Disability: A History of Resistance
By David Turner.
Published by Random House, 2026, £12.99
Reviewed by David Maples
David Turner has written an enthralling book. Although he is an academic social and cultural historian, the book is accessible and written for a lay audience.
His central approach is not to focus on exclusion but on the history of creativity, resilience and struggle for acceptance. In bringing suppressed histories to light he aims to shift perspectives, challenge assumptions and offer a new lens through which to understand both the past and the present. In particular he gives a platform to people with the lived experience of impairment as experts in describing the problems they face and in offering solutions.
The Socialist Party supports the social model of disability which is endorsed by the author. This is the idea that it is the organisation of society which disables people rather than their impairment.
Throughout history, war has been a key factor in shaping attitudes to disability. The first major legislation to address disability was the Act for Relief of Soldiers 1593 which ordered the raising of funds to relieve “sick, hurt and maimed soldiers and sailors”, paid as pensions to men incapable of further service on proof of an honourable service record.
One motivation for the Act was fear. The sight of ragged demobilised soldiers was alarming authorities. Demobilised soldiers and sailors also presented a constant threat of violence. The legislation for pensions was part of clamping down on disorder of various kinds, reinforcing the power of magistrates to act against drunkards, fornicators and people who spent their Sundays in leisure pursuits rather than attending church. Pensions aimed to remove temptations to crime and insurrection, binding the interests of disabled veterans to those of the state.
Many readers will find the chapter on the industrial revolution the most interesting. Wales was the first industrial nation with Merthyr Tydfil, based on coal and iron, at the heart of it. In the late 1840s a correspondent from the London-based Morning Chronicle described Merthyr’s streets as being “thronged with the maimed and mutilated”. The reporter wrote that there were “more men with wooden legs than are to be found in any town in the kingdom having four times its population”.
Many people at the time viewed men’s capacity to labour as a form of ‘property’ and industrial disablement as a process by which it was stolen by a capitalist industrial system which placed profits before the livelihood of people.
The development of large-scale manufacturing created pressure to work faster and more efficiently. This made it harder for disabled people to compete, but disabled workers were not just the victims of economic exploitation, they were part of the resistance to it.
Children were employed from the age of five in the mill towns in Yorkshire and Lancashire. A newspaper report in 1825 claimed that a thousand workers were maimed each year in Manchester’s cotton factories. In the emerging labour movement the maimed and deformed bodies of workers, especially children, became increasingly weaponised in the struggle for workers’ rights.
By the early 1830s, Short Time Committees were calling for a Ten Hours Bill to restrict the length of the working day for all workers. When the Ten Hours Bill was defeated in parliament in 1832, a Royal Commission was established to investigate the condition of factory workers. In May the following year, disabled factory children marched through Manchester to greet the Commissioners with the slogan ‘Excessive labour is the burden of my soul’. The next month the Commissioners were greeted in Bradford by “hundreds of factory-made cripples”.
The 1833 Factory Act did not win the campaigners’ full demands, but it did ban children under nine from working in factories and restricted the hours of under-18s.
The book charts a long-running struggle between the disabled and charities which claim to speak on our behalf. The late nineteenth century saw the growth of trade unionism amongst new layers. The National League of the Blind, pioneering in having disabled leadership, was very much part of the new unionism and had key demands: a central register of all blind people to enable better government support; independent inspection of charitable workshops and institutions; state initiatives to increase employment and training opportunities for blind people.
By 1899 it had registered as a trade union. In August 1899 five League members at the Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind’s workshop in London walked out in protest against low pay. Through support from the wider labour movement they held out for six months and won a 25% pay rise.
In April 1920 the League organised a march from Leeds, Manchester and Newport under the banner of ‘Justice not Charity’ culminating in a rally in Trafalgar Square. The government was forced to introduce the Blind Persons Act which committed funds to local authorities to promote the welfare of blind people. This proved once again that reforms are won through struggle.
The first world war left more than seven million men permanently disabled, including over a million in Britain. The British government was forced to grant war pensions.
Similarly, the impact of the second world war led to the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act 1944 which established a quota system for the employment of disabled people and extended the provision of sheltered employment.
However, the lack of government commitment to disabled combatants led to 800 members of the British Limbless Ex-Serviceman’s Association marching to Downing Street in 1951 in ‘a silent reproach’.
The modern disability movement championed independent living. The British Council of Organisations of Disabled People exposed and discredited wealthy establishment disability charities such as Radar, Mind and Cheshire Homes. Instead, it promoted organisations run and promoted by disabled people.
Years of campaigning, including mass direct action led, at the nineteenth attempt, to the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995. Narrow in scope and lacking an enforcement agency it was known to activists as ‘doesn’t do anything’. It did however introduce the concept of reasonable adjustments.
With the ending of the post-war boom, successive governments have scapegoated disabled people. In Autumn 2010 the Chancellor, George Osborne, in announcing £4 billion in benefit cuts, said “a welfare cheat was no different to a mugger who robs you in the street”.
The weakest areas of the book are since the Covid pandemic and the role of the labour movement. The pandemic took an enormous toll on disabled people, including activists and it was far from clear the disabled activist movement would recover. However, the strike wave of 2022-2023 as a result of the cost-of-living crisis brought forth new activism.
The election of the Starmer Labour government, rather than bringing an end to austerity, saw a continuation of the Tories’ plans to cut disability benefits. A magnificent movement led by disabled activists in the summer of 2025 forced the government to retreat. As a concession, to avoid defeat, it announced a review led by Sir Stephen Timms.
Almost 18 months later, and with a new prime minister, the government is still trying to attack disability benefits. Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), especially in Wales, has led opposition and exposed the bogus claim of co-production. Rather than working with disabled organisations to design a benefit system that works for all disabled people, especially those with varying conditions, Timms has co-opted a small group of self-appointed disability experts. However, DPAC Cymru has repeatedly exposed the inaccessibility of consultation events and the preset conclusions of the review.
Turner’s book complements other recent publications, including Ramping Up Rights: An Unfinished History of British Disability Activism, by Rachel Charlton-Dailey. You Will Hear Me Speak: Memoirs of Marxist with a Stammer by Gary Clark, published this month, is also a valuable addition. Gary, inspired by Marxism, and a member of Socialist Party Scotland, learnt to overcome his stammer and went on to become a leading trade unionist in Scotland.
Because they are the largest democratic organisations of disabled people and because of their collective power in society, socialists look towards the trade unions as key vehicles in the fight against disability discrimination and for socialism – a system which would reorganise society to use the abilities of all.