The social and the subjective: defining disablement at the birth of the Disabled People’s Movement in Britain

Recent activist memoirs and archival work has begun to challenge our
understanding of the historical Disabled People’s Movement in Britain;
recentring the voices of self organised groups of activists in its strategic and
analytic development. This article takes advantage of the results of this work
to explore the emergence of a social definition of disability during the
formation of the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation
(UPIAS); the first national organisation of disabled people to form in post-war
Britain.

Utilising a previously private, internal UPIAS communique from before its
first conference, I show that the adoption of the social definition followed a
period of extensive debate amongst activists on the nature of subjective
responses to disablement and the social position of disabled people. I situate
this debate in the history of UPIAS’ emergence from a critique of the existing
Disability Movement, and outline both the objections raised to the social
analysis of disability, alongside the counter-arguments deployed to defend it. I
conclude by evaluating the success of this defence against UPIAS’ final agreed
policy document.