1. Kevin meets Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson

All 4 Inclusion presenter Kevin Daws catches up with Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson.

Kevin started interviewing people in written form to celebrate Disability History Month for All 4 Inclusion in October 2024. Following the success of these Interviews it was decided that we would continue these using our podcast and YouTube channel to present them.

You will also be able to catch up with them on our website too.

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson has won 16 Paralympic medals, 11 of which are gold and won the London Marathon 6 times.

She played a big part in bringing London 2012 to reality for Paralympians.

Some may argue some of her biggest challenges have been away from sport. Battling society as a wheelchair user.

Born with Spina Bifida, Tanni had parents that pushed her to become the best version of herself that she could be and in turn encouraged her to help other disabled and non disabled people where possible.

Catch up with more All 4 Inclusion News on our website www.all4inclusion.org

Transcript

Kevin Daws (00:00)
Tanni tell us a little bit about yourself. I know you've got a big backstory but just tell us a little bit about yourself.

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson (00:06)
So I was born with spina bifida and I could walk a little bit when I was young but my legs never really developed properly because of the damage to my spine and then as I grew my spinal cord collapsed and my vertebra severed my spinal cord. So I ended up with scoliosis and having to have a couple of operations on my back but I started using a wheelchair when I was very young and I was really lucky my parents were very positive about

me having to use a chair. didn't wrap me in cotton wool. It was all about what I could do, not what I couldn't do. And they pushed really hard for anyone who discriminated against me. and there's quite a lot of that around at the time. There is still some there now. So, you know, I started off in mainstream primary school, and then my parents fought very hard to get me into mainstream secondary school, which was incredibly important.

for the rest of my life actually, because at the time special schools didn't really educate disabled children, they just gave them something to do until they left school. So it was in high school that I started playing sports more seriously, I grew up in a very sporty family and at the age of 12 I watched a called Chris Allen win the London Marathon. He grew up not too far from where I lived and know, Chris was like this, like six foot four, dyed blonde hair, permanent tan, appalling tasting leopard print bodysuits.

and I could see my route through. So I started doing sports and every decision I made from the age of 12 was around trying to be the best athlete I could be. So I went to Loughborough University because that's where Seb Coe gone and had 25 years as an athlete before then retiring and moving into politics.

Kevin Daws (01:35)
Now, I mean, a great backstory and I think you competed in five Olympics, you, with which achievement in itself.

This probably sounds a silly question, but I want to ask everyone. A lot of disabled people don't think of themselves as disabled. I mean, do you think of yourself as disabled or how do you see yourself?

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson (01:55)
It's probably not the biggest part of my life for me, but it's what other people see because my wheelchair is so obvious. I'm kind of disabled in different environments. So, you know, in my house, I'm not because I don't have a lot of adaptations, but, you know, I, I fine. so, lots of parts of my life, my, my impairment doesn't hinder what I do, but it's more around attitude from other people. I'd say.

who say to me, so what's wrong with you? Or, it's a shame you're like that. And my response to all those, it's been sort of developed over a period of years is what Welsh, like, it's when people say, well, my daughter's 23 now, but when it was like, people like you shouldn't be allowed to have children, my response is what Welsh people. So I don't think of myself every single day as being disabled. It just depends what's happening around me. If I can't get on and off the train, then yes, I am.

I went to Liverpool the other week, they've got step-free boarding. It's amazing. I'm not disabled there. So it's very much around the attitude and society around me that makes me feel it. But it's not something I think about every day. It's just part of me.

Kevin Daws (03:02)
No, absolutely. And I do follow a lot your tweets about your experiences of public transport. And I mean, you've got an extremely big following.

I mean, I would suggest that you're not just the role model, you're a campaigner as well. There's lots of people who are one or the other and I think you're both of those. I how do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as a role model? Do you see yourself as a campaigner? And what motivates you to be a campaigner?

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson (03:30)
I think I'll probably call myself an activist, but that's just a technicality. You know, I'm very privileged in the position I hold now sitting in parliament in the House of Lords. I've got the ability to feed into legislation and try and make it better for disabled people. And the reason I do that is that although I experienced discrimination as a child, I also had a lot of privilege in terms of my parents getting me into a mainstream school. Education kind of set me up. you know, so I see it as

you know, to use the platform to try and change things for others and for me, you know, I campaigned for trains because I want to go on a train as well. So, you know, my parents when I was growing up, you know, told me, you know, that I had, you know, a privilege and because my education and then as an athlete, you have a platform. My parents were very keen that I used both of those to put something back. And that came through my first coach guy called Roy Anthony. You know, he

he always used to say to us, you know, if you get something out of sport, you give back. the fight is sometimes interesting. Although in the House of Lords, it's very dignified most of the time, but it's about just trying to get stuff better. Because actually all I want is disabled people to be able to work, to go to school, to have decent housing, know, same as I want for everybody. But there's lots of barriers for disabled people to do that.

And I do think disabled people should be contributing to society, but for a lot of them it's just very difficult. yeah, just think, I was very lucky. I traveled the world, saw lots of different jurisdictions, how disabled people and women were treated in those. And then you come back to the UK and think, okay, there's more we need to do. So that's the thing that sort of gets me out of bed every day is, okay, what can we do to change things? How can we make it better?

Kevin Daws (05:20)
Absolutely. And I mean, what do you think of the biggest barriers facing disabled people at the moment, which is, if you like, preventing them from participating in society? I mean, you hinted in there, probably other things that what do you see those barriers?

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson (05:39)
sort of still permeates through society. you know, if you have a disabled child and the first thing you're told is I'm sorry, but you know, it's, you know, there's, there's pressure on families to, you know, not continue with a pregnancy. If a child's disabled, that's, you know, a complete individual's choice. But from the beginning, it's very negative. You know, a friend of ours,

had a traumatic injury a little while ago and broke his back. And pretty much the first thing he was told was like, your life's over. And that negativity just permeates. So it is, it's in education, it's in housing, it's in employment. We still don't have a mandatory pay gap reporting for disabled people. the numbers are disabled people, only about half of the disabled people who could work have a job.

And so it all crosses over each other. And if you can't get to work because a public transport is not accessible, then every bit of it is hard. unfortunately, what happens in Parliament, we discuss a lot of these things in isolation rather than being able to join them all up together. And health care, there's challenges with people getting health and social care. I even getting to see a GP at the moment is really, really difficult.

So I think one of the biggest challenges that it conflates or government conflates disability and sick and assume that if you're disabled, you're sick or if you're sick, you're sick. Now you can be both, but I think sometimes it's easier to keep thinking around the edges of the welfare system and not actually provide meaningful jobs. Now this is an issue for everybody, like proper job, know, just the high streets changed and you know, there's cafes and nail bars and you know.

and fast food and they're jobs that don't pay particularly well. So, you know, we've got, I think, quite a big problem in this country anyway, and then you layer on disability and, you know, it's even harder.

Kevin Daws (07:32)
Absolutely. mean, have you come across barriers? I mean, I know we talked about public transport and you tweet a lot about your experiences of traveling on trains and some of those come across as really horrendous. But I mean, have you personally come across barriers and how you overcome them?

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson (07:50)
Yeah, lots of barriers. It's a lot of its attitude, and also some of its physical, you know, not being able to get on and off the train or not being able to get into a building, you know, to public transport, you know, where I live is sort of okay. You know, London, there's only a third of the tube stations that are step three. So, you know, it's all these things that make it different. So I've experienced less than most, I'd say, because of

privilege I had of being an athlete and recognized. And now, you know, in parliament, that gives you a level of privilege. So yeah, I'm probably a lot of it I had was when, you know, when I was pregnant, you know, people saying to me people like you shouldn't be allowed to have children. That's where I developed the Welsh bit. You know, so and there's a lot of low levels sort of just daily, you know, if you're trying to get on a bus, you know, on New Year's Eve, I got refused access to a bus.

And, you know, I've been, you know, treated not brilliantly a couple of Tuesdays, you know, it's, it's a low level stuff that's hard because the high level stuff, it's easy to complain about except disabled people folks is exhausting, but it's the low level stuff that grinds you down. But I think from, from being an athlete, you get a lot of resilience to deal with it. And again, my family were like, okay, right. This is actually what you're to do about it. So, you know, how are you going to

complain, how you can raise it. So for me, social media is one way. I don't think it's the way to start a formal complaint with an organization. But one of the reasons I tweet about trains is because then non-disabled people realize the issues we have. you know, I've been stuck on a couple of trains in the last year and people now will say to me, you're right, can you get off? I'll go and find someone. So it's not just about like screaming into the ether.

So a non-disabled person said to me last year, I didn't actually realise there were steps on trains. And because they just never thought about it, because a lot of non-disabled people don't really think about steps, they're just there because you can do them. And they said to me, I now realise actually it's quite hard. So it's some of my posting on social media is about getting non-disabled people to understand the reality of a bit of the lived experience.

So, yeah, I I have lots, but I'm pretty thick skinned about how I deal with it. I do get angry sometimes, but most of the time I'm like, okay, this hasn't worked. How are we going to change the system to make it better? Because there's loads of disabled people who don't have the social media following I do or the platform of being able to write to a minister or just in the chamber in parliament.

and say, so we're actually working on bus legislation at the moment. you know, that's my chance to sit and talk about why buses need to be better for disabled people.

Kevin Daws (10:39)
Absolutely and I wish you best luck with that. I hope you bring back some big improvements. Tommy, do you think that the British media and the British public have an open and positive attitude towards disability and disabled people?

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson (10:55)
quite mixed I think so Harrowlympians are generally quite well liked, same as Olympians you know competing for your country you know that's pretty good but a lot of the media coverage around benefit scroungers, blue badge abuse, know taking men out of state I don't think a lot of the coverage of disabled people apart from sport is very positive or it's non-existent

So if you look at the last general election, was very little on disabled people in any of the manifestos. It just gets ignored in 20 % of the population. I mean, that's kind of a of a group of people choked together. But no, think generally disabled people are ignored or treated not terribly well in the press. And then that feeds the public perception of disability, it being sad and tragic.

2012 Olympics and Paralympics were amazing. know, best eight weeks of my life. I worked on the bids and delivery for 10 years. I worked on legacy for 10 years. It's still part of what I do. But they didn't change the world for disabled people. know, at the most harsh, we got step-free access at King's Cross and Green Park. And some cobbles got changed on the South Bank. Now, there is more than that. There's some quite subtle stuff. But, you know, that...

doesn't help disabled people who are still experiencing discrimination. And after the Paris games last year, Paralympics GB wrote to the education minister to say, look, why are disabled people still not accessing PE in schools? You know, we're a lot of years on from 2012 and disabled children still by and large don't access PE. So, you know, I get frustrated when people go, oh, 2012. Yeah, it was amazing, but I'm a bit now.

So what? Because I don't think it's fair to expect two weeks of the games to change the world. You've got to do a lot of other stuff. So I think it's still pretty hard out there for a lot of disabled people.

Kevin Daws (12:50)
Yeah, there's lots of negative attitudes. Have you heard of the social model of disability? Is it something you agree with?

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson (12:58)
Yes, so I first read about social model when I was quite young. And, you know, Mike Oliver, Jane Campbell, who I now get to work with, Baroness Campbell in Parliament. So, yeah, I do. I mean, I think it's evolved and there's other versions, but it's still around, you know, access and attitudes. The medical model, I think a lot of the media coverage is around medical model of disability. So I do think, you know, if we make society more

physically accessible. It actually doesn't just make it easier for me or disabled people, it makes it better for everybody. You one of the things with, you know, campaigning for step-free access is it makes it better for everyone to get on and off the train, older people, small people, know, buggy, you name it. So I do think the social model is important because it reframes. And for me, it really helped me because it's not my fault I'm a wheelchair user, you know.

reason I can't do stuff is because there's steps and inaccessibility and attitudes. I do think social model is kind of important. Now there's some disability rights campaigners, there's an amazing woman called Ellen Clifford who's she's been really good stuff but she's evolving that model and I think it's quite interesting that it does evolve and move forward.

Kevin Daws (14:18)
Yeah, no, Ellen does some amazing work here, quite right. At the moment we've got the assisted, I call it the assisted suicide bill, the assisted dying bill going through parliament. I mean, it's receiving lots of coverage, there's stuff in paper today about wanting to water down some of the controls already. What's your opinion, and do you think that...

the use of a private members bill is the right route through parliament for that or should it actually be in a government bill? Should there have been a commission to bring, to think it through properly and make sure proper safeguards there? I don't know what your views on that are.

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson (14:54)
This is one of the biggest changes in our society that we're ever going to see. So I don't think a private member's bill is the right way to do it because it doesn't get a lot of time. And, you know, I do think there should be a commission that looks in detail. I think this bill is a dreadful bill. And we keep being told there's, you know, it's the most expensive bill anywhere in the world. That's not right.

I think there are a group of people who are just desperate to get it across the line. And what we've heard in recent days about changing. So one of the things that gave people some comfort was there would be involvement from the Family Division High Court. Now we've known for a long time that the Family Division is under massive pressure anyway. And what's...

we've heard in the last few days is and Kim had me to have to say this at second reading. She hadn't consulted any current members of the family division, but actually there wasn't the capacity to do it. So what we're hearing now, it's going to be a panel and then there might be an oversight panel above that and that to me just weakens it even more. And I could talk about this for a long time, but.

I'm really worried about the impact on disabled people. Now we keep being told it's not for disabled people, but this is where conflating sick and disabled means that it very well could be. And, you we know there's other jurisdictions where they allow it for anorexia. If you're tired of life, if you hit 70, you know, and Canada, which a lot of people are rowing back from now, you know, allows it if you're poor. So, you know, a question is this really

what we want a society to be. This is not a way to fix the crisis in the NHS. So for me, I'm really worried about the impact on disabled people because if doctors don't think disabled persons' lives worth living or they haven't got any value, and we saw that in COVID, where they did have to make incredibly difficult choices about who got access to a ventilator. But do not attempt resuscitation orders. We'll put on thousands of disabled people without their knowledge or permission, and it's still happening.

So, and doctors in this bill are allowed to suggest it to the patient. So I'm really worried about it because I think it'll be a way, it'll be seen as a way to fix society. And this is not, you know, a society I think is tolerable. And I don't come from any religious perspective on this. You know, I've been told, well, it's like I'm an atheist. I just don't think it's a society I think protects the most vulnerable.

We need to palliative care, need talk health and social care, we need to other things. And then maybe think about what we do to protect people and life. This is a really clumsy and quite scary way of doing it.

Kevin Daws (17:40)
Yeah, I mean, one of the photos I saw, one of the demos against the bill, the most telling placard I saw was, the government will assist me to die, but it won't assist me to live. Yeah. I think that was word or support me to live. And I think there's lots of issues in there.

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson (17:59)
Yeah, I agree. just think it's just not.

I find it quite scary that, it seems to be based on the back of, you know, but there's been loads of attempts over the years, but it seems to be, you know, a promise from the prime minister to Esther Rantzen And I'm really uncomfortable, you know, emotion. I don't want to hear any, some of the stories we've heard about awful deaths are tragic and horrible and should never happen because there should be better palliative care.

But emotion is not the way to make legislation because when it's on the statute books, you're not dealing with emotion in the same way.

Kevin Daws (18:31)
I absolutely totally agree with you. Parni, thank you for answering all those questions and giving me your time this morning. Is there anything else you want to add? Just open invitation if there's anything we haven't covered or you'd like to say more about, please do.

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson (18:47)
It's just disabled people have loads to offer society and we're missing a trick by not making that happen. And there are loads of really good people out there who are trying to kind of change things, but we need to be better and we need to just be better as a society about how we treat everybody. And what gives me comfort is there's loads of people, you know, I might be

sitting in parliament, but I've got loads of friends, supporters, people on the outside who help me do what I do and without them it wouldn't be possible. yeah, it's good to be doing stuff like this and yeah, we need to get those stories out there.

Kevin Daws (19:23)
Absolutely. And I mean, I know it's Scott through all for inclusion is trying to do that. And I know there's lots of other organisations get out there, but thank you for the work you do. I mean, you an amazing job both in Parliament, but I mean, being offered, taken on this role with the through the Prime Minister of looking at air travel, isn't it? the accessibility of air travel.

I just wish we'd given them the wider remit of public transport as well.

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson (19:50)
Maybe next, if I do a good job on this, you never know. We might get the chance to work out some other things too.

Kevin Daws (19:57)
I certainly hope so and I look forward to seeing your findings and the report that comes from that work. Thank you very much for your time, Tanni I really appreciate it.

Baroness Tanni Grey Thompson (20:07)
Thanks.