A Magna Carta for learning disabled people

Abstract

The year 2015 marked the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, but we would argue that learning disabled people remain ‘villeins’, who are denied rights against arbitrary power. So what would a Magna Carta for look like for learning disabled people living in Britain today? No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will be proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice. Eight hundred years ago this set of freedoms was made law in England and, although Magna Carta is widely believed to have been the first ‘Human Rights Act’, it actually excluded most of the population. It did not apply to ‘villeins’ – the ordinary people. The Lords, Barons and ‘free men’ were granted the right to be judged by their own peers in courts of law. Most people were villeins and outside this new law. Are people with learning disabilities our modern day villeins? The rights and positions of people with learning disabilities are not judged by juries of their peers but by systems where power is held by ‘lords’ – commissioners, social workers, service providers, psychiatrists, judges and politicians. In Britain, the latter half of the 20th century was a time of social and economic change. The horrors of two global conflicts led to the breakdown of the formerly dominant class system in the UK, which had evolved from the earlier feudal system.