Ruth Bashall

Ruth Bashall (b. Bromsgrove England, 23 May 1952, d. London, England 11 November 2023) was an activist for lesbian and disability rights.

The family moved to Paris in 1954, where Bashall learned French at Lycée Blaise Pascal.

She returned to the UK in 1970 to study sociology at the London School of Economics, graduating with a BSc in 1975.

Bashall came out as lesbian in the mid-1970s.

At around the same time she helped to establish the Lesbian Mothers’ Group, a group dedicated to winning lesbians the right to keep their children after separating from their male partners.

She also joined the London Lesbian Line collective and was a member of the disabled gay rights group, Regard.

She married Alan Bashall in 1971, they had a daughter the following year.

They divorced in 1977.

Bashall worked as a bus conductor from 1977 to 1981, then at a community bookshop from 1981 to 1984.

She was a transport researcher for the Campaign to Improve London’s Transport (CILT) from 1984 to 1990.

With Hillary Torrence she co-organised Women for Improved Transport (WTI) in 1984, with the objective of calling “attention to the needs of all women using London Transport, with particular regard to matters of safety and access.”

Bashell became a wheelchair user and experienced “numerous incidents of disability-targeted hostility on the buses”, including a driver who refused to come close enough to the kerb for her to board, saying “she shouldn’t be out at that time of night” (it was 10pm on a weekday).

In 1989 she co-founded Campaign for Accessible Transport (CAT).

She was one of the “Oxford Street 16”, who were arrested after direct action by CAT and held in a police cell “while the police hunted out a means of getting 16 disabled people to an inaccessible court.”

She was a local council access worker for the London Borough of Waltham Forest from 1990 to 1996, and a policy officer from 1996 to 1999.

In 1999 she became an independent disability equality trainer and consultant.

In the early 2000s, she set up and, with Anne Novis, co-chaired the Metropolitan police's Disability Independent Advisory Group (DIAG).

From 2007 to 2017 she advised the Metropolitan Police and Greater London Authority on domestic and sexual violence and disability hate crime.

She co-founded Stay Safe East, an organisation that supports disabled survivors of abuse, in 2010.

Bashall was born to Bill Parsons, an economist, and Joan, a translator and English teacher.

She set up Stay Safe East with Nicholas Russell in 2010, the “first disabled people’s organisation dedicated to tackling violence and abuse against disabled people from diverse communities”.

She was initially the charity's CEO, and later became its policy and projects advisor.

She retired from this role a few days before she died.

Bashall was: