So the day has finally come when Gary McKinnon and his family can start to rebuild their lives. A decade has passed since Gary was arrested for hacking into US security systems. Ten years of political and legal battle, of the media circus, of personal battles to stay positive, and to somehow get on with life.
I first met Gary’s family nearly five years ago when working for a disability charity, by which time his mother Janis was already a seasoned, formidable, but increasingly desperate campaigner for her son. At the time I was struck by her media skills and canny political approach, but what really stood out was her ability to always make real the plight Gary himself faced. Then, as now, Janis would point to the reality of Gary’s Asperger syndrome – not to the disability itself in some abstract or general way – but to Gary’s individual difficulties. This was not a tactic, it was an expression of the deep frustration and fear caused by the crass assumptions made about his so called ‘mild’ disability.
Working with Gary’s family I would often speak to politicians and journalists who would always ask the question: ‘Do you think all people with autism should escape extradition?’. The answer then, as now is ‘no’. We would always go on to say that in Gary’s case his severe anxieties and associated mental health problems reveal and acute and very real risk that he would not survive such extradition, and therefore he should be tried in the UK. Anyone who has met Gary will know this truth, but it confers no assumption upon anyone else with the same, similar or any other disability. To know a disability is, and is only, to know the individual affected by it.
Gary’s case fell victim to the lopsided extradition treaty with the US that former Home Secretary David Blunket now admits he should not have signed. That said, I always felt that fighting Gary’s cause through a battle to amend the treaty was not only politically dangerous, but represented a sideshow to the real battle to have his condition and its individual effects taken seriously. I will never forget the sight of Alan Johnson (then home secretary) spotting and then running away from Gary’s family as we approached him along the Brighton prom during Labour conference of 2009. Johnson is one of the most respected and talented politicians of his generation but in that moment he would not face the human and real life impact of his decisions.
Gary’s case should act as a wake-up call to policy makers of all parties about the dangers of generic and broad brush assumptions about the capabilities and difficulties of disabled people. This is of course true for criminal justice and extradition arrangements, but must also strike a chord across the wider policy arena. Navigating public services and the apparatus of the state is a nightmare for disabled people and their families – just ask anyone being ‘migrated’ by Iain Duncan Smith and ATOS on to the new benefits regime, or any parent of a disabled child fighting for a meaningful statement of special education needs. The constant refrain is one of ‘the system’ treating disabilities by rote, and of little or no interest in how individual difficulties ‘disable’ individual people.
The heroic and triumphant efforts of Gary’s family over the last decade will be rightly celebrated for years to come, but we should recognise something unique about their case. It was ultimately successful because Gary’s individual person became known. His condition became ‘personal’. If we are to address the potential, the needs and the difficulties of disabled people beyond label or diagnosis then the ‘personal’ principle must be the starting point for how we view all disabled people.
Matthew Downie is a Progress member and chair of Hornsey and Wood Green CLP. He tweets @matthew_downie.
Photo: UK Home Office