Description

White t-shirt with the words 'Rights not charity' in black.

"Rights, Not Charity was the rallying call for the Disabled People's Direct Action Network, which I was very active in for a period of time. A lot of disabled people objected strongly to the concept of telethon as entertainment. Myself and a friend of mine, we actually went into the underground [of the telethon] car park and we were blocking the celebs cars coming in and we had a bit of set-to [argument] with Chris Eubank. We still talk about it to this day. I think somebody else, a couple of women, actually got into the studio with a banner saying Rights, Not Charity but obviously it was edited out. But it did happen.

Rights, not Charity, is still very important. I think although we've moved quite a long way in terms of the way legislation works, to some degree in our favour, there are still too many decisions being made about what disabled people do and don't need without directly consulting them. I think that's still happening now. You know, ‘would somebody like to come along from your organisation to talk to us’ and then we'll ignore you anyway."