The right to work (1974)

this is a film about the physically handicapped a film about us a group of people who if Society were honest with itself would probably say a more of an embarrassment than anything else for we reflect A peculiar kind of hypocrisy while everyone seems quite prepared to accept us when we are children once we grow up they seem totally unprepared to accept the possibility that we might have the same aspirations as everyone else this film is about one of the most important of those aspirations the right to work well I've tried to get other work other of employment but who can't get it they just don't want to know you just don't take you on and the government to tell them they got to take a certain percentage to disable people throughout the country but they don't they don't know whe they uh can play with it they've been looking for years ever since they've been the age of uh 15 year old I try to get a job everywhere before I went up to the rlo factory and I was the L well I just don't want to take you on they just said there's nothing that suitable I me there's bound to be a job somewhere like could doing one of the factories I've always been there always been my ambition in spite of my handicap to come independ as much as I can like in spite of it like because all the more reason why these people should help you when you got to when you try to help yourself but instead of that they make life more difficult more harder I mean it's a long way to have L every day to get up about time I mean I get tired when I get home makes it a long day they get out to bed about 4:00 they time to come downstairs about 205 4 up put the C on ready you know the B and then time come and Sh up and we back up there sh and a wash and nothing getting ready for work get dressed then they have a cup of tea in that 10 more less to go takes me a long time you need to leave about 7:00 to get up there between 7 and 10 P because it's a long way you can't race in one of them especially if the roads are bad you got a lot overtaken you got a bus overtaken you want a coach or anything any I van they they blow him as they overtaken him they don't fber glass are fa a glass body there's no weight in them at all and I'm heavy but it still don't keep it down on the road it's 26 mil a day Lu then back came between life and death traveling up there well they make duffel bags shopping bags any type of bag they get like you know they do a lot of army work there you can see they do army work oh it's good quality R play Worker it's good work too man they really work really hard up there that's our job what I got turn them duffel bags rli's wages is very poor very poor money I think it's disgusting the money they get up there right basic wages is £18 12 well out of that I mean you got your tax to pay for so I pay about 225 a week then you got your naal insurance graduated pension all that well I mean time you come home we only Bring It All About £156 have to run your R house that's not a lot see to run home on these days if I lose a day like I lost Monday now and I got in touch with the Social Security I can't get it they won't pay it I just said you got if you work three days or two days you got to have to live on this is the attitude Ian if they'd encourage you more if the government would help in in lots of ways and encourage you more and say well I like these cars breaking down let's give him a a proper car we can't find him a job nearer we'll give him a Min to get back and for there and when you try to help yourself like I am it's all the more reason why they should help you and the didn't sympathy you want when you got a disability is practical help should never feel sorry for anybody with a disability so I don't want nobody the feel sorry for me I it's help I want and the government ought to be H up in every way they can if they had more factories more sheltered workshops for disabled people and done more it would make life a lot more easier instead of that they make life harder everything is arranged against employing handicapp people nobody is really encouraged to take them under their wing it's very difficult you to to discuss something which is uh which one knows in your heart really that uh people are really doing their best and won't do any better until they are F to it at the moment we think we are because we offer them two hours a week or two hours AG morning a week some local authorities offering minimum the minimum they can offer by law they think they do because they're doing their best that's all that can be done the fact is we don't just don't scratch the [Music] service we certainly don't work any wonders here but at least we offer a 5-day week on a regular basis and it isn't playing about either we have production targets to meet and all the work that leaves here has to be good if anything better than other subcontractors unfortunately this place really is an exception to the rule most handicapped people really aren't given the opportunity to do anything constructive I don't know if people appreciate how important it is to it to the handicap B there's lots of things we can do rowboats go sailing fly an airplane um these all these things are B from the handicapped and if you think of going home at night and just sitting down watching TV every night of the week all physical Sports you just can't be involved in work means a tremendous amount to you and I sometimes think if anybody should be employed it should be the handicapped CU it literally is best part of your life you see the fact is that almost all the people we have here simply wouldn't be offered anything else I don't know if that chapping Wells knows how lucky he is because remploy aren't interested in heavily handicapped people and for most of the people here rlo is out they don't really want people that are handicapped they'll take people that have fits this this type but those people are 100% 95% of the time you can't really call them handicapped they're handicapped whil they having a fit they're handicapped as far as they bar from having a car but when they're sitting down working they're as good as your ey and these are the people that renoy are employing Reno has a great idea but it's an idea that to my mind has certainly gone astray do go to remploy go to your local remploy walk around and see how many world chair you can see you see the remploy is set up uh they decide their production and then they take people to keep up the production so really you want to lower your production and take on more severely handicap people but this was the whole idea the concept of real employer to employ these people coming back from the world disabled but now it has got completely disorientated they pick and choose you seem be getting through to them I T you can't take him cuz he's handicapped you'd think that industry would be the place that would provide most of the employment prospects for the handicapped but there isn't any encouragement from the government for them to do much about it disablement resettlement officers are supposed to place handicapp people in open industry but if the firm says it's impossible without workspace or Machinery being adapted what can he say the money for these kinds of adaptations has got to come from somewhere in our society firms are out to make a profit therefore there's no incentive at all for them to subsidize what should be a function of society through the government you look around your own office or factory how many disabled people do you see I'm one of the few lucky ones at least I got a job in the outside world how you get on with that letter John too bad actually I'm not quite sure check the service number go down to the um files down at the end and check the cargo manifest and if it's on there but we haven't but you can't find it on our bills anywhere then you'll know that we've got a document missing you have to chase for it the first few years at work you know it was um a growing up process as far as I was concerned because I think when I left school uh I think that um being at a special school with so few contacts with outside people you you're about 2 or 3 years behind in maturity as far as anybody else is concerned and yet at the same time I was a sort of prisoner on two fronts one mobility and to ignorance of what possibilities were and I think that the ignorance of the Alternatives was you know caused by the immaturity I was also at this time using my own transport to and from work which was an electric invalid Carriage which is a sort of the mo almost one of the most ghastly machines invented on the one hand because of the fact that it isolates people so much anyway after a couple of years of saving up I managed to change that and bought an automatic mini this meant basically that I was able to extricate myself from the incredibly tight R of existence that I'd been living you know not going out at all in the evenings but principally because the bloody electric invalid Carriage needed recharging every night after the journey to and from work I think it's something to remember that it was only because I was in an open employment earning the kind of money that made it possible for me to buy a car God knows what would have happened if I hadn't been able to afford the mini I think I would certainly have found myself at home every night of the week watching television perhaps probably someone would have found me something useful to do like making a mosaic tile ashtray or weaving a scarf during the summer or something very useful like that perhaps basket weaving I gather is very popular for handicapp people that could have been my future if I had been stuck with that Bloody invalid Carriage frankly if people are encouraged to integrate then they find their way out which has happened to me basically I suppose two things one the influence of employment meeting you know inverted commas normal people at work and two becoming far more Mobile by my own car which has allowed me to develop more social contacts but I think that there are a lot of people in day centers who shouldn't be there and who wouldn't be there if they had had the right opportunities at the right time and have been given the right background I think that they've just been swept away and I and I don't think you can blame the employers because there's no incentive really for them to take on disabled people unless you know they can obviously do a job as well as anybody else and they're not going to pose any particular problems you know if there's no problem for getting a wheelchair in if there's no problem as far as walking about and indeed if with all intents and purposes they're just going to behave normally and it's quite obviously true isn't going to be true of every disabled people of all disabled people there're going to be problems like toilets for instance if you're in a wheelchair in fact where I work it's quite good really there are uh for toilets provided specifically in each corner of the building for disabled people they're wider and the doors open outwards and then you know this is obviously a great help and this is the kind of thing that's really needed a sort of investment in it at the right time because it's cheaper then than to muck about and do it later but because there aren't many of them and because they're not articulate and because they're not militant because they're used to having stuff doled out to them and they don't create a fuss then they're not a problem and the fact remains that whatever our society provides by way of bricks and mortar people who are handicapped are often very isolated and perhaps more importantly because they never meet Society they feel written off yet everybody seems to go on about pensioning us off cooping us up in hosels and working in special centers driving special cars as a sort of solution to our problem you know a place in life for us um you know there seems to be this incredible assumption that we would be somehow better off lumped together for the rest of our lives the future becomes a fantasy because in fact that there's so little that's practically offered that you just begin to dream and everything becomes unrealistic and like likewise the problems become unrealistic because they're not faced practically they just pushed behind so we tend to bury ourselves in books learning about the world that andless things change will probably never be a part of yet here we are perfectly able to use our brains trained and Ted and what's it all for what's at the end of it once he's got his degree basket leaving dick is one of the only two people here who's benefited from the kind of technology that our society is capable of devising when it triy [Applause] for [Music] opposite my window there's one of those charity begging bowls a little girl with calipers on her legs I often wonder if we're not somehow condemned by that image the trouble for society is that handicapped people grow up grow up with the same desires and aspirations as everyone else and beneath our probably to you alarming exteriors we aren't very different but have you ever seen a Charity's appeals poster with a handicapped adult on the front of it you learn very slowly not only your own limitations but societies and its capacity to absorb you in fact you learn more quickly to be objective about Society than you do about yourself I accept or more to the point I put up with what you think when I'm walking down the street I have no choice but I can't really go about with a placard on my back saying don't be embarrassed on a person you can spoon feed a handicapped child and teach it to walk yes but spoon feed a computer programmer it's it's as if as we grow up the contradictions become too great for society to cope with this image or this one somehow don't fit society's concept of what handicapped people ought to be doing it often seems that we are still seen as objects that need to be occupied and not as people who might just possibly want to do a job of work which has some dignity and purpose we can't be beyond the capacity to of society to absorb us sure there must be countless firms and processes and means by which with a little bit of imagination on the part of the employer and will we can be absorbed into the mainstream of life but some how these this argument or these arguments seem irrelevant to the handicapped because without the desire of society to make a real effort to accept us as normal fellow human beings and not merely as an embarrassment any progress seems doomed if you can't guarantee acceptance by Society at least Society should start to formulate a really imagin ative policy to help the handicap towards the first rung of social acceptance a job in the outside world incentives must be created for for industry to employ the handicapped because at present it's not only social stigma that denies the handicapped the possibility of employment but simple things like a ramp here or a handrail there and unless employers make the effort to create an environment in which people of varying ability can function at their maximum level the handicap won't get a look in and it isn't simply a question of creating an environment solely for the handicapped thousands of people every year either through age accident or illness suffer impairments which affect their ability to work do they have to be chucked on the junk keep too simply because some employer is too shortsighted to spend a little money and put people first [Music] [Music]