Acts of Defiance (review)

Book Reviews Acts of Defiance by Jack Ashley (London and New York: Reinhardt Books in association with Viking, 1992, 370 pages, hardcover) Acts of Defiance is the absorbing and moving autobiography of Jack Ashley, for 24 years the distinguished, completely deaf member of the British House of Commons. Ashley was born in Widnes, an industrial town near Liverpool, in 1922. After his father, a laborer, died, Jack's mother scrubbed floors to support the family. At 14, Jack left school to work as a laborer in local factories. Militant but genial, the well-liked young man became a union leader and, at 22, was elected to the town council. He -won fellowships to Oxford and Cambridge Universities and became the first working -class president of the Cambridge Debating Society. In 1966, when Labor ousted the Conservatives and Harold Wilson replaced Edward Heath as prime minister , Ashley was elected member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent South, a pottery-making town not far from Widnes. Soon, he was appointed parliamentary private secretary to Michael Stewart, minister of economic affairs. A ministerial appointment was rumored . However, after three stapedectomies , the hearing in Ashley's right ear was failing. So, in December 1967, he entered the hospital for "a minor operation " on his left eardrum that, the surgeon said, was almost certain to improve his hearing. He had a sore throat, was given an antibiotic, and the operation proceeded. A heavy, feverish cold and deafness followed. His right ear did not function ; in the left, sound fluttered and expired ; tinnitus clanked and roared. I left hospital in a car driven by one of my brothers-in-law, who chatted with Pauline [Ashley's wife]....This apparently simple, natural scene caused one of the greatest shocks of my life. I was astounded to see them sharing a car with me yet having a conversation from which I was totally excluded, (p. 141) Intensive efforts at lipreading and a powerful hearing aid were of too little help. Ashley stepped down as parliamentary private secretary and resignation from Parliament seemed unavoidable. Returning to the House of Commons in April 1968, he could follow very little of the debate. Labor ministers faced the opposition , so he could not see their lips; the quick interruptions common in parliamentary debate were over before he could locate the speakers. In the bar, he was welcomed with handshakes, greetings, and questions that were repeated, then shouted. Not understanding, he smiled, thanked his colleagues, and walked out. "It was the most embarrassing experience of my life," he recalled. That day, it seems, he had lost the last remnant of his hearing. Submitting his resignation to the constituency party, he started to look for other work. Colleagues in both parties and Prime Minister Wilson urged him to remain ; when his constituency party also did so, he agreed. Thereupon began the struggle, not just to survive as an object of political charity but to be effective. In politics, this can mean being troublesome, even fighting friends and allies. A hearing aid was useless and "no one in the House of Commons could understand sign language, so there was no point in learning it for Parliament." Speech making had been Ashley's metier, and deafness would not change that—the danger of speaking too loudly or softly could be reduced by relying on signals from a friend. Nonetheless, he confesses a certain envy of the ease with which native deaf people communicate. When Gallaudet University students "smilingly addressed us in rapid sign language....I felt I was disabled whereas they were not," he writes. Without his wife, Pauline, it is unlikely that Ashley could have continued in Parliament or been as effective. She contributed more than ears and a clear mouthing of what she heard on a phone extension, so that a conversation could be held with little interruption. She drafted many parliamentary questions, letters, speeches, and policy proposals; she served as personal and professional assistant, as secretary and research staff. During the couple's visit to Gallaudet in 1984, Pauline Ashley was asked how she coped with her husband's deafness. She replied with some irritation, "He was still the same Jack Ashley. It...