David Ruebain - If I knew then what I know now; disabled people reflect on their careers

RICHARD>>:David Ruebain is next. David is fundamentally a solicitor; he used to be a practising lawyer for over twenty years, but he’s much more than that. He’s now the Chief Executive of the Equality Challenge Unit, which is an organisation that is funded by Higher Education to promote equality in universities in the U.K. He was Director of Legal Policy before that at the Equality and Human Rights Commission of Great Britain, and as part of his work there and elsewhere he provided advice across Europe, and to a range of institutions within the U.K. as well, including the F.A. Premier League. He has published widely – in fact his list of publications is huge, so huge that I can’t list them. But he’s also taught nationally and internationally, on education, on disability, on equality law of course, with many voluntary organisations he has worked, and he’s drafted Private Members’ Bills, made oral presentations to committees in Parliament. He was awarded the Radar People of the Year Award for Achievement in Furtherance of Human Rights of Disabled People in 2002; and in 2006 he was listed by Disability Now magazine as one of the twenty-five most influential disabled people in the U.K. David.

DAVID>>: Thank you very much. Well, this is fascinating. I do and have done a lot of presentations and teaching, and certainly when I was a practising solicitor, a lot of advocacy. But it’s unusual to be asked to come and talk about yourself – it’s slightly nerve-wracking, actually. But it’s been very interesting listening to the other speakers and their perspectives; and I suppose the first thing I’d say is: the experience of disability is heterogeneous. It’s not – there is no one experience of disability. So I think if you have a physical impairment, that, well, you’ll have a different experience than if you have a learning difficulty, or some form of cognitive impairment, or a sensory impairment. And also whether you have a congenital disability, whether you are born with it, will be different from whether you’ve acquired it later on in life, because inevitably one’s experiences will have been different in that regard. And frankly, if you take two people with the same impairment, they will have a different experience. So I suppose I’m saying all of this, really, to strike a note of caution, in that I guess none of us up here can relate anyone else’s exact experience. We can only sort of give headline issues.

I was born with my disability, and it’s a noticeable disability, so it’s something that was evident to everybody who saw me from the moment that I was born. I don’t know if I’m the oldest person up here, but when I was a child, it was overwhelmingly the case that if you had any kind of disability, or indeed difference, you went to a special school. I quite often talk about this, because it’s just so absurd: it wasn’t only if you had what we recognise as a disability, it was if you were different in some way. So, for example, there were – before 1981 – 1983, actually – there were eleven categories you were put in if you were a child who wasn’t, quote, “normal”, unquote. And some of them bore some vague relationship to a disability – blind, physically handicapped, deaf, partially deaf. Some of them were absurd, like, I think one of them was “delicate”. And there were schools for “delicate” children. I used to go to school next to one, and basically they were children who were a little bit thin, or poorly. And then there were obviously even more offensive terms, like schools for children who were “backward”; and if you were really unlucky, you went to the school for children who were “educationally subnormal (severe)”, which probably isn’t designed to give you the widest horizon for the rest of your life.

So I went to a special school. My mother, who probably is responsible for everything I’ve achieved, decided that she wasn’t only going to be my mother, but she had to be my champion; and it kind of was her and me against the rest of the world. She insisted that I receive some kind of an education, and I went to a regular primary school for a year when I was nine; but then, unfortunately, she died, and I then went back to special school, to boarding school. And I left special school at sixteen with two O-Levels – what are now called GCSEs – at Grade C, and had no idea what I was going to do. And this is where I make my regular plug for the comprehensive system: because I thought that I wanted to carry on studying – I had no idea why or what, I didn’t have any horizons or expectations at the time, except I enjoyed learning, notwithstanding the fact that I had failed so miserably at special school. And I wrote – because I didn’t really have an active parent – I wrote to all of the schools in my area; and the grammar schools, if they replied at all, sent a curt response saying “This is not how we do things: your parent has to approach us”. But the comprehensive welcomed me. I think I was one of the only disabled children who was still there – this would have been in 1978 – but they welcomed me, regardless of my failings, and I did very well there. So I did my retakes, obviously, and then A-Levels, and then I got a place to study Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at Oxford. And I have to say, with hindsight, I probably wouldn’t have gone there. I think it’s a fantastic institution, evidently, but I think I was too terrified. So most of my three years there were spent in a state of near terror, and probably I could have done with a bit more pastoral support. It may well be completely different now, but it was, one thing that it did give me was the belief that I could do absolutely anything I wanted to do.

There is a pretension in that, evidently because I can’t but I think having that belief really is key in attaining what you want. I then still didn’t know what I wanted to do after attaining my degree, mainly because I had no plan, I had no sense of any, erm, I had not thought that I would ever get a job. I had not thought that I would go to college, let alone university, but I had become an activist as a result of my experiences. I was very active in party political events at university, I was interested in pedagogy and why children are sent to certain institutions and not others, in the light of my experience, and it was the early 80s when I had graduated was a time when the law was being used to advance political objectives. It was beginning to be used to advance political objectives, so lots of people suggested I do law. I applied to law school, I got in, and I found it suited me. It suited my way of thinking, it suited my world view, and so I became a solicitor, and ended up being a partner in the law firm, which I enjoyed enormously, but wanted to do more, and hence all of my time as a solicitor in private practice I had an unusual career in that I combined litigation, I loved litigation, I loved advocacy, I combined it with policy work, so my, erm, one of the things is, whatever you do, make sure you become senior in whatever you do because then all the things you don't like doing you can employ other people to do, so I had other lawyers who could do all the stuff in my department that I wasn't that keen on, and I spent half of my time doing policy work, when I became Equality Adviser to the F A Premier League which was a whole other story and quite hysterical really given the amount of money they have, and teaching and a certain amount of research, and decided that I wanted to combine more policy, the policy and law elements of my interests which is when I left to become director of legal policy at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and now Equality Challenge Unit which is essentially a strategic policy and research agency, so I don't practice as a solicitor any more. I suppose when I think about my career, I have never really been unhappy, and I have always been able to do largely what I wanted to do, and it is interesting to me why that is. There must be a significant element of luck in there. I think I was helped enormously by the comprehensive school that I went to, by the staff, and the students there. I was bullied at special school, and I was never bullied at mainstream school. I know our experiences are a little different.

I think most people want to like most people and they are terrified by difference or uncertainty, and I think the way that we can take charge of our lives is by helping them do what they want to do. And I suppose one of the things that I have found out very early on is that being a victim is really unhelpful. It is actually quite unattractive, and also it will only take you so far. That doesn't mean to say that you cannot get angry at appropriate moments, and if you pick your moments it is all the more potent, but assuming that you are, one is the victim in a situation, is unappealing, frankly. I don't like it when I see it in other people and I don't like it in me if I notice any tinge of that. When I was in private practice I specialised in education because of my interests in teaching and learning and research and early pedagogy and at the time in the 80s and 90s, if you acted for individuals which I did, rather than institutions, most education was about the emerging body of law around special educational needs, disabled children, and I, frankly, was the best in the country in that area of law. I was recognised as such in the various legal directories as being pretty much one of the leading practitioners in the area, and so we got a lot of work, both legally aided and private, but fairly early on I noticed that parents of disabled children were looking to me not only to be their lawyer, but also because it, my existence gave them some hope for their children, and for a long while that irritated me until I realised but there is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with being, helping to afford people on their own journey, which is really what we are all on, and I suppose, although I consider myself an activist, I have mellowed a lot more as I have got older. I don't feel cross as much as I do with individuals. I feel very cross with systems, and with stupidity, actually, mostly, but I don't feel nearly as cross with individuals who are inelegant or gauche, or awkward, as I used to be, and I have to say one of the most useful things that I learned to do, and I think I would probably encourage everybody to do, whether they are disabled or not, is to flirt. I would encourage you to flirt with everybody, no matter what the situation, no matter what you are trying to get, even if you are just buying a bar of chocolate I would encourage you to flirt. Flirting is a way of engaging with people by really thinking about them and bigging them up and everybody likes that, whether or not you are looking for a relationship or another relationship, flirt. I have found that, and one day I will write a disability liberation manual and I will call it, "Flirt", or something.

Let me just see if there is anything else I wanted to say. I'm sure I probably have run out of time. I think all of us can be oppressive and all of us can be oppressed. It is another point why there is no point in being a victim. There is some place where we'll have inadvertently or otherwise have mistreated other people and just as patient as we need to be patient with ourselves for our stupidity so we need to be patient with other people for their stupidity. I think that we all need to be realistic but I think there should be no limits on ambition. I probably have benefitted from the decision that my mother made for me that I could do anything I wanted to do, but there are clearly some things that I can’t do, and I think you can hold both things without being pretentious, and by being kind to yourself and other people when there are things that you can’t do as well as things that you can do. I think we can play to our strengths, there are things, as I mentioned, that I like doing and things that I don't and I'm in the position now where I have got staff so I can design my organisation in a way where I can do the things that I'm good at and arrange for people to do the things that I'm not so good at. And I think - maybe that's all I want to say. Really the thought that keeps coming back to me which I have said but I will probably finish off with this, is that there are very, very few people that I have met who have malign intent. There are lots of people who are -- who don't have information, there are lots of people who are part of a structure which terrifies them and they feel that they don't know what to do. There are lots of situations which we will all face which are irritating. One of my bug bears is that I have particular access requirements in hotel rooms, and although I or my PA will always specify them at least 20 or 30% of the time they will be forgotten or omitted or whatever, and I have learned not to be cross with the receptionist about it, because it is never the case that they have deliberately set out, and they think that I think that they have done it on purpose, and as soon as we can move on from that it is much easier to solve the problem, so I fear that I risk sounding a bit Pollyanna-ish about this but I think reaching out to people is probably the most useful thing.