Remembering Stansfield View

I have been pointed to a new YouTube film called ‘Remembering Stansfield View’, made as a ‘love letter to all the people I have been fortunate to have known with learning disabilities‘ by Gerard Wainwright (someone who trained and worked there).

In the film, made 30 years on from the institution’s closure, some of the people who lived and worked at Stansfield View (near Todmorden in West Yorkshire) reflect on their times and roles there, the residents’ transition to community living, and the changing perception of people with learning difficulties. The interviews are illustrated with film and photographs of the place (not dissimilar to a ‘Hospital for the Mentally Handicapped’ that I worked in as a Nursing Assistant for 6 years in the 1980s) and the people who lived and worked there.

Watching it (in stages) made me reflect on the history that was deliberately imposed on many people with cognitive difficulties and behavioural differences, with their forced removal from society to live their lives hidden away behind ‘invisible gates’. It also made me think about how people with such difficulties and differences were viewed as ‘other’, and therefore less worthy of the human rights afforded to the general population.

History repeatedly tells us that it is always much easier to routinely and collectively act inhumanly to those seen as somehow different to the rest of us, especially when at a distance or when ‘out of sight’. This process of ‘othering’ less powerful groups of people is something we need to continue to guard and act against.

As Gerrard says, we should ‘celebrate what sets us apart, and take pride in that, as well as what brings us together‘. That is a general humanistic principle that is often tragically lacking in much of our current political discourse.

You can watch ‘Remembering Stansfield View’ at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6lnKtc7m3A