Tanni Grey-Thompson: Still Not Equal

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Archive on 4: Tanni Grey-Thompson: Still Not Equal

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, Tanni Grey-Thompson: Still Not Equal

Tanni Grey-Thompson looks at how attitudes to disabled people have changed over 50 years.

Paralympian turned Parliamentarian Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson examines how the fight for disabled rights and attitudes to disabled people have evolved over her lifetime.

Thirty years ago, multi medal winning Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson became one of the UK’s first disabled ‘celebrities’. She had no role models, the only person she’d seen on TV who was disabled growing up in the 1970s was the fictional character of Sandy in the ITV soap Crossroads. 

Here Tanni charts her own journey and assess how attitudes to disability have evolved over the past half a century. Tanni remembers her earliest experiences and dips into the archives to remind us about the turning points in the long battle for equality.

Among those discussing developments and how much more work needs to be done - Falklands War veteran Simon Weston CBE, Stephen Hawking’s first wife Jane Hawking, fellow Paralympian Ade Adepitan MBE, comedian and ':Lost Voice Guy' Lee Ridley, profoundly deaf performer Jonny Cotsen, disability rights campaigners Kevin Donnellon, Phil Friend OBE and Ann Bates OBE, playwright Richard Vergette, diversity campaigner Deborah Williams OBE, Peter Bullimore from the Hearing Voices Network, Professor of Psychology at the University of Bolton Jerome Carson and former Home Secretary Lord Blunkett.

Tanni remembers how she faced appalling prejudice when she fell pregnant and even had social workers questioning whether she was fit to be a mother. She charts how disabled people have been portrayed in the media down the decades, remembers the gaffes and times when society got it completely wrong, and warns current policymakers there's a thin line between equality and being patronised. Among the archive we hear a never before broadcast extract with the late June Brown playing an elderly woman remembering how she was treated as a mum of a down syndrome son in the 1970s and an interview Tanni carried out with Paralympic pioneer the late Susan Cunliffe-Lister who became Baroness Masham just months before she died.

Produced by Ashley Byrne
A Made in Manchester production for BBC Radio 4

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