The Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP) was established in 1985, a membership organisation in the UK that is controlled by disabled people. GMCDP is regarded as being influential in the social, cultural, economic, and legal policy debates on a national stage that have impacted on disabled people, grounded in the Social Model of Disability. The GMCDP magazine Coalition was referred to in these debates, its articles being cited in academic textbooks as well as within the community. The history of GMCDP has been a microcosm of the history of the radical disabled people's movement in the UK since the 1980s, with GMCDP members often involved centrally and nationally.
Origins The first meeting, Strategies for a Coalition, was on Saturday 16 June 1984 with over 90 disabled people attending. It was an all-day meeting and held at the County Hall of the Greater Manchester Council (now an office block) on the corner of Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester. This meeting elected a Steering Committee that was tasked with agreeing a constitution (the rules on how to run the group) and to start looking for funding. Much of the support work behind this event and the steering committee came from two community development workers employed at the Greater Manchester Council for Voluntary Service (later called GMCVO), Dorothy Whitaker and Val Suffolk.
The idea for GMCDP came from a group called the Greater Manchester Disability Action Group which had discussions with radical disabled people like Ken Davis and Maggie Davis at the Derbyshire Coalition of Disabled People (1981-2018), and from regional events during and after the United Nations' International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981. The name of GMCDP was in use from July 1984 onwards.
Around half of the founder members of GMCDP were also members of the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS, 1972–1990) and the Social Model of Disability was central to the design of GMCDP. Many of the UPIAS members who lived in and around Manchester also met together within the Manchester Disabled Athletes (MDA) sports club where further private discussions were possible concerning the formation of GMCDP.Source: private conversations with Lorraine Gradwell, Neville Strowger, Kevin Hyett, Ken Lumb. In particular, it was agreed that GMCDP would be registered as a company but not also as a charity, so that future campaigning would not be compromised. A funding application to the Greater Manchester Council for an Urban Aid grant of £27,350 revenue and £10,000 capital for a Greater Manchester Resource / Information Centre for Disabled People was drafted by the group, showing Lorraine Gradwell as the committee secretary. A basic typed leaflet describing GMCDP was also circulated in October 1984.
One example of the ways of working of the GMCDP Steering Group was the organising of an open meeting called, Politics of Disability, 7.30pm Friday 8 February 1985 at the Health Education Centre, Hardman Street, Manchester (now Spiningfields). Vic Finkelstein was noted as a speaker, as Chair of the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP). The agenda-setting discussion was a few weeks earlier, 24 January 1985, between Kevin Hyett and Lorraine Gradwell while at the MDA club evening meet at Stretford sports centre. Because it was an open meeting it was decided beforehand that it would not be a policy-making meeting. Steering Group meetings were often held at the Health Education Centre at Hardman Street (one of the few accessible meeting venues at the time) each month on a Friday evening.Source: Lorraine Gradwell, Diary 1985.
The Inaugural Meeting of GMCDP took place on Saturday 22 June 1985 at the County Hall of the Greater Manchester Council, at which point the Steering Committee ended and the first Executive Council was elected The meeting included a number of smaller discussion groups, including on education, access, and employment.
Membership
The GMCDP Steering Group decided at the outset that the membership would be only open to individual disabled people who support its aims, and not also to any disability organisations, to prevent GMCDP being overwhelmed by any larger, better-resourced organisations which were not following the social model of disability. Associate membership was allowed for non-disabled people, for organisations, and junior members aged under 16 years. It was also agreed that the officers (chair, secretary, treasurer, etc.) would be elected from the executive council and not from the full membership at an annual general meeting, which elected the executive council only.
An extract from the draft constitution in August 1984 states: "The Coalition aims to promote the full participation of disabled people in ensuring that they have the necessary facilities and support to live independently; to have control of their own lives, and to support all measures that seek to ensure that disabled people have the means to be fully integrated into society."
1980s The first office was at 11 Anson Road, Rusholme, Manchester, in a temporary cabin in the car park of SERIS, the Special Education Resources and Information Service of Manchester City Council. There were three staff initially - a Clerical and Administrative Officer (Sue Stirling for a few weeks, then Thelma Tomlinson) and two Information and Publicity Workers (Ian Stanton, --- ), and a fourth worker recruited in 1986 as the Development Worker, later Team Leader (Lorraine Gradwell).
GMCDP staff and members were heavily involved in the establishment and running of the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP, 1981–2017), both before and after GMCDP had become established.
Coalition magazine The first publication by GMCDP as a staffed organisation was in February 1986. This was an Information News-sheet, which soon had a name-change to become Coalition News and then Coalition from June 1989 onwards. By 2019 there had been over 70 editions of the Coalition magazine. An Information Bulletin was issued for details of events and other announcements.
Accessible public transport (mass transit) When GMCDP was formed, it included people and committees from some pre-existing single-issue disabled people's organisations and these included ADAPT, Action on Disabled Person's Transport - Greater Manchester Branch (1979–1985). In 1982 in outline and then in 1984 in detail, the public transport planners in Greater Manchester proposed that a new tram network should be funded and built, which later became known as Metrolink. Disabled people in ADAPT described themselves in minutes as very concerned to find that the proposed trams would not be accessible to disabled people. The proposal was for retractable steps to slide in and out under the doors of the trams for (non-disabled) people to climb on when boarding a tram. A meeting was held between the authorities and around 70 disabled people on 22 November 1984 to protest, and one of the speakers was the visiting disabled activist Vic Finkelstein.
The transport authorities continued to refuse these demands for a fully accessible tram system for three more years, up to another meeting with the authorities around May 1987, this time with over 100 disabled people protesting. By the summer of 1988 the principle of full access had been agreed and disabled people were invited to inspect a full-size mock-up vehicle and platform that had been built for consultation purposes.
Artability - protest and consequences In July 1986, the Coalition magazine featured the campaign against and eventual cancellation of the Artability conference. The Carnegie Foundation had planned to hold a conference in Manchester on 22–24 September 1986 called, Artability - the way ahead for the arts and people with disabilities, to take forward the recommendations in the (Richard) Attenborough Report on the arts and disabled people. GMCDP and other organisations of disabled people had objected because they were not consulted, the venue for the conference was inaccessible, the philosophy of the conference was medical and therapeutic, and it was aimed only at non-disabled policy makers and excluded disabled people. When GMCDP persuaded Manchester City Council to withdraw its support for the planned conference, the Carnagie Council issued a statement and cancelled the event.
Following this, GMCDP worked with Manchester City Council and others to plan and run a better, alternative event, the Manchester Disabled People's Arts Conference held on 26–27 March 1988 at Manchester Town Hall, and a 39-page conference report was published by GMCDP in August 1988.
Accessible venues In May 1987, GMCDP in conjunction with the Greater Manchester Council for Voluntary Service (GMCVS) co-produced a 61-page booklet, the Venue Guide for meetings and conferences in Greater Manchester, based on 500 questionnaires issued. It was intended to highlight the very limited number of accessible venues, to encourage their wider use by event organisers, and to inform inaccessible venue managers on ways to improve their own access.
Manchester Town Hall campaign In the early 1980s, Manchester Town Hall was inaccessible to disabled people. Every entrance had steps, there was one tiny lift once inside, no accessible toilets, no hearing aid induction loops, no Braille signage. Disabled people's organisations such the Manchester Disability Forum and GMCDP had called for full access to the 'corridors of power' but were being told it wasn't possible because the town hall was a listed building, which the groups considered to be an ill-informed response. The Manchester Town Hall Extension, built in the 1930s, was slightly better for access, though both the link bridges between the buildings contained steps, barriers to access.
GMCDP and Manchester Disability Forum believed that they had secured a political understanding with Manchester City Council that the council would commit to making the 'old' Town Hall fully accessible as soon as possible, and that in the meantime no public meetings would be held there. However, disabled people were angry to find that this agreement had been broken when an exhibition of the Trades Union Congress was held in the town hall alongside the TUC's annual conference nearby. When the exhibition organisers refused to use an alternative accessible venue, GMCDP organised a picket of disabled people at the town hall entrances, including placards saying which trade unions they belonged to, and many TUC delegates refused to cross the line. Kevin Hyett and others later said, this was the moment when elected councillors realised that GMCDP was as political as they were.
Benefits cuts and protests Some members of GMCDP went to the major protest and rally of disabled people on 28 July 1988 at the Elephant and Castle, London, marching on the headquarters of the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) against the cuts by the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher to disabled people's benefits. This campaign resulted in a u-turn on the cuts, and soon afterwards the creation of the Independent Living Fund. This major protest was celebrated by the disabled poet, Simon Brisenden, in The Battle for the Elephant and Castle. (Simon Brisenden was a founder member of Southampton Centre for Independent Living, now Spectrum CIL.)
1990s
First youth project In 1990 GMCDP launched its first project specifically for young disabled people under 25 years old. GMCDP has run various Young Disabled People's Projects continuously since then, including young disabled people taking part in independent living skills training, drama workshops, the Kulture Klub social club and through information provision sessions.
In July 1997 GMCDP and project funders published a training pack of a film (VHS tape) and paperback book, Independent Living Skills: A training manual for young disabled people, by Alison Blake, the project worker.