The power of peer pressure

The UK disability rights campaigner Lady Nicola Chapman would have been 50 this month, writes BRIAN MAYE

WHEN LADY NICOLA Chapman died in September 2009, at the age of 48, her obituary in The Guardiansummed up one of her greatest attributes when it said that she may have been small in size (she was only three feet tall) but that she was "a giant among campaigners for disabled people".

Nicky, as she was generally referred to, was born in Leeds 50 years ago this month. She was born with brittle-bone disease.

Doctors had little hope for her survival and told her parents that it was unlikely that she would be able to see, hear, talk or, indeed, have any mental function that could be noticed. She certainly proved those doctors wrong.

The middle child with two brothers (“the best part of any sandwich is the filling”, as she herself put it with her customary wit), she preferred cars and football (watching as she was unable to play) to dolls or other traditional girlish pursuits.

“Children are very self-oriented and I never really considered my difference until my teens, as it was never an issue with my family,” she said of her upbringing.

Fortunately for her, her parents paid no attention to what the doctors said at her birth. As a young child, no school would accept her and they taught her to read at home.

At eight, she won a place at the John Jamieson School for the Physically Disabled in Leeds, later moving on to Trinity and All Saints College, also in Leeds, where she tackled the subjects of maths and planning and administration.

She seemed to be a natural administrator and was appointed head of the computer department of East Leeds Women’s Workshops in the early 1990s. She was subsequently chairwoman of Leeds United Disabled Organisation, which she helped to establish.

This organisation assisted people with disabilities to live as normal lives as possible. Nicky was also chairwoman of the Habinteg Housing Association, which provides practical support for people with disabilities.

This organisation nominated her in 2004 for the “people’s peers” scheme, which the government of the day had instigated to broaden the range of people becoming peers. (Some 500 people were nominated for the scheme.)

“I felt there was no chance of the Appointments Commission choosing someone who looks as different as I do. I firmly believed that if they chose a disabled person at all, it would be someone who had become disabled and looked ‘normal’, the ‘acceptable’ face of disability,” she said afterwards.

But she did become a peer, in recognition of her work for disability rights. Her maiden speech in the House of Lords caused uproar as she denounced the government’s Mental Capacity Bill because “if this bill had been passed 43 years ago, I would not be here”.

Such a stance was obviously based on what doctors had told her own parents at her birth. In debates on an issue such as the right to die, she reminded people that doctors can sometimes get things terribly wrong and that the resilience of the human spirit should never be underestimated.

She was living proof of that resilience herself with her slight, tiny frame and pain-wracked body as she got herself around in a wheelchair.

She had a huge number of fractures in the course of her life but, rather than wallow in self-pity, she devoted herself to finding ways of helping other disabled.

Her self-imposed mission was to raise awareness of disability and the everyday difficulties involved. The House of Lords gave her an ideal forum from which to speak out on a wide range of disability issues.

Her attendance at Westminster was limited by her ill-health. But she also wanted very much to go on working at her various tasks in Leeds, where she felt most at home. However, she is on record as saying that she was made to feel very welcome in the House of Lords.

In 2005, she revealed that taxi drivers had refused to pick her up 37 times in 12 months because of her wheelchair, nine times in one day in London. The relevant section of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 was clearly not being honoured, but her tireless campaigning brought a change for the better in this situation.

Tens of thousands of wheelchair users have reason to be grateful to her as a result.

On her death from a chest infection, her father recalled that in the first five years of her life she was never given more than another day to live.

She was a life-long Leeds United FC supporter and at the time of her death, the club’s chief executive, Shaun Harvey, said: “She was inspirational. She was a fighter. She was a character and she was devoted to everything she believed in.”