It's time to choose! Who is your Disabled Legend?

Who’s the person who’s done most as a disabled thinker, performer, activist, entertainer or sports star who you think deserves the status of LEGEND? Which of our 50 contenders, historical and contemporary, has done most to shape the way disabled people are viewed and treated? Which of them has done most to raise the profile or improve the standing of our community? YOU TELL US!

Each of Disability Now’s reporters and regular writers has put together a list of the people they believe are Disabled Legends.

We’ve then put all the names together to produce what is, in anyone’s book, an impressive list.

From Stephen Hawking to Stevie Wonder, Tanni Grey-Thompson to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Beethoven to Baroness Campbell, Spike Milligan to Bert Massie.

Their names have come from across the centuries and from a wide range of activities from politics to pop, painting and poetry, from activism to acting.

But they have one thing in common. And that’s not just that they’re disabled, but that what they are has informed what they’ve done and shaped the way in which they’ve been viewed by society.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN!

We’re asking you to vote for one of our 50 likely legends.

Which one of the people on page 23 and on our website would you say has done most to further the cause, raise the profile of or change attitudes towards disabled people? To start you thinking, each of our writers has chosen one of their nominees they want to champion. Read their choices online or on the following pages.

MAKE YOUR VOTE COUNT
Using the form which came as a flyer in this issue, vote for the person you think most deserves to be a Disabled Legend. Alternatively, go to disabilitynow.org.uk and cast your vote there.
Address for votes by post is: FREEPOST, Disability Now (Envelope but no stamp required)

THE CONTENDERS
Who gets your vote?

Rick Allen – Rock drummer with Def Leppard

Muhammad Ali – All-time boxing great

Lord Jack Ashley – Veteran politician and stalwart campaigner

Douglas Bader – Wartime air ace and POW escapee

Ludwig van Beethoven – Composer

Colin Barnes – Academic and disability rights champion

Jean-Dominique Bauby – Novelist, author of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

David Blunkett – Former Labour Cabinet Minister

Louis Braille – Inventor of literacy system for visually impaired people

Baroness Jane Campbell – Campaigner, activist and equality champion

Patricia Chambers – Mental health campaigner

Sir Winston Churchill – Wartime Prime Minister

Ian Curtis – Innovative post-punk musician

Chris Davies – Writer, broadcaster, campaigner

Ian Dury – Musician, hit-maker

Albert Einstein – Pioneering physicist

Michael Flanders – Humorist, performer, raconteur

Michael J Fox – Film actor, campaigner

Stephen Fry – Actor, mental health champion

Frank Gardner – Security correspondent and specialist

Evelyn Glennie – Percussionist, music champion

Goya – Painter

Tanni Grey-Thompson – Athlete, sport ambassador, campaigner

Joseph Grimaldi – Clown

Stephen Hawking – Physicist, science ambassador, Simpsons guest star

Adam Hills – Comedian

John Hockenberry – Journalist, TV and radio presenter

Alan Holdsworth (aka Johnny Crescendo) – Activist, performer

Rachel Hurst – Veteran activist, rights champion and campaigner

Dr Samuel Johnson – Lexicographer and raconteur

Frida Kahlo – Artist

Helen Keller – Campaigner, disability ambassador

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – Painter, observer of life

T E Lawrence – Soldier, writer

Sir Bert Massie – Activist, rights champion, former head of RADAR

Curtis Mayfield – Soul singer

Spike Milligan – Innovative comic performer and writer

Claude Monet – Impressionist painter

Christopher (Christy) Nolan – Distinctive author

Mike Oliver – Academic and activist

Oscar Pistorius – World-class athlete

Sylvia Plath – Poet

Franklin D Roosevelt – Former American President

Nabil Shaban – Actor, writer, activist

Tom Shakespeare – Writer, campaigner, academic

Vincent Van Gogh – Painter

Peter White – Broadcaster, Disability Now columnist

Brian Wilson – Musician, mental health survivor

Sir John Wilson – Founder, Sightsavers International

Stevie Wonder – Musician, blind ambassador

To vote, click here

Our champions say…

Here’s a selection of Legend nominations from some of our reporters and writers

Andy Rickell, Disability Now columnist
Rachel Hurst has been a political disability activist for several decades, including in the British Council of Disabled People and the campaigning alliance for civil rights, Rights Now. Her day job for many years was as Director of Disability Awareness in Action with its leading role in championing disabled people’s rights internationally.

She was a leading political operator over the last 12 years at national level championing the voices of disabled people and disabled people’s organisations, and jointly convinced the Minister for Disabled People to have regular meetings with the movement from 2001. She played a leading role in supporting Scope to change to become an ally organisation.

She has persistently emphasised the human rights elements of disability equality as tenaciously as a rottweiler, and the parallels between the disability and anti-apartheid movements.

Cathy Reay, reporter, Disability Now
At the tender age of 20, Ian Curtis brought together two strands of music, post-punk and digital, and started a movement that went on to rebrand rock and roll as the world knew it. His image, his style, his voice, his outlook on life, were imitated by thousands, especially after his death. He worked inexplicably hard to follow his dream of becoming a punk rock icon, so much so that when he started having epileptic seizures on stage he wasn’t deterred, he fought through it; his seizure-like movements even became part of his signature live persona. Ian Curtis may not be your typical disabled legend in that he didn’t try to change the world for disabled people, but his suicide was a devastating blow, though it did expose the world to Joy Division’s music. And it showed that even the coolest looking kids in rock and roll had to battle against all odds to get there.

Peter Beresford, Disability Now writer
T E Lawrence (of Arabia) is the first truly modern hero. A man attacked for his sexuality, who experienced major breakdowns working for the liberation of Arab peoples. But even more than
that and why he is so important for our age, he valued the causes of both Jews and Arabs and worked for the rights of both. They might be living together in peace in the Middle East if his and their ideals, rather than the ambitions of empires, had triumphed. He was amazingly ahead of his time. His life is a beacon for survivors like me, arriving at a self-understanding through valuing the ordinary things of life and the ordinary virtues of other people – without judging.

Paul Carter, reporter, Disability Now
“Hero” is a word often overused and tossed around flippantly in today’s celebrity-obsessed society.

However, even by lesser standards, few can argue that Douglas Bader is a rightful holder of that title.

Disability campaigners often like to shun “triumph over tragedy” stories, and in many cases are right to do so. Except that in Bader’s case, his achievements and the obstacles he overcame were so remarkable that I unashamedly make an exception. You see, Douglas Bader was a war hero first, and a disabled person second.

Bader lost his legs before the Second World War, when he crashed an aircraft attempting to perform a low-flying acrobatic manoeuvre. However, after the outbreak of war, he passed refresher flying courses and soon progressed to flying Spitfires and Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain. In total he shot down more than twenty German aircraft.

In 1941, Bader’s aircraft was shot down over German-occupied France, where he was captured. Despite mobility difficulties, he attempted escape several times, and proved such a nuisance to his captors that he was eventually sent to high-security Colditz Castle, where he remained until 1945.

After being freed from Colditz, Bader requested a Spitfire so he could rejoin the war yet again. His request was refused.

Penny Batchelor, travel writer Disability Now
As most A-level English literature students can tell you, Sylvia Plath’s poetry broke new ground in the 1950s and 60s. Her confessional style chronicled vivid and disturbing renditions of mental illness, with poems such as Ariel and Daddy containing searing, genius images of depression. Plath’s autobiographical novel of her breakdown, The Bell Jar, is still a feminist rite of passage text. “Is there no way out of the mind?” she wrote. Nearly 50 years after her tragic, untimely death her gift with words is still firmly in ours. Plath put mental health issues on the literary map.

Ruth Patrick, Disability Now columnist
Winston Churchill called upon the people of Britain to fight the Nazi enemy “on the beaches, in the fields and streets”, never to surrender, and helped keep a country united during the tragedy and devastation of World War II. Churchill and his fat cigar are part of this country’s cultural history and he is rightly regarded as a fine orator, a great leader and a champion of the British nation. Less well known, however, is his ongoing battle with his “black dog”: depression, which he lived with throughout his life. Churchill shows what all of us in the disability movement know: that impairments are no barrier to success and greatness.