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BBC RADIO 4: NO TRIUMPH, NO TRAGEDY – I/V WITH JANE CORDELL (INTERVIEWER: PETER WHITE)
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BBC RADIO 4
NO TRIUMPH, NO TRAGEDY
Interview with Jane Cordell
(Interviewer: Peter White)
DATE TRANSCRIBED: 16.8.11
TRANSCRIBED BY: JANET REEVE, at
DATA PROCESSING: 020 8997 5043
WORD COUNT: 4,924
Ref: 11/294
PETER: Ten years ago Jane Cordell joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, believing the fact that she was profoundly deaf wouldn't hold back her career as a diplomat. And it didn't. After four highly successful years as First Secretary in Poland, she was offered what should have been the first step in senior diplomatic service, as Deputy Ambassador in Kazakhstan. And then had the job removed. Her special needs of lip speakers to help with communications, it was decided, were too expensive. She took the case to an industrial tribunal, and, when she lost that, to an appeal. It's as well Jane is used to fighting. When she became totally deaf in her twenties, she found herself, as she says, not only with no hearing, but with no job, no money, and no relationship. She fought her way through this and, after a spell in publishing, thought, until this case, that she'd found her niche.
Jane, before we talk about the case itself can we perhaps explore a little your reasons for going into the Diplomatic Service? I mean, given that our image of diplomacy is of highly nuanced negotiations, crucial tones of voice - tricky areas, to say the least, for someone with profound deafness, or have I been reading too much spy and political thrillers?
JANE: (LAUGHS) I found that diplomacy required, as you say, the ability to read people. And interestingly I think people with hearing loss develop the ability to read people. So I think in some ways being a deaf diplomat brings you an advantage. When I walk into a room I pick up immediately a sense of what the atmosphere is, whether there's going to be a rapport with the speakers, what's going on. You read people's faces, their gesture. You can pick up messages that possibly people who aren't deaf couldn't. So I just went into it with an open mind, believing that the more straightforward barriers presumpted by not being able to hear could be fairly easily overcome, but then I'm an optimist. (LAUGHS)
PETER: So is this a way of preparing yourself early for those conversations, this business of reading the signs?
JANE: Yes, and I think it's fair to say probably all people working in reasonably high-powered jobs with disabilities will prepare more. What you do is you do your best to make sure you at least meet the same level as those without the disabilities. In my experience that means you often go further. So you try to avoid going into a meeting or a discussion without being properly prepared. You make every effort.
PETER: Can yougive me other examples of what you think you pick up that other people might not?
JANE: Well, it's particularly useful if you can see a person's whole body. I can see yours now. Because I think it's fair to say when reading body language, the body lies more easily from the top. So if you can see a person's feet, it can give a very good indication of what they really think.
PETER: How do your feet lie?
JANE: Er, (LAUGHS) if they're wearing sandals, if somebody curls their toes it's often an indication they may be lying, or not convinced of what they're saying. If you have the disadvantage of they're wearing shoes, watch the movements, the tapping, the nervous tapping, the way they cross their legs. We learn to control our face, but further down the body we can see the truth.
PETER: I'm conscious now that I'm jiggling my toes! (BOTH LAUGH) What does that mean?
JANE: You're not giving anything away Peter!
PETER: Am I not? Good. I'll have some tough questions later. This might be a good moment to explain how you actually work.
JANE: Yes I'm happy to. Thank you for the opportunity to do so, because I think lip speaking, which is the facility I use, is not very well known. The person sitting next to you is Anthony Redshaw, who's helping me today. He is repeating silently and in a lip readable way what you're saying.
PETER: And what… But it sounds complicated. I mean are you in some sense lip reading us both, or are you concentrating on Anthony because his is a style of presentation that you've become used to?
JANE: I follow the lip speaker because otherwise there's a risk of missing something, but I do love to keep eye contact. I'm trying to do that with you now, and we're positioned well so I can do that, turn it just slightly behind you and to one side. But it's important for me to also keep reading the person as well as obtaining the information from the lip speaker. But no I think it's a smooth system, and it works, it works very well, practically seamlessly, on the condition you have the right person working with you - you have to have high trust too, which we do I'm glad to say.
PETER: Can we go back quite a long way? When did you first realise that you had a hearing problem?
JANE: It's a good question, and I think it's something important maybe for the listeners, some of whom are likely to have their own hearing loss. I think we're always immediately aware of hearing loss. It's important if you suspect that, that you get your hearing checked, that you take action quickly. I didn't. As a musician - I'd actually been a professional musician for a year or so - the thought that I may be losing my hearing was terrifying, as you can probably imagine. The first indication was the onset of tinnitus, so the jangling in the ears is a terrible thing, to lose your hearing and have it replaced by a jangling in the ears now. I think the first time I realised there was a problem was a colleague who was a teacher at that point, on a summer course, saying, 'You're definitely a bit deaf' - it was a devastating thing to hear.
PETER: And what were you doing at the time?
JANE: Teaching English as a foreign language.
PETER: Which in a way could, could hardly have been a, a worse area to have been in for someone to have a, a hearing loss, working in language.
JANE: That was actually a comment made by an audiologist a bit later, when I got back into the British system. She tested my hearing with the new very sophisticated technology, and she looked at the result and said, 'What did you say you used to do?' And I said that I taught English as a foreign language. She said, 'With that level of hearing? Well,' she said, 'I can tell you, if you can do that you can do anything.' (BOTH LAUGH) This has stuck with me. (LAUGHS)
PETER: It's a positive way of looking at it.
JANE: Yeah.
PETER: And you were also, one of your main interests was music.
JANE: Yes. It still is, yes. I play, I play. (LAUGHS)
PETER: What, what do you play? What's your main instrument?
JANE: I play the viola. I started at secondary school, had the chance to learn, so I had my hearing when I learned, and I loved it. I played in Stockport Youth Orchestra, I was in the National Youth Orchestra, had two years at music college as well.
PETER: In fact when your hearing began to go you, you weren't in the UK. Can you explain where you were and exactly what you were doing?
JANE: I set up a small English language teaching school in southern Poland. I was an entrepreneur I suppose as well as a teacher.
PETER: And I think you were running it with a colleague with whom you were having a relationship?
JANE: Yes, at the time, that's right, yes. It was mostly work, to be honest. (LAUGHS) Something, something I've learnt, there's nothing as tough as running your own business, but I loved it, it was fascinating. It was a real challenge. It was a new language, a new culture, it was 1990, just after, immediately after the political changes. To say that things were in disarray is an understatement I think. One, one year we received a gas bill that had more than doubled because of change in the currency or something. That was quite tricky to say the least. But I learned a lot.
PETER: So what happened in the end? What happened to the school, and the relationship?
JANE: The school was sold. I didn't sell the relationship but I ended it! (BOTH LAUGH) Nobody wants it I don't think! (LAUGHS) No I, it's interesting, because I think you're right to point out the way that different elements of your life match, and I think it was very difficult to be in a relationship with someone who's Polish at the time, and the culture at that point found it very difficult to handle people with disabilities generally. At that point, 1990, the people just tended to conceal their disability if they had one, and the notion of me changing from a hearing person to a deaf person was very difficult for the partner at the time, but that also showed me probably wasn't the right partner for me. I viewed my hearing loss as a quality filter for future partners.
PETER: What does it tell you? What are the warning signs for someone in your situation?
JANE: Well, the fact is if someone, a potential partner say, when I was still single, wasn't prepared to meet me halfway, wasn't prepared to change their behaviour or adapt their communication or just be able to communicate, then they weren't going to have the benefit of my friendship or whatever. And I think, I think it's true, it's a quality filter because it's partly a test of whether someone instinctively can communicate and respond to me as a deaf person in the right way.
PETER: So it was very complex in a way, you were in a foreign country, you were losing your hearing, you were trying to run a business, there was political turmoil, and you were in a relationship which perhaps couldn't stand up to all this. Is that, is that fair?
JANE: Yeah it was pretty complex, yes. I don't recommend anybody to, probably to get themself into that situation again, but having said that, (LAUGHS) it becomes the basis for who you are. And I think it really really forces you to be very self-aware, which is important you know. When you're in another country you take a step back, you're able to see who you are much more clearly. I think that's been crucial.
PETER: Can I explore that a bit more, because, as I said at the beginning when I introduced you, there was, there was a point when you came back to the UK, when, I think as you said to me, you had no hearing, you had no job, you had no money…
JANE: Yeah.
PETER: …you had no relationship. Where do you go from there?
JANE: You go back to your mum's! (BOTH LAUGH) That's what I did.
PETER: You went back to your mum?
JANE: (LAUGHING) For a short time.
PETER: Who offered comfort and an arm around you presumably and that's what you needed.
JANE: Of course.
PETER: Yeah.
JANE: And say get on with it I think, which was quite right. I just picked myself up and tried to get on with it. It was hard, I'm not saying it wasn't hard, but I think that loss is part of life. I've had four major losses in my life. The first was hearing, which was really tough. The second sadly was my mum, a few years after that, so I'm quite glad I had that time with her at that point. But loss builds strength to an extent I think too. It's part of life, you have to learn to work through it.
PETER: That's quite a difficult philosophy to have to keep putting into practice though isn't it?
JANE: Yeah, you sort of think what's coming next you know. I mean it, it, it can make you feel, I think it makes you see the range of life. It's like waves coming towards you, the next big one, you know. And, but the point is not to spend your life worrying about the next wave, but you find a way, a way to handle it. And I think it, it widens your repertoire, and in a strange way these big waves make you think about the detail of life more. You're forced to enjoy the moment for what it is.
PETER: Can I just pin you down to, to the specific loss of your hearing? Can you just…
JANE: Yes.
PETER: …explain the impact of that, when you realised that it was going to be a total loss rather than a partial loss?
JANE: I had a conversation with a very dour Scottish GP, it was my mum's GP, and I said to him, 'Please can you tell me what's the worst case scenario?' And he said, 'You could lose all your hearing.' I said, 'Thank you very much, goodbye.' (LAUGHS) That was so good to hear that, to know that that was a possibility. If you know what the worst scenario is you can start to think about it and adjust to it. What happens is of course day to day you figure it out, you think what can I do you know. But interestingly it never occurred to me to stop working, because that's wh… How do you, how do you live if you don't have money you know. And how do you retain any sense of self-esteem? I like people, I'm a people person, sociable, I needed to be out there, so work was a foregone conclusion. Perhaps that helped. But yes… I think for any major loss like that you go through a sort of grieving process, you're devastated by the loss, then you feel angry probably. Anger is a, a significant period, then you start to adjust and assimilate to the reality. There's lots of things you can do, there's hearing aids and there are people out there who can help you. I was lucky to have such a fantastic amount of supportive people around me.
I'm a proud member of the Ramsbottom Choral and Orchestral Society, and that made a difference. And I've always felt I benefitted from joining in networks of groups. People had disabilities as well - mutual support is vital, but it's actually what's inside you that's most important. It's how you choose to respond to each situation. You can make the choice, that's what I discovered. Like I'd always thought life buffets you, and that's it, but no you can choose how you think.
You have to figure out what this does to your identity, you have to sort of piece yourself together again.
PETER: You went into publishing for a while, three or four years?
JANE: That's right, that was a sort of sideways move. I decided to want to get another string to my bow, but the fact is I'm a people person so I missed that. I enjoyed very much learning music as I enjoyed the editing, I didn't feel it was using the whole of me. I saw an advert in the newspaper, I think the wording was that the British Diplomatic Service needs to represent modern Britain, and I liked the fact that the diversity policies were clear, and that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was positive about disabled people. And it was that which attracted me, plus the requirements, which seemed to meet the experience I had. I had already worked overseas, and I felt I had the skills that they were asking for.
PETER: So having gone in, what was the day to day life like?
JANE: In ... Head of the EU Bilateral department, sort of covering four Mediterranean countries. The great thing about the Diplomatic Service, the work is so varied, you couldn't actually say there was a typical day, because it depended very much on what was happening in the EU, what was happening in the countries we covered, what ministerial requirements there were.
PETER: Now you got a foreign posting to Poland, as First Secretary. That was a step up.
JANE: It's very exciting work, wide ranging. And I had a team of eleven people, we covered all foreign policy, military issues. I was often talking to Polish contacts about ballistic missile defence, or deployments to Afghanistan, was typical conversation, or their policy on Iran or the Middle East. We also covered internal political, or visit, or Press and Public Affairs, Justice and Home Affairs, so it's very very varied work, quite responsive to what was happening politically. very interesting.
PETER: And what about those unofficial conversations, the nuances, the overheard remark perhaps, that you don't overhear?
JANE: I think it probably balances out. I mean you're right to suggest earlier there's a lot of challenges involved in being, in, in my case the only one at my level who was deaf working at that level. But the advantages you bring balance it out. I think you end up being at a level playing field.
PETER: And how did the people you worked with, how did they react to you in this position, as a profoundly deaf person?
JANE: I think they were so surprised, that it almost didn't matter. It was equivalent of a Martian turning up you know, so, because most of the people I'm dealing with are used to diplomats, they're diplomatic themselves, they couldn't say, 'Good God it's a Martian', they sort of tried to get over it really.