The British Council of Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP) was a radical national voice of disabled people for legal, social and cultural change in Britain from 1981 to 2017, with a high profile in the 1980s and 1990s. (Wikipedia)

BCODP was founded in 1981, the United Nations International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP). Vic Finkelstein was especially keen to build ‘a mass movement’ of disabled people in Britain.

On 13 June 1981 in London a meeting was organised between UPIAS [the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS)] and eight other national organisations controlled by disabled people, plus a further five organisations being willing to be involved. Its initial name was the National Council of Organisations of Disabled People, soon becoming [BCODP]

It was one of a new type of organisation at the time, being radically different to the established big disability charities in two ways: these charities claimed to speak for disabled people, and they were often impairment-specific (such as for blind people, for people with health condition X, for deaf people, etc). BCODP followed the new Social Model of Disability which said that what people with impairments had in common was that they were disabled by society, not by their impaired bodies. Wikipedia

Scroll to Top
Scroll to Top