Bengt Olof Lennart Lindqvist (3 June 1936 – 3 December 2016) was a Swedish politician and advocate of persons with disabilities.
Born in Helsingborg in 1936, he was a member of the Social Democratic Party and served as chairman of the Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired (Synskadades riksförbund) from 1975 to 1985, the rehabilitation committee of the World Council for the Welfare of the Blind from 1974 to 1985, and the Swedish Disability Association (Handikappförbundens centralkomité, HCK) from 1977 to 1985. First elected as a Member of the Riksdag (MP) for Stockholm County in 1982, he stepped down in 1995. Lindqvist also served as a deputy minister for social security (responsible for family affairs, elderly care and disability) in the Palme II and Carlsson I Cabinet and was later named minister without portfolio with the same responsibilities in the Carlsson II Cabinet.
From 1994 to 2002, Bengt Lindqvist served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Disability of the Commission for Social Development.
He died at the age of 80 in 2016.
Biography Family Born in Helsingborg, Lindqvist was the third child of Wiking Lindqvist, a pipe installer, and his wife Westa Jönsson, a shop assistant for a chemical business. He grew up with two older sisters. He married Gun Bengtsson in 1960 and moved with her to Solna in Stockholm County. The couple had two daughters. In 1966, the family moved into a larger apartment in Tyresö and in 1970 into a house in Trollbäcken. Lindqvist died in Nynäshamn on 3 December 2016, leaving behind his wife, his two daughters, and four grandchildren.
Education While attending Husensjö primary school in Helsingborg, Lindqvist was diagnosed with poor eyesight during a routine check at the age of eight, which was later specified by the university hospital in Lund as a degeneration of the retinal pigment, eventually causing blindness. Though Lindqvist continued to attend public school, his visual impairment affected his education and after several years rendered it impossible to read standard printed text. As aiding technology was not widely spread in Sweden at that time, he had to fall back on individual solutions. With the use of magnifying glasses, a typewriter and the help of family members and friends who recorded or read texts to him, Lindqvist finished primary school in 1951 at the age of 15.
After a discontinued internship at a local greenery, Lindqvist's aunt contacted the Institute for the Blind in Solna by Stockholm to arrange for him to attend Tomteboda School for the Blind, then the leading school for blind education in Sweden. He stayed there from October 1951 to June 1952. Even if the main motivation was for him to learn reading and writing in braille, Lindqvist also received training in basket weaving, Swedish language and literature, music – he started to play the drums in a jazz band – and sports. Through a gymnastics teacher he was introduced to the ideas of the still young disability movement that advocated for a better inclusion of disabled people into Swedish society. Lindqvist later described this acquaintance as an important founding stone for his later engagement in disability rights advocacy, an experience that was enhanced by the secluded environment of the school: After his return to Helsingborg in 1952, Lindqvist continued at the local secondary school with a focus on language, using braille books and voice recordings by his sister as aids. He then studied English at Lund University from 1957 to 1960 with the help of book loans from the National Library for the Blind in London. During this time, he also began to work part-time as a travelling teacher for Tomteboda School for the Blind, a job that consisted of visiting and assisting former Tomteboda students who were to be integrated into regular schools in their home towns. After moving to Solna with his wife in 1960, who had been offered the position as typist for braille at Tomteboda, Lindqvist took up studies in German, Nordic languages and literature history at Stockholm University, from which he graduated with a magister degree in 1965.
After the birth of the twins in the same year, his wife began to work from home as a copyist for the study department of the Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired. Due to the strict regulations of the Swedish school department concerning physical impairments among teaching staff at public schools, and practical difficulties during a brief employment as teacher at a secondary school in Stockholm, Lindqvist decided to leave the educational sector.
In an interview with Livsbild, an initiative of the Nordic Museum (Nordiska museet) and the Swedish Disability History Association (HandikappHistoriska Föreningen), he states:In 1967, he accepted an invitation of the Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired to become involved in a research project on visual impairment and public education.
Political career Political positions His own struggles as a person with a visual impairment in acquiring the study material necessary for a continued education in public school and university, as well as the months spent at Tomteboda School for the Blind and his continued work with visually impaired pupils have contributed to Lindqvist's rising interest in contemporary socio-political debates that started to critically examine the realities of the Swedish welfare state. In his memoirs Blindstyre (Blind Governance, published 2012), Lindqvist attributed his political orientation towards the Swedish Social Democratic Party, of which he became a member in the early 1970s, to the political views and actions of the then Prime Minister Olof Palme as well as the social democratic politician and former Minister for Finance, Ernst Wigforss. An incident that influenced his political views in particular was the public debate of the Low Income Committee's final report (låginkomstutredningen) of 1970 that gave detailed testimony of the living situations of Swedish citizens, highlighting existing inequalities within society that marked a sharp contrast to official political statements. The reactions of Palme and the Social Democratic Party to expand the Swedish welfare state by introducing far-reaching labor reforms as well as a comprehensive redistributive reform to benefit disadvantaged groups coincided with the emergence of a more and more politicized and vocalized disability movement. Through his work for the Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired, Lindqvist became increasingly exposed to the movement's arguments and demands.
These debates contributed to Lindqvist's realization that the analytical category of disability could be used as an indicator for the degree of welfare and social equality within state administration and societal discourses, a position he refined and continued to defend throughout his later career as a politician as well as an advocate for disability rights: This debate on the structures, practices and ideals of the Swedish welfare state in the late 1960s and early 1970s also wielded influence among disabled citizens and their organizations, notably the disability activist Vilhelm Ekensteen with his publication På folkhemmets bakgård (In the Backyard of the People's Home, 1968) and the associated, radical leftist disability movement Antihandikapp. Although Lindqvist acknowledged the movement's critical stance towards the prevailing living conditions of persons with disabilities in general, he remained skeptical of their confrontational argumentation and verbal assaults against the more established disability organizations. He instead advocated for a shift of perspectives within these organizations towards a more rights-based approach to disability. The aim was to establish persons with disabilities and their representatives as important members of and contributors to Swedish society and the political process. To this end, Lindqvist advocated a deepening of cooperation between disability organizations, state authorities and the broader public.
Member of Parliament, 1983-1995 and Deputy Minister for Social Security, 1985-1991 In 1981, the Stockholm municipal unit (arbetarekommun) of the Social Democratic Party suggested to Lindqvist that he stand as Member of Parliament for the upcoming Swedish elections. He was elected as MP to the Riksdag in October 1982. After leaving parliament in 1985, he was re-elected from 1988 to 1991, 1992, and 1993 to 1995. Following his first term in the Riksdag, in 1985 Lindqvist was appointed deputy minister for social security by Prime Minister Olof Palme. After Palme's assassination in 1986, he continued in this position under Minister for Social Affairs Gertrud Sigurdsen in the Carlsson I Cabinet. His main responsibilities included elderly care, family and disability policies. With the convention of the Carlsson II cabinet in 1990 his position was transformed into minister without portfolio, though with similar jurisdiction. Additionally, matters concerning the state alcohol policy fell within his area of responsibility. Even after leaving his ministerial positions in 1991, Lindqvist continued to work as a special advisor to the Ministry for Social Affairs in the domain of international disability matters.
Upon his appointment as deputy minister in 1985, Lindqvist was the first Swedish politician occupying a higher position with a visual disability. This caused a considerable public echo, not least among the national press. The majority of newspaper and other media contributions were positive, though some of them voiced possible challenges his disability could pose in the day-to-day business of politics. Only a few, however, highlighted his engagement within the Swedish disability community or focused on his political positions and goals. As he later expressed himself on the matter: His six years as deputy minister were marked by attempts to make the Swedish welfare state more open to disadvantaged social groups. Persons with disabilities received particular attention, as his political activities testify. One of his main tasks in this area was the implementation of the National Program of Action on Disability that Sweden had adopted in 1982 as an outcome of the United Nations' International Year of Disabled Persons of 1981, which Lindqvist, as chairman of the Swedish Disability Association and a member of the national planning committee for the Year, had been instrumental in drafting.Swedish National Archives: SE/RA/323494/Beredningsgruppen för internationella handikappåret 1981/Volym 7-9/Utkast och manuskript till rapporter och handlingsprogram 1981-82.
During his parliamentary terms, Lindqvist initiated or supported 52 motions to the Swedish Riksdag, many of which concerned the rights and social position of persons with disabilities.
Lindqvist was also involved in political debates concerning prenatal testing and ensuing ethical questions. Together with Margaretha Persson, also she a member of parliament and involved in the Swedish disability movement, he handed in the motion Political Responsibility for Ethical Questions in Adherence to the Beginning of Life (Politiskt ansvar för etiska frågor i anslutning till livets början, Motion 1983/84:1626).
In the mid-1980s, Lindqvist was elected chairman of the Social Democratic Party's disability council with the aim to revise the party's official disability policy. The resulting program, called På alla villkor (On Equal Terms), was, however, not adopted by the party congress.