Jack Ashley, Baron Ashley of Stoke, CH, PC (6 December 1922 – 20 April 2012) was a British politician. He was a Labour Member of Parliament in the House of Commons for Stoke-on-Trent South for 26 years, from 1966 to 1992, and subsequently sat in the House of Lords. Deaf MP, Jack Ashley, campaigned for the rights of all disabled people and not just for deaf people. Jack Ashley founded the APDG in 1968 and remained as its chairman for 40 years.
Jack Ashley was born in 1922 to a poor couple in Widnes. He was only five when his father, a night watchman, died. Leaving school at 14 to work as a factory labourer, he became a shop steward for the Chemical Workers Union, a union of which he was the youngest executive member aged 22. He was also a local councillor by the age of 23.
Jack eventually became an MP, for Stoke-on-Trent in 1966. He made an immediate impact and many thought that he would become a minister. However in 1967, when he was 45, he became profoundly deaf as a result of a routine ear operation.
Jack feared, and many assumed, that he would have to abandon politics. Instead he learned to lip-read, helped by his wife Pauline, and became the UK’s first completely deaf MP.
In the Chamber other MPs, including political opponents such as Ted Heath, helped him to take part in debates by turning to face him or giving him cues about his own speech. In this spirit of cross-party cooperation he founded the All Party Disablement Group, as it was then known, in 1968.
Jack soon became well-known outside Parliament as a powerful and passionate advocate for disability rights. His Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill, presented in 1983, was the first piece of anti-discrimination legislation presented to the UK Parliament.
As a private member’s bill, without the support of the government, it fell. There were to be more than 10 further attempts before the government finally brought in its own legislation, in 1995.
Jack was made president of the Royal National Institute for Deaf People and in 1985 he and Pauline founded Deafness Research UK. In 1993 Jack’s hearing was partially restored by a cochlear implant. A year late he ended 26 years as an MP and became a life peer, Baron Ashley of Stoke CH.
Jack played a leading role in campaigns about thalidomide, which resulted in increased compensation for those affected and improvements in drug safety. He has campaigned on other compensation issues, such as vaccine damage to infants, the transmission of HIV to people with haemophilia and the arthritis drug Opren.
Jack and Pauline shared a strong belief in the need for justice for women and he became the first MP to raise the issue of domestic violence in Parliament. He also campaigned and secured changes to the law on rape.
Jack continued to be a vigorous and effective champion of disabled people in the Lords, sponsoring a number of private member’s bills on anti-discrimination legislation and social care.
The government’s Disability Discrimination Act 2005 mirrors his 2002 Disability Discrimination (Amendment) Bill. His final campaign in the Lords focussed on the Disabled Persons (Independent Living) Bill.
During the debate on the Disabled Persons (Independent Living) Bill he said: "The purpose of this new bill is to propose enforceable rights to independent living for disabled people. We have come a long way in the past 30 years or so from a patronising, pitying attitude to disabled people, but without full rights to independent living we fall well short of our goals. Independent living means disabled people having the same choice, control and freedom as any other citizen. It means providing practical assistance based on their own choices and aspirations"
Jack initiated numerous debates on disability in the Lords and fought against aspects of government legislation that he felt were detrimental to disabled people, such as parts of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Bill of 1998-99.
As Jack later wrote: “The failure to tackle disability was a failure of democracy. Millions of disabled people were being ignored and their views disregarded.”
The basic demand, which has echoed across the ensuing decades, was first articulated then: disabled people deserve a fair deal from the society of which they are part.
In his second autobiography, Acts of Defiance writing about the All Party Group on Disability, Jack says: “The world of disability is like a turbulent sea. New thoughts, ideas and beliefs are constantly rising to the surface, being tested and then carried on either an outward or inward tide. The group is the channel through which the new and sustainable ideas are funnelled into Parliament and legislation.”
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