Schooled for scandal and blind ambition

One of my favourite conversation stoppers - apart from the one about Gazza being my cousin, which he is by dint of my brother's marriage - is to introduce David Blunkett as a topic of conversation and then say, "By the way, I was at school with him".

At the time he and I were there, the then Royal Normal College for the Blind, situated at Rowton Castle in Shropshire, didn't train people for successful careers in politics. It trained some of the boys to be piano tuners and similar, whilst all of the girls were educated in the skill of shorthand typing. That was the career and life choice that you made as you approached your sixteenth birthday. Or it was made for you.

The regime at the college was self-contradicting. The 'Normal' in its name was there because its founder was an American blind man. To him, a 'Normal' college was one that offered training. And yet there was a sense in which, as students there, David Blunkett and I were encouraged to think of and identify ourselves not as blind, but as normal. The guiding principle for the school was that it would equip us with the wherewithal to live independent lives. Yet independence would only be offered on the College's own limited terms. You could only choose to be independent as either a piano tuner or a shorthand typist.

Ultimately, David Blunkett's innately radical and rebellious spirit rejected either of those options, as he chose to express his independence, individuality and his 'Normality' in one of the toughest of proving grounds: local left-wing politics. In his election to and rise through Sheffield City Council, it's clear that Blunkett brooked no thoughts of his blindness being a 'handicap' or a cause for prejudice against him, even if many of those around him did.

On questions relating to personal liberty and freedom of choice, Rowton Castle once again offered mixed messages. Blind students were allowed to make the eight-mile trip into the nearest town, Shrewsbury, on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. But days were alternately designated Boys' and girls' 'Out Days'. The fear was that if they were allowed to visit the Sallopian fleshpots at the same time, students would quickly pair up and head for cheap hotel rooms, where they'd lose no time in going at it like knives. The sleeping accommodation at the college was also strictly segregated, with no visiting allowed between the dorms at any time. If David Blunkett regarded these rules as entirely breakable, he would not have been the only student of either sex to have done so. Plenty of opportunities for sexual encounters were found and taken in any case, and music practise rooms often reverberated to noises other than scales and arpeggios.

During the extensive coverage of the fall-out from his affair with Kimberly Quinn, much has been made of two matters connected to family life. We're told that David Blunkett is very close to his three sons from his earlier marriage. He's also gone to court to prove his paternity and then assert his rights of access to the son he's said to believe he fathered with Kimberly Quinn. None of this is surprising. If, as he was, you're taken away from a close family at an early age - five or younger - and you're also denied any opportunity of seeing your parents, brothers or sisters for three months at a stretch, it's hardly surprising that in later life, when you have a family of your own, it becomes important to you. However, in the case of David Blunkett, it seems to be stating the obvious to also add that the childhood experience of his father's death in an industrial accident will have had a significant impact on his own needs and feelings as a parent.

This brings us to his treatment by the media, both as a politician and a blind man, not just at this time but throughout his career. To begin with, there's the business of the dog. So, there would be Sir Robin Day introducing panellists on Question Time, coming to the respected former leader of Sheffield City Council, a rising star of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Opposition Spokesman on Health: "... who is of course accompanied tonight by his faithful companion, Otha" (or whatever the dog of the day's name happened to be). David Blunkett's guide dog would get equal billing, even though it would play no further part in proceedings - let alone supply a more erudite contribution to the debate than its owner.

The question which arose for some blind people on these occasions was: did David Blunkett connive in this and, in doing so, sell himself and other blind people out? His answer would probably be that the dog was a fact of his life. But the question lingers. In setting him apart from other politicians, did this vaguely patronising approach work for or against him and other blind people in terms of unchallenged perceptions? Elsewhere, his blindness seems to have been either accepted or ignored by the media.

The chief criticism of Blunkett - both from people who share his impairment and the wider disability community - is that, like Margaret Thatcher and women, David Blunkett has done little or nothing for the cause of disability rights. It's true that he hasn't been, in political terms, a disabled activist. As a conviction politician who has always asserted a strong sense of social justice, his role has been to attempt to change things for the better for everyone, not just for one group in society.

The other question is: has his mere presence done anything to change or improve general perceptions of blind people? Putting aside the jokes made by people like David Baddiel and John O'Farrell about whether blind people have more sex than we thought they did, or can get girlfriends who are really rather pretty, will people look at us differently following these particular newsworthy events? Or will Blunkett be seen as largely an aberration, with the rest of us continuing to be stereotyped as passive individuals, content with our basket-weaving and our innate ability to play the piano?

While that's too big a sociological question for me to answer, the present media focus on David Blunkett's private life does at least give us the opportunity to point out that, for good or ill, our lives are fuller and more 'Normal' than people might assume or imagine.