Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World (review)

Abstract

members of Parliament knew how to strike that balance, or learned; others failed or did not try. "I lost none of my friends when I became deaf, but it was not until I was deaf that I knew who my friends were," Ashley says. Most people, he observes, "are infinitely more conscious of their own difficulties than those of others." Colleagues who formerly would stop and chat might now pass by. He could walk with two friends and be excluded from their conversation . Yet "a former MP who for years had made no effort to speak to me clearly, or indeed at all," spoke with striking clarity when she sought his help. Upon his reelection in 1970, Ashley became "the first totally deaf person to be elected to any legislature." Ministerial prospects set aside, he devoted himself increasingly to the concerns of people with disabilities, poor people, and women. He initiated and chaired the AllParty Disablement Group, which focused parliamentary attention on disability. He campaigned successfully for better compensation for the childhood victims of thalidomide, a network of refuges for battered wives, and revisions of the antiquated law on rape. He worked to secure compensation for children injured by compulsory vaccination and for the residents of houses damaged by mining. He obtained funds to provide free cochlear implants through the National Health Service. He pushed for an increase in subtitled television programs, helped to form the British Tinnitus Association , and served as the first deaf president of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. Upon retiring from the Commons in 1992, Ashley was made a peer and moved to the House of Lords. In politics, he has sought to pursue causes without denigrating opponents, to "differ without damning." Given to emotional outbursts, he has sometimes failed to do so and expresses regret for these lapses. In managing, analyzing, and recounting his experience, he is perceptive, honest , realistic, and (with a good politician's antennae) fully aware of the predicament of an inexperienced hearing person who encounters a deaf man. He admits to inadequate lipreading, attributing it to the late onset and extent of his deafness. (Indeed, lipreading ability is sometimes used as an indicator of residual hearing or of age at the onset of deafness). He has made embarrassing errors . Once, in the Commons, thinking Prime Minister James Callaghan had answered his question curtly, Ashley angrily "accused him of being 'arrogant'....I had made a mistake....To me the words, without hearing the tone of voice, seemed dismissive." On another occasion, believing that the chancellor of the exchequer had refused extra funds for people with disabilities , which in fact he had just granted, Ashley "attacked his meanness and lack of humanity." He immediately apologized, and the speech was omitted from the official record of parliamentary proceedings. The main deprivation of deafness is not...the loss of music and birdsong...but the severing of easy communication. It is...the difficulty of small-talk, the absence of conversational nuances and the lack of company which mark the mind. (p. 357) Ashley muses that "electronics and the science of sound are advancing so rapidly that in the middle or near the end of the twenty-first century there could be no more totally deaf people—just some who are hard of hearing." That time is far enough off to indulge the speculation, but his experience with the limitations of science and the tragic consequences of medical error may give us pause. Lord Ashley remains totally deaf. A changing cacophony roars in his head: On rare occasions when it is unbearable , with a jet engine noise screaming full pitch...I take sleeping pills and try to go back to sleep. Most days when the tinnitus is severe, I simply get up and immerse myself in my work. (p. 350) The ever-present racket "is as disturbing an affliction as total deafness; and if, by some magic wand, I was to be offered an overnight cure for just one of them, I am not sure which I would choose." Jack Ashley has shown that a hearing person who is deafened need not become bitter, irritable, self-pitying, or isolated; that he can keep his sense...