) and the Liberation Network of People with Disabilities, were attempting to create a new politics of disability. The detailed theoretical discussions of the UPIAS made possible what we now call the social model of disability. At the same time the Liberation Network was exploring an approach to disability which, while less concerned with establishing rigorous theoretical underpinnings, worked at creating a broadly-based personal politics of disability. As its name suggests, it drew upon the thinking of the Women's Liberation Movement and Gay Liberation. In particular it took the idea that 'the personal is political' and tried to apply it to disability. This paper describes the establishment of the Liberation Network and its key achievements. It describes ways in which the Network and UPIAS worked together, such as the demonstrations against the presence of a South African team at the Stoke Mandeville games. It also suggests some reasons why the Network fell into decline. The paper takes the view that the disability movement needs both a head and a heart, and that it is to be regretted that the personal politics of the Liberation Network have not formed a greater part of the mainstream thinking of the disability movement. However, the paper also suggests that both versions of disability thinking found a place in the disability arts movement, achieving a synthesis that has been absent in many other parts of the movement. It explains why this should have been so and what the effect has been. Allan Sutherland, the paper's writer, was strongly involved in the Liberation Network from its inception. The Network's thinking played an important part in his 1981 book 'Disabled We Stand'. He has subsequently been a key figure in the disability arts movement.