The Guardian has published an obituary for the Deaf and disabled rights campaigner Arthur Verney, and it’s well worth reading in order to understand his achievements and the impact he had through his work with the British Deaf Association, European Union of the Deaf, and Disabled Peoples’ International, among other organisations.
Extract:
In 1980, Arthur Verney, who has died aged 70 from complications following surgery, became general secretary of the British Deaf Association (BDA). At that time it was a predominantly social and welfare charity run mostly by hearing people. Arthur was in large part responsible for transforming it into a modern campaigning organisation led by deaf people, and went on to champion the rights of deaf and disabled people across Europe.
When Arthur arrived at the BDA, there was a feeling in the membership that it needed to change, and in 1983 John (“Jock”) Young was elected its first deaf chairman. In the years that followed, deaf people only were elected to the executive council, and deaf people were appointed to senior positions.
Linguistic research in the 1970s had shown that sign languages were individual languages in their own right. British Sign Language (BSL), for example, differs from English in its grammatical structure. This recognition provided deaf people with the opportunity to redefine how they viewed themselves: as members of a linguistic minority rather than a disabled group. This perspective remains the premise on which the BDA’s work is based.
Read the full obituary here: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/18/arthur-verney
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M Williams
November 19, 2013
No titled honour after his name the work you all praises….
Linda Richards
November 19, 2013
Huge thanks to David Brien for this obituary in the Guardian. Arthur was a true visionary. Not dissimilar to Allan B Hayhurst who also took the BDDA (as it was then) into the future. I knew Arthur within the North London Polytechnic, NCSWD, the Welsh Office, BDA, ERCS (later EUD) and Mobility International. Across all these arenas, he liked to get on with the business of doing things … Not talking about doing them. I don’t think people really knew the extent of just how much he did for, and with, the Deaf Community and its associated groups and professionals both nationally and internationally but one day, the history books will show just much of our developments and achievements were due to his efforts. RIP Arthur and condolences to your family.
Robert Duncan
November 20, 2013
I’m copying my comment from The Guardian (below) only because I think one of the best features of David Brien’s obituary is how he takes the opportunity of this tribute to link it to Arthur’s crucial partnership with Jock Young. When Jock died in 2005, his death went more or less unnoticed in the mainstream media. Even now, The Guardian limps a long way behind The Limping Chicken and other Deaf media in paying tribute to somebody who contributed so much in the Deaf world.
“Thanks to The Guardian for this belated but lovely tribute to a man described by the European Union of the Deaf as “the pioneer of Deaf European Emancipation”. Deaf media such as The Limping Chicken and Signworld did obituaries nearer the time of his death, but it is good (and rare) to see a mainstream medium acknowledging the work of someone who contributed so much in a minority community. It is excellent also to see the exemplary David Brien being characteristically open in embracing within this overview of Arthur’s life and achievements his crucial partnership with Jock Young, the first Deaf Chair of the British Deaf Association. I do not remember Jock’s achievements getting the wider acknowledgment they deserved at the time of his death in 2005.
I first met Arthur in 1984, when we were beginning to make programmes for the Deaf community in British Sign Language on Channel 4, in the form of ‘Listening Eye’. It was the vision, guidance and advice of people like Arthur and Jock at the BDA that enabled us to create the first truly ‘Deaf’ BSL programmes on British TV. He was a man of integrity and courage as well as vision and without him many of the achievements of the last 30 years could scarcely have happened. He is remembered with admiration and affection by both my Deaf and hearing friends and colleagues as a worthy role model for the present generation.”
In the same way, none of the mainstream media seems to have picked up on the death of The Deaf Dracula Stephen Pink, who was so well remembered in the LC by Joe Collins in September. There’s an excellent obituary, with pictures, of Stephen, on the Monster Kid Classic Horror Forum: http://bit.ly/1fhumHF The LC, Remark!, Signworld and Deaf TV programmes covered it, but none of the mainstream media. But the work of the LC especially suggests that D/deaf media are at last in a position to do something to try and remedy these glaring omissions.