This document provides a summary of a presentation by Dr. Simon Duffy reflecting on the history of support for people with intellectual disabilities. It discusses how in the past, people with disabilities were dehumanized and institutionalized. It describes the seven steps that preceded the Holocaust, including the weakening of shared humanity through ideas like utilitarianism and nationalism. It notes that existing stereotypes were used to scapegoat and victimized groups. The presentation reflects on lessons learned and reasons for optimism going forward, including examples of self-advocacy, family support, and community-based models of support.

1. Keeping the flame alive
Reflections on our history, our present and our future
Dr Simon Duffy ￭ The Centre for Welfare Reform ￭ 14th-15th August 2013 ￭
Wellington ￭ New Zealand Disability Support Network

2. Dr Simon J Duffy
Worked with people with intellectual disabilities
for 24 years. Director of The Centre for Welfare
Reform, which works for equal citizenship for all.
Philosopher and social activist and led
development of self-directed support in the UK.
Policy Advisor to the Campaign for a Fair Society
and Chair of the Housing & Support Alliance.

3. Lessons from our history

5. At the end of the nineteenth and for
most of the twentieth century it was
common for people to think that
people with intellectual disabilities
were very different, hardly human,
and certainly not equal citizens.

6. The powerful eugenic movement
that spread across Europe, America
and the British Empire led
eventually to the murder of over
250,000 people with disabilities in
Nazi Germany.

9. The process of de-humanisation
that preceded the Holocaust had
seven steps:

11. Three factors weakened people’s
grasp of their shared humanity:
1. Mass Morality
2. Rootlessness
3. State Power

13. • Utilitarianism - all that matters is happiness
• Relativism - moral rules are just habits
• Communism - what matters is class
• Nazism - what matters is race

14. Francis Galton: Theory of Eugenics - race improvement

15. Powerful ideas which undermine
traditional moral codes, including
respect for the sanctity of life.
Humanity was swept into great
movements, with utopian goals.

16. Graves at Hadamar, an institution that became a
euthanasia centre

18. Without certain fundamental
securities we become weak.
We can be led to do evils that we
would never believe ourselves
capable of.

19. The lack of common interest so characteristic of
modern masses is therefore only another sign of their
homelessness and rootlessness. But it alone accounts
for the curious fact that these modern masses are
formed by the atomisation of society, that the mass-
men who lack all communal relationships nevertheless
offer the best possible “material” for movements in
which peoples are so closely pressed together that
they seem to have become one.
Hannah Arendt

21. • Nationalism - centrality of the state
• Tax & Welfare - growth in economic power
• Control - growth of law and policing
• Elitism - growth of the ‘professions’

22. The modern state is more powerful,
more organised, more professional
than any previous form of
government.
It is capable of doing great good or
great harm.

23. In the fall of 1941, with the completion of the first major
phase of the euthanasia operation, gas chambers at
psychiatric institutions in southern and eastern
Germany were dismantled and shipped east, where
they were reinstalled at Belzec, Majdanek, Auschwitz,
Treblinka, and Sobibor. The same doctors and
technicians and nurses often followed the equipment.
Germany’s psychiatric hospitals forged the most
practical link between the destruction of the mentally ill
and handicapped and the murder of Germany’s ethnic
and social minorities.
Robert N Proctor

24. Inspired by the ideas of scholars like Binding, Hoche,
and Ploetz, Adolf Hitler came to believe that the future
volkish state should aggressively pursue pro-natalist
policies based upon selective breeding and the
eugenic elimination of the unfit in order to maintain
the racial purity of the German state.
Suzanne E Evans

25. Existing stereotypes and negative
propaganda can be used to prepare
groups to be scapegoats - sacrificial
victims who can be blamed for
problems that nobody knows how
to solve.

27. “Life without Hope”

29. Even after the victim has been
selected they have to be prepared
for destruction. There are 3 steps:
1. Rightlessness
2. Poverty
3. Segregation

30. 7 April 1933 - Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service - dismissal of Jews from government
25 April 1933 - Law against Overcrowding of German Schools - no more than 1.5% of non-Aryans to be
admitted to public schools and universities
14 July 1933 - Law on the Revocation of Naturalisation and Annulment of German Citizenship - withdrawal
of citizenship from ‘undesirable,’ especially East European Jews
15 September 1935 - Nuremberg Laws: Reich Citizenship Law and Law for the Protection of German Blood
and German Honour - the Jew defined and separated legally, socially and politically.
14 November 1935 - First Ordinance on Reich Citizenship Law - Jews denied citizenship
15 October 1936 - Jewish teachers banned from private education of Aryan children
12 June 1937 - Secret directive of Heydrich, head of Security Police that ‘race-violators’ be put in
‘protective custody’ after serving their sentences.
26 April 1938 - Registration of all Jews with assets exceeding 5,000 RM
14 June 1938 - All Jewish business have to be registered and credit refused by public savings bank
15 June 1938 - June Action sends 1500 Jews to concentration camps
6 July 1938 - Termination of certain Jewish businesses
23 July 1938 - Special identification cards for Jews
25 July 1938 - Jewish doctors can only treat other Jews
27 September 1938 - Jewish lawyers removed from the bar
12 November 1938 - 1 billion RM fine on the Jews following Reichkristallnacht
15 November 1938 - Jewish children excluded from German schools
28 November 1938 - Movements of Jews restricted
14 December 1938 - Decree replaces the Jewish owner or director of a firm with an Aryan general
manager1 January 1939 - All Jews have to carry the middle name of Israel or Sara
30 April 1939 - German landlords can evict Jews and other Jews must accept homeless Jews into their
households
1 September 1939 - German attack on Poland, beginning of World War II

31. The Jews had to be stripped of their
rights, their resources and their
place in society.
People with disabilities were already
rightless, impoverished and
incarcerated within the institution

33. Bodies being cremated at Hadamar

34. Lennoxcastle Hospital in the 1920s

36. From “Christmas in Purgatory” (1974)

37. In the UK the peak population for
the institutions was in the 1970s.

42. But the journey away from the
institutions has been neither
straight nor fast.

44. This shows spending in one part of England
after the institutions were closed:

48. Often English de-instutitionalisation
was institutions without the park

49. Yet people keep breaking through
the barriers placed in front of them.
Social innovation by people with
disabilities, families and their allies
has changed the lives of many.

51. There is not just one kind of institution
we bring the institution with us

52. The creation of the welfare state
and social rights has helped lift
people from poverty and increased
the capacity for wider citizenship.
But today the welfare state and
social rights are under attack.

53. The UK Response to ‘Austerity’

54. In the UK we have seen a very
rapid unravelling of the language
of rights and inclusion - back
towards the language of shame
and stigma.

56. This is in turn
leading to new
more radical
and political
expressions of
the need for
change.

57. Many are questioning the role and
competence of the state.

58. Pruitt–Igoe (St Louis) 1955-1972

61. We need a new appreciation of the
value of community.

62. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no
need because he is sufficient for himself, must be a
beast or a god. He is no part of a state. (Politics 1.2)
Aristotle

63. We must also welcome human
diversity, and yet treat each other as
equals.

64. Aristotle explains that a community is not made out of
equals, but on the contrary of people who are different
and unequal. The community comes into being
through equalising, 'isathenai.' [Nich. Ethics 1133 a 14]
Hannah Arendt

66. Q: What’s wrong with Hayley?
A: Absolutely nothing.

67. Three reasons to be optimistic.

68. 1. The Danes...

70. 2. Families...

73. 3. People...

75. Suzie Fothergill

76. I’m a woman who has talentThat they can’t take away.They tried with drugsAnd needles to
dope me every day.
Institutions stink,They make you want to puke,The doctors think they’re itAnd they’ll read you
like a book.
I was kicked around and usedInsulted and abused;They messed my mind right from the
startTreated me like a dirty tart.
But it was them that did that,It was them that scarred my mind,It was them that corrupted my
innocence,And left me feeling that no one cared.
They shoved me in a hostelAs a guest of the Salvation Army,With the company of drunks and
punksIt was enough to send a poor lass barmy.
I wonder why it had to be that all my lifeNo one to love meNo one to careNo one to seeNo one
to listen properly.
So now my second life begun -A new chance to live life through my son;A reason for living I have
foundAnd it’s going to be better second time round.
So now I tell youI’ve got a voiceI’ve got a right to make a choice.I’m not a toy for you to abuseI’m a
woman of spirit and now I’ll refuse…To take that abuse anymore.

77. If you found these slides interesting you might like to read...

78. Lots of free resources on all these topics and more:
@simonjduffy and @cforwr - follow
www.centreforwelfarereform.org.uk - subscribe
like The Centre for Welfare Reform on Facebook