Brian Rix, who died last week, was an extraordinary man. The sort of man who took on every challenge that life threw at him and fought back.
His first daughter, Shelley, born in 1951, had Down's syndrome and Rix was appalled to discover that there was no support for children with this condition other than a place in an institution where there was little or no attempt to provide any stimulus, let alone education. So he and his wife spent the next 60 or so years fighting on behalf of those children. He gave up a hugely successful stage and TV career to become general secretary of Mencap in 1980, later becoming its chairman and president.
When he was created a life peer in 1992 - sitting as a crossbencher - he introduced a bill to ensure that local authorities provided respite care for the parents of children with learning difficulties. He also fought for the extension of statutory childcare provision for children with a disability, as well as the right of those with learning disabilities to vote freely. Rix changed the way the law, statutory agencies and the general public viewed mental disability in this country. He was one of life's genuinely good guys. He made a difference to society.
In 2006 he spoke against and voted against an Assisted Dying Bill, because he feared that people with learning disabilities might become the unwilling victims of euthanasia. His daughter, Shelley, had died in 2005. But just a few weeks ago Rix announced that he was terminally ill and wrote to the Speaker of the House of Lords to confirm that he had changed his mind in his opposition to assisted dying: "They won't let me die and that's all I want to do. I have no fears of dying because it will put an end to this misery, this pain and discomfort. I am constantly woozy and hazy but I can't sleep. The doctors and nurses do their best for me, but their best is not good enough because what I want is to die, and the law stops them from helping me with that."
I agree with Rix. I believe that the terminally ill should, if they so wish it, choose to die sooner rather than suffer for what will seem to them an eternity. Of course they will talk to their families and clinicians, but at the end of the day - and it really would be the end of the day - it must be their choice. I'm not a brave person. I do not want to suffer or "fight courageously to the end." I don't want to be doped to the eyeballs with painkillers and lying incapable and insentient in a hospital or hospice bed. I don't want my partner, daughters and friends to be standing around my bed knowing that all I want to do is die. I don't want them to see me suffer pointlessly - when we all know that there is no hope of recovery.
I do not believe in a God. I do not believe that I was created for some specific purpose and I certainly don't believe that there is some sort of afterlife. It's my life. I take risks every single day with that life; from getting into a car, or onto a plane, or falling down a flight of stairs, or being in the wrong place when a bomb goes off. I accept all of those risks. And I accept the fact that I could, as a consequence of one of those risks, or of contracting a disease, find myself with a terminal condition involving the sort of change to my life and lifestyle that I would regard as intolerable. To be honest, I'm not even sure I would want to live if the condition was physically or mentally 'catastrophic,' but not 'terminal.'
And in exactly the same way that I calculated the risks involved with living my life I want to be given the right to decide what to do if I no longer want to live that life. I know who I am. I know what motivates me. I know what I can endure or not endure. I will know if I want to leave this world rather than being forced - which is what the present law insists upon - to endure intolerable conditions and circumstances. Furthermore, every single person who is close to me knows exactly how I feel about this issue.
Life is precious. It is a truly wonderful thing. And I accept that many people would never willingly end their own life. That is their choice. But it would not be my choice. I don't fear death - I have had close brushes with it on three occasions - yet I do fear being forced to continue with a life that means nothing to me. I fear, like Rix, being "stricken like a beached whale." I fear helplessness. I fear the anger of being kept alive against my will.
I fear, as Rix did, being made to suffer for no point and with no purpose.
