National League of the Blind marches from Scotland to London in 1920 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
This pathbreaking new book explores how disabled people have resisted their oppression—as well as the dominant views of disability in society.
From the demeaning Old Poor Law of the 1600s through the mass disabling effects of industrialisation to the impact of war on disability, Turner examines these periods through the experiences of disabled people.
He shows how disabled people experienced and resisted these changes.
In doing so, his book challenges not only the various views of disability throughout history but also the rhetoric surrounding disability still prevalent today.
Labour’s continuation of austerity—including threats to benefits and cuts to services—has been combined with ideological attacks.
The government’s “Back to Work Plan”, for example, is an attempt to force sick and disabled people into jobs that may not be suitable for them.
It’s no accident that the policy’s introduction came alongside increasing waves of disability hate crime.
Turner’s outline of the history of resistance shows these ideological attacks are not new.
In brilliant detail, he centres disabled people’s resistance to attacks on both living standards and poisonous ideological views.
Here there are many lessons for disabled people’s struggles today—lessons to be shared with all others fighting for liberation from oppression.
Disabled working children marched in Manchester in 1833 under the banner “Excessive labour is the burden of my soul”, for example.
They helped bring about a ban on children under nine years old working in factories.
William Cuffay was one of the most prominent leaders of the Chartist movement for political reform in the 19th century. He was a black man with a spinal deformity. He helped organise the mass Chartist rally on Kennington Common, in south London in 1848. The state later arrested and transported him for “fermenting revolution.”
And there are other examples, including the British Deaf and Dumb Association, which resisted the eradication of sign language and fought for a deaf culture.
The National League of the Blind registered as a trade union and organised strikes and rallies of up to 500 blind people.
In the post-war period there are the “Responauts”—who depended on mechanical respirators to breathe. Their radical protests demanded the rights of all disabled people.
Turner also depicts the struggles of disabled women who fought for the right to vote.
His history of resistance challenges the way we are taught about disabled people. Where many focus on the realities of misery, pain and oppression, Turner shows that disabled people have always fought back.
In doing so, he inspires all of us who are fighting back today.
Disability: A History of Resistance by David Turner, Bodley Head, £25
Jazz’s new young warriors are on the charge
“It is written that on the other side of this pain, there will be renewal. Beauty for ashes. Joy for mourning. Praise for heaviness. Everything in my spirit knows this to be true.”
So begins one of the most exciting British jazz records in a generation.
Ezra Collective have taken their fusion of jazz, Afrobeat, calypso, Latin and reggae to the top. In 2024, they filled Wembley Arena for night after night. Last week their latest album went straight to number one in the pop charts.
The group, born in London’s Tomorrow’s Warriors jazz youth programmes, has soaked up not only all those musical influences—but many of the political, social and religious influences too.
The tracks are in three parts, each introduced by one of actor Letitia Wright’s monologues, and reflecting the musical journeys of the African diaspora in Britain—from Africa and from the Caribbean.
Some, like early track Blow Your Trumpet easily recall the days of reggae band Aswad and black music made in Britain in the 1970s and early 80s.
Sweet Echo is pure West Africa with horns as tight as they would have been on a Fela Kuti record.
Then, on Only Love comes British-Gambian rapper Pa Salieu to bring the sound of contemporary Afropop.
And Jamaican singer Lila Iké represents on Well Organised, which opens with a great rendering of Max Romeo’s I Chase The Devil.
Letitia is back for part three, opening with the lines, “How do you go through such hardship, such pain, such injustice and then come out with a sound… like calypso?”
When I saw Ezra recently they had so many guests performing with them there wasn’t time to introduce them on stage.
And that reflects something about the band. For them, what matters is not the fame of the person guesting with them, but whether they contribute to the general sense of uplift.
And in an era of oppression, to be so profoundly optimistic about black music, past, present and future is a glorious thing.
Yuri Prasad
- Here Because Of Hope by Ezra Collective, Partisan Records, from £4.99
