Rory O’Kelly on eugenics and social control
The undesirables: The law that locked away a generation by Sarah Wise – published by Oneworld
Between its passage in 1913 and its repeal in 1959 the Mental Deficiency Act allowed people so classified to be placed under guardianship or detained, potentially indefinitely, in institutions or “colonies”. There were various routes into the classification. Formal IQ testing was in use, and educational attainment was a factor, but so too was criminality and general, and particularly sexual, behaviour. One category of the mentally deficient was “moral imbeciles”.
This book is a history of some aspects of the Act, but not of the treatment of learning disability as such. The author states at the outset that she will not deal with those described at the time as “low-grade”, who would now be said to have moderate or severe learning disabilities, but only with the “high-grade” with, by current standards, mild disabilities or none at all. She is interested in the Act primarily as a method of social control, directed against the poor, the uneducated and people with unconventional lifestyles, as well as those who simply had nowhere else to go.
While the Act is presented as a historical oddity it is not clear that things have changed that much. We now have a very large prison population, the great majority having serious problems with literacy or substance abuse or both and many at least on the borderline of mental illness or learning disability. While drugs are now a bigger issue and sexual promiscuity a smaller one there is a recognisable similarity between those in prison now and those who would once have been in “colonies”. All societies have strategies for dealing with people who cannot cope easily with life in the community or who simply do not seem to fit in very well. Today we seem to prefer a penal rather than a quasi-therapeutic approach but this is not obviously more effective or less abusive. It is certainly a lot more expensive.
One major influence behind the Act was the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. There was an influential, though by no means undisputed, theory that “mental deficiency” was hereditary, coupled with a fear that the “unfit” would breed faster than the “fit” leading to racial degeneration. It is now well known that eugenics was rather disturbingly appealing to some Fabians, while working class socialists could use the concept of the “lumpenproletariat” to the same end. During the debates around the Mental Deficiency Act there were even people arguing for compulsory sterilisation, though this never gained majority support.
Sexual segregation was however a fundamental part of the Act and stopping the perpetuation of mental deficiency through the generations was always an objective, though not always explicitly stated as such. The rejection of eugenics after the Second World War did seem to be one area of undisputed progress. As a bizarre example of regression, however, the idea of preventing the poor from breeding was revived in George Osborne’s austerity programme through the two-child limit on benefits, subsequently adopted by the Labour Government. Neither Party likes to refer to the intellectual antecedents and Labour, in particular, insists that it is just about saving money. This is a transparent evasion. To save money one could equally withhold benefits from left-handed or red-haired children, rather than those with two or more siblings.
Apart from the concern with heredity there was also a general unease about the sexuality of people with cognitive impairments. Women were seen as potential victims, and there was a quite sophisticated understanding of the dangers of sexual abuse within the family. The same women could also however be seen as a source of moral pollution. Again, the terminology has now changed but we still see the same drive to prevent learning disabled or demented people from having sex, now nominally based on doubts about their mental capacity to give consent. The capacity to consent to living in permanent celibacy is apparently not seen as an issue.
The book is well worth reading for its account of the contemporary debates, featuring conflicts between personal freedom and demands for social regulation which do not map at all closely onto “left” and “right”. As a historian the author is probably right not to focus on resemblances to our current political disputes. She is, however, perhaps a little too willing to treat the Mental Deficiency Act as a throwback to the 19th century rather than a forerunner of things to come. At many points the relevance to our present situation is visible on the surface without need for too much excavation.