Tanni Grey-Thompson is telling me about her concerns with “inspiration porn”—a term she assures me I can safely google. It refers, she tells me, to the way the media talk about disabled people “as if we’re all inspirational” purely for being disabled. Grey-Thompson, one of Britain’s greatest Paralympian athletes, thinks it’s “patronising”.
I’m speaking to Grey-Thompson, who was made a crossbench peer in 2010, on her last day in parliament before the summer recess. She’s telling me about the “endless” low-level discrimination faced by disabled people. “Disabled people can’t get on most trains in this country without the support, assistance or agreement of a non-disabled person,” she explains. Grey-Thompson has regularly been left stranded, and was once forced to crawl off a train after her requested assistance failed to arrive.
The last government’s figures show that it is going to take around 100 years before all train stations are accessible, based on the current rate of progress. Grey-Thompson, who regularly posts about her and other disabled travellers’ discriminatory experiences on trains on X, says Labour needs to commit to ordering low-platform trains that allow for level boarding. “The government have got to make a start.”
Progress is hard, she says, because “most people don’t think about disability... The reality is that most disabled people have brought about change by suing.”
I ask whether it feels that disabled people are more visible now than when she was a child in the 1980s. She hesitates. “Slightly.” Although there are more disabled people in the media, “it’s not as inclusive as it should be”.
Disabled people write to her regularly, asking for advice about pretty much every policy area—“housing, education, health and social care, medicine, medical treatments, transport, you name it, everything”.
She’s currently particularly troubled by the Assisted Dying Bill, which was introduced to parliament in July and which would, subject to safeguards, allow terminally ill adults who have six months to live to be assisted to end their life. Grey-Thompson believes that the bill could lead to an erosion of boundaries over time and harm disabled people, as “the reality is there’s many conditions of disability that could fit into those six months”. She also questions whether doctors have the time, capacity or space to figure out someone’s likelihood of survival. She refers to a colleague of hers who said: “Where there’s a will, there’s a relative. All it takes is a family member saying, ‘health and social care’s costing a bit, think of the grandchildren.’ And if that’s what people think is okay, then let’s just be straight about it.”
“People have said to me, ‘if my life was like yours, I’d end it,’” she adds. “And I have a massive amount of privilege. If you think that about my life, what do you think of other disabled people as well? So, I am really worried.”
She encourages non-disabled people to “just treat everybody fairly” and “think about how you treat people”. She adds that, if you see a disabled person struggling, ask if they need help. But if they say no, walk away—don’t insist on being a saviour. “I’m not there to make you feel better.”
