Remembering Alan Bates

Speaker 1 00:07

It's up to you and me to shine a guiding light and lead the way United because we have the power to pursue what we believe

Speaker 2 00:23

We'll achieve the realisation of our dreams. Hello and welcome to New Horizons and thanks for joining us. I'm John Simpson. Sadly, we learnt recently of the passing of one of BCA's founding members. Alan Bates passed away on March 30th after a short illness. More recently, of course, Alan was best known across the country for his involvement across many sports and recreational activities for people who are blind or have low vision. But many of us have a longer association with Alan than that. And in fact, Alan was one of those who was part of the establishment of Blind Citizens Australia or the National Federation of Blind Citizens as it was known then in 1975. 

To reflect on some of Alan's achievements and involvements over those years, I'm joined by Bill Jolley. Welcome to the program, Bill. Thanks, John. Bill, let's go back to the formation of Blind Citizens Australia. You were BCA's president in those first years and I understand that Alan was part of that inaugural committee. Tell us a little bit about his contribution and the work and contribution of his wife, Rosalyn, over those early years.

Speaker 1 01:47

Yes, so the National Federation of Blind Citizens, as it was called then, was formed in 1975. In fact, David Blythe was the first president and I was the first secretary. And I realized that being secretary created a lot of hard work. And in the future, I thought that being president was a better option for me than secretary. But Alan was, so we had the meeting in June to form the organization. And the committee that was formed was David Blythe, Hugh Jeffrey, Phyllis Gratian, myself and John Machen. That was in fact the working group formed earlier to sort of set up the organization and prepare the way for a formal adoption in 1975. And then Peter Sumner joined the group. Alan was a very important person in that group because he was a very good networker.

So he would be one of the ones that would be out there selling the raffle tickets and encouraging a lot of his friends and associates to join the organisation. In particular, Alan was well positioned to do that because he was one of the trainers of the telephonists who went through the RBIB rehabilitation centre. At that time, the switchboard operation was the main job really for blind people who hadn't gone to university and that was most of them in those days. And who didn't seek factory work. So for the sort of the middle of the road blind person, operating the switchboard was the main job.

And Alan was one of the trainers. So he knew over the years hundreds of people that had been trained there. And he encouraged a lot of people to join the organization and work very hard. Also, we had, we used to have a newsletter. It was called Buff in those days. And it was typed up on a stencil and then Ronnie Ode and Alan's wife, Rosalind, did the bulk of the work for that, typing up the newsletter and then running off the copies. And then of course, putting them in the envelopes and posting them out. So Alan supported her in that task as well. So he was very much a doer in those days and working at the grassroots to build the organization into a strong organization that it is today.

Speaker 2 04:38

His work with the organisation continued over a lot of years and of course in the mid -1980s Alan represented the then National Federation of Blind Citizens Australia as the consumer representative to the Round Table on Information Access. One of his major involvements of course was in the area of improving audio standards and as was the custom at the time, our external representatives reported each year to the National Convention. Let's have a listen to part of Alan's report to the 1987 Convention held in Melbourne.

Speaker 3 05:17

The subcommittee system, I think, seems to work well. And the audio subcommittee, of which I'm the main person involved, or the main consumer involved in, I think has lifted the standards quite a bit of the various talking books and magazines. The guidelines that have been accepted by all the producers are fairly complex. And the standards that they've set for themselves, I don't know that as yet, they're forming up to the thing that I'm most interested in is the standard of the narrators. It seems to me that when you're reading a talking book, that a good narrator can make a fairly ordinary book quite interesting, whereas a really good book read by a poor narrator can make a hell of a mess of it.

I think it's important to realise that the standards that the producers themselves have set down are there. They're there for them to take notice of. And now that they do have some paid narrators, I think the days when we would say, well, it's good to get a talking book no matter how it is, now that they are being paid, they are getting a book subsidy, it's now time for us as consumers to say, well, if the book's not good enough, we should do something about it.

Speaker 2 06:31

Bill, that's a great example of Alan's quiet, the assertive advocacy. Alan did a lot to improve the standards of audio materials in those days, didn't he?

Speaker 1 06:42

Yes, he did. And he was a very good representative for BCA, as we call it now in that in the Roundtable organisation, because he was a very keen talking book reader, and he was a discerning listener. So his comments about narration and the standards of narrators were very poignant. So the Roundtable had been formed just a few years earlier to bring organizations producing Braille and audio together. And it was a bit like herding cats really, to get the concept of cooperation working among these organizations. They weren't competing with each other all the time. There was a bit of competition, but there just wasn't much learning from each other.

And there wasn't much of a collegial atmosphere. And the Roundtable and people like Cliff Law from the National Library did a lot of work to break that down. And to get that cooperation happening and to improve the standards of the audio book narration. And in fact, there was an audio book narration award, the Talking Book of the Year Award, sponsored by the National Library that organisations then would compete for. And that also helped to improve the standard of narration.

Speaker 2 08:08

Let's turn then to more recent times and over that period of time and since Alan as I said in the introduction of the program had a very heavy involvement with sport and recreational activities for blind people. I guess that started with the development by the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind of the Ski Club and the RVIB actually was a heavy sponsor of the ski club through the provision of a facility up at Mount Boer Boer in Victoria. Alan was president of that organisation for quite a number of years.

Speaker 1 08:45

Yes, Alan and Rosalind were very strong supporters of the Ski Club, and then his daughter had a leading role in that later on as well. The activity of skiing for blind people was one that Alan and others at the Rehabilitation Centre took on with great gusto and encouraged people to go skiing, and it was really a great outlet for many blind people that didn't have access to this recreation and hadn't learned how to ski, and it was really a very successful club during the sort of 70s, 80s and 90s, and Alan was very largely responsible for that as a really strong leader of that activity.

So as well as doing that sort of vocational work of teaching switchboard and the sort of political work of developing blind citizens Australia and the representation there with the audio standards, he was very strong on recreation, including the skiing, also tandem cycling, and he was a pretty good swish player as well.

Speaker 2 10:00

And I know that other subsequent sports such as 10 -pin bowling for blind people were developed with the support of Alan and Rosalind in later years. Just to come back though to the Ski Club Bill, beyond all of that of course the Ski Club was a great opportunity for people to learn socialisation skills. For those people who were less connected to a broader community, putting them all together over a weekend or a week in a ski lodge up in the snow, I guess helped their socialisation skills as well.

Speaker 1 10:40

It was something that the RVIB strongly supported at that rehabilitation centre which was providing residential rehabilitation for people and it was particularly important for people who were newly blinded and also people who had come out of school and then needed to make that transition from being a school student to a young worker and to develop some peer support and provide peer support for those clients of the rehabilitation service through sport and recreation was something that they were very keen on and Alan played a leading part in that.

Speaker 2 11:20

Alan's reputation in all of these areas of course was not just here in Victoria but nationally. I know that the RVIB training centre programs were made available to people from right across the country and of course once we got into the sport and recreation area there was more of a much more of a national involvement. So Bill, as always with this program, time is against this - but before we go, do you have a final reflection or something you would like to mention?

Speaker 1 11:54

Look, I think, John, that Alan Bates, a very strong contribution in the blind community and particularly was important in his role as a peer supporter and a role model and a positive role model for younger people coming through and people who were newly blind. And that's what I remember. And also, as I say, in blind citizens Australia, particularly in those early days, he was one of those very important doers who would actually get on and do the work. There were others that would talk about policy and talk about organisational structures that didn't really know much about governance.

But Alan knew where his strength slide lay and his strength was in getting out and promoting the organisation and then, as I say, representing the consumers of talking book services through his work on the round table, where he was BCA's representative for quite some long time, probably 15 years or so.

Speaker 2 12:59

Alan's life was celebrated recently with family and a wide circle of friends at an event here in the Melbourne suburb of Sandringham and I know that in the social media in the last week or so there have been lots of memories and messages of condolences to their family. On behalf of New Horizons and Blind Citizens Australia more generally and all of Alan's many friends and associates over many years we say rest in peace to Alan and our best wishes and sincere sympathies go to Alan's wife Rosalind and the family.

I'm John Simpson, thanks for being with me for this week's edition of New Horizons and don't forget that if you want to contact the organisation you can phone BCA on 1800 033 600 or email BCA - at - bca - dot - org - dot - au.  That's bca@bca.org.au

Speaker 1 14:02

of a dream... of a dream...