BERT’S WAY
Disability rights hero cemented into city history
ALIVERPOOL road has been named in honour of disability campaigner Sir Bert Massie.
The former All Together NOW! chief columnist, who contracted polio at three months old, spent his life fighting for a better deal for disabled people.
Sir Bert Massie Way is part of an enhanced housing scheme in the Knotty Ash area.
His wife Lady Maureen joined Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram and Cllr Barbara Murray at a special unveiling ceremony.
Lady Maureen said: “It’s an amazing tribute to honour Bert this way. Everything he did was for disabled people and to have Liverpool Council acknowledge this is absolutely wonderful.
“I hope they’re proud of the
place they live in, as proud as I am of my late husband. It’s been six years since he died, which seems to have disappeared in a very short space of time.”
Sir Bert, who lived in Aigburth, was also awarded an honorary degree from Liverpool University and made a freeman
of the city of London in 2008.
He played a crucial role in ensuring that Parliament passed the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.
In the lobbying work that led to the DDA, he worked with the Government of the time and the transport industries to develop and set standards for accessibility, and secured the access regulations formula which is the basis of the current provision of accessible public transport.
Sir Bert spent the first five years of his life in Alder Hey Hospital before attending Greenbank School for Rest and Recovery, and Sandfield Park school at 11.
In 1978, he joined the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation (and was its director from 1990 to 1999.
He served as chairman of the Disability Rights Commission from 2000 to 2007 and was founding commissioner of its successor, the Equality and Human Rights
Commission.
He was awarded an OBE in 1984, a CBE in 2000, followed by a knighthood for services to disabled people seven years later.