Ramping Up Rights

A vivid history of the 100-year battle for British disability rights, spotlighting enraging injustices and inspiring campaigns, past and present: this fight isn’t over.

From the ‘crippled suffragette’ to 1980s punks chaining themselves to buses, from resisting government policies to changing the media narrative, this book celebrates the amazing activists, protest actions and campaigns that have fought in the UK for disabled people’s rights to live.

In Ramping Up Rights, Rachel Charlton-Dailey highlights a shockingly overlooked history: 100 years of struggle for disability rights. She unpacks what has gone so wrong with British attitudes and policy in the twenty-first century, and interviews campaigners and disabled people about how they have reclaimed power, from the inclusivity of online activism to the importance of intersectionality. She explores the live frontiers in this ongoing battle for civil rights—from the scandalous inaccessibility of our education and transport systems, to the existential debates about neurodiversity, genetic screening and ‘the right to die’.

These angry, thoughtful, hopeful pages show for the first time how a look at disability activism’s past can become a call to action for the future. As rights continue to be eroded for political gain, this urgent, powerful book will show readers how hard, and how often, disabled people and their allies have fought and won—and will give them the energy to keep fighting back.