Middle Class Solutions To Working Class Problems Is Why Charities Like MIND Keep Getting It So Wrong

Reblogged from JohnnyVoid, with thanks https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/middle-class-solutions-to-working-class-problems-is-why-charities-like-mind-keep-getting-it-so-wrong/ Iain Duncan Smith must be pissing himself. A report released at the end of last year by mental health charity MIND could not have gone further in endorsing the core ideas that lie behind his bungled and brutal welfare reforms. The report is titled “We’ve Got Work To Do” and claims to demand ‘fundamental reform’ of the workplace and social security system to better support people with a mental health condition. Sadly it is calling for nothing of the sort and is underpinned by the exact same lies and toxic assumptions that have driven both Tory and Labour welfare reforms. Just like the DWP, MIND have adopted the flawed medical consensus that work is good for your health. The charity does acknowledge that this isn’t actually always true, but falls short of saying that work can be bad for your health, instead arguing that “inappropriate or poor quality work can have as negative an effect on people’s mental health as not being in work”. They base this opinion on research carried out in Australia that found that “the mental health of those who were unemployed was comparable or more often superior to those in jobs of the poorest psychosocial quality.” In other words work can be worse for your mental health than being unemployed, rather than just equally bad as MIND claim. It is not nit-picking to point out the discrepency between what this research found and what MIND say it found because it reveals the charity’s opinions to be based on ideology, not facts. This same factual slippage occurs elsewhere in the report when MIND begin by saying that most people with mental health conditions want to work, which later becomes everyone with a mental health condition wants to work. The truth, as revealed in the footnotes to the report, are that only around 58% of people out of work due to a mental health condition strongly agreed they wanted to return to work whilst 20% did not feel they were well enough. These two distortions – or let’s call them lies – have allowed the despised Work Capability Assessment, benefit sanctions and workfare all to be misrepresented as ‘support’ or ‘help’. In truth these measures destroy lives. The medical consensus that work is good for you does often not apply to those on the lower end of the income scale who face being forced by Jobcentres into the kind of work likely to make them ill. MIND’s Chief Executive Paul Farmer claims at the beginning of the report that there have been “improvements in how people with mental health problems are supported”, although it is unclear what they are. There then follows an emotive journey about someone’s journey through the benefit system after leaving work due to depression. This is actually where their journey would stop, because unless they could provide reems of medical evidence to the Jobcentre they would be disallowed benefits for giving up work. That this reports begins by misrepresenting the benefit system as it currently functions just shows how removed these giant disability benefits charities have become from the lives of those they claim to support. Instead the ‘fundamental reform’ they call for is actually more of the same or worse – such as the dangerous idea that sensitive health information from the Work Capability Assessment should be passed over to Work Programme providers like A4e and G4S. This is like your boss having access to your medical history and appallingly MIND relaxed about this as well. Much of the early part of the report is taken up by calling for improvements in the working environment for people suffering mental ill-health. Which is fine, everyone wants that, except greedy employers who worry it might cost them money or who harbour nasty little prejudices about mental health. According to MIND themselves this is about 40% of them. Yet one of MIND’s recommendations is that the Maximus run ‘Fit To Work’ service – the new telephone helpline which will be used to certify time off instead of GPs – should more effectively engage with employers. About the only decent thing about Fit To Work, which is designed to bully people back into the workplace before they are better, is that currently you have the right to keep your boss out of any discussions. The final part of the report discusses what future welfare-to-work schemes should look like for those with a mental health condition. The charity are calling for “new specialist scheme for people with mental health problems on ESA”. A scheme which should be run by those who “have expertise and experience of working with people with mental health problems”. And here lies the real reason for this report. It’s a fucking advert to any incoming Labour Government to give MIND a lucrative contract to run a new welfare-to-work service. There is no longer any doubt that endless Atos assessments, workfare and benefit sanctions are creating a crisis in the lives of those with a mental health condition. The tragic death toll rises ever higher. Yet nowhere in this report does MIND call for these brutal policies to be scrapped. Even if MIND were handed a contract to be nicer to people on ESA this would still leave those who have been found fit for work abandoned and dumped onto mainstream unemployment benefits alongside those whose condition is at yet undiagnosed. On twitter yesterday MIND claimed they couldn’t call for sanctions to be scrapped for people who are unemployed because it wasn’t a key issue. If your mental health condition isn’t bad enough to be able to claim ESA then tough shit seems to be the charity’s response if you get sanctioned. The thing is, naked profiteering aside, MIND are not bastards. They have dedicated front line workers who don’t get paid anywhere near enough and are sincere committed people. Workers who would probably agree that benefit sanctions and the Work Capability Assessment should be scrapped immediately. They see the carnage that is being caused everyday. The problem is that reports like these are overseen and commissioned by highly paid charity executives who live lifestyles that their service users and lowest paid staff can only dream of. These lifestyles lead them to make assumptions based on their own distorted experience of the world. Over time they become unable to avoid inflicting solutions to the problems faced by working class people based on their own middle class values because that is all they know. It is near impossible for someone on a huge salary who does a job they love to understand why someone may not feel up to working at present. That, to someone like MIND Chief Executive Paul Farmer, really does seem like madness. Likewise charity bosses have no real understanding of why it might be dangerous to allow other bosses to snoop around your health records. Bosses think bosses are lovely people who would never abuse their powers – or at least not without a damn good reason. And bosses know best, they tell each other that all the time. Charity bosses in particular have their own view of themselves as benevolent experts confirmed everyday by politicians and journalists who would far rather talk to them than someone on the dole. Their whopping salaries provide further proof of their own ability. As do arse-licking middle managers who continually tell them how wonderful and clever they are, to their faces at least. So Paul Farmer must be is right because he’s Paul Farmer and MIND are right because they are MIND and anyone criticising them just doesn’t understand. Because they are not experts. That’s how MIND alongside other disability and anti-poverty charities can so easily dismiss the demands of grassroots campaigns comprising of disabled people and benefit claimants. Groups which are more or less united in calling for benefit sanctions and the WCA to be scrapped completely. These people are not experts. At worst they might even be service users. And you don’t want them getting too uppity. Before you know where you are you’ll have working class people running organisations together to address working class problems. Then there’d be nothing at all for poor Paul Farmer to do. He might even have to get a real job. https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/middle-class-solutions-to-working-class-problems-is-why-charities-like-mind-keep-getting-it-so-wrong/

Is Access to work helping disabled people or not ?

I myself use Access to work for my part time job as a office worker and find it a key part to my working life. I use it mainly for transport costs to get a taxi to work and back due to the bus's being infrequent and unreliable at best. The last time i reapplied for Access to work i was given a really tough line of questioning from one of the advisors really asking quite personal and almost hostile questions to find out if anyway i can reduce the costs for them. I have found it to be a very good service on the whole and am so keen for it to be continued and even extended as it needs to be if the government are really serious about helping disabled people back to work as they claim. Of course the tories are not about helping disabled people in fact they have made it harder for disabled people who do want to work if anything. A brilliant blog post over at DPAC - Disabled people against cuts a group i'm very close to and support wherever i can takes a look at the mess taht is the Access to work scheme. You can read this in full over at http://dpac.uk.net/2014/10/what-the-f-is-going-on-with-access-to-work-join-the-stopchanges2atw-campaign/ For me as a blind worker Access to work is a god sent but alot in this blog post rings true with me too. In this piece which i'm quoting from the author uses's the term deaf in their piece this as the author is deaf but the message being put is much the same for any disabled people who have experience of Access to work. "More and more people are asking what is happening with Access to Work, the programme that supports Deaf and disabled people to get into and stay in employment, as changes are making it harder and harder to use. Despite the government’s well publicised extra investment in the scheme Access to Work’s clear direction of travel is to cut individual packages, with the result that the employability of Deaf and disabled people is being seriously undermined. When the Tories closed the Remploy factories in 2011-2012 they said there was no place for segregated workplaces in modern society and the money used to fund the factories would be better spent supporting Deaf and disabled people to get into and stay in mainstream employment through the Access to Work programme. Over the past year, with the factory closures out of the way, changes introduced to the AtW programme have decreased eligibility, brought considerable distress and uncertainty to customers who had previously and successfully used the programme for many years, pushed Deaf and disabled people out of jobs and left others fearing for their futures. It is difficult to summarise all the changes: AtW is awarded on a discretionary ‘case by case’ basis and the programme has always denied the existence of any blanket rules for particular impairment groups. What we have seen emerging are some clear patterns around the cutting of packages, lack of information and hostility to AtW customers alongside growing inefficiency and cuts to AtW service delivery. The first clear pattern emerged with respect to Deaf customers who suddenly found themselves labelled as ‘fraudsters’. Individuals contacting AtW advisers, in some cases advisers they had had for many years were greeted with a completely different and hostile attitude. They were told ‘there are high levels of Access to Work fraud in the Deaf community’. Changes brought in including the notorious ’30 hour rule’, requiring Deaf customers using more than 30 hours of BSL interpreters per week to employ a salaried interpreter, have literally left Deaf people unable to continue in their jobs. The government has sought to justify what it is doing by pointing the finger at interpreters, blaming them for ‘costing too much’, meanwhile undermining what is a highly skilled and important profession. A particularly nasty move has been the introduction of retrospective decision making experienced by both Deaf and disabled people who have had their packages cut with the cuts being backdated after support costs have already been incurred. This situation has been compounded by the fact that has review notices are no longer sent out warning AtW customers when their packages are due for renewal which easily leads to people not realising their packages have ended. Deaf and disabled people have been left owing thousands of pounds and has left interpreters and support workers owed thousands of pounds, causing considerable hardship and distress. Successful appeals against changes to packages have been made but many people do not realise they have a right to appeal or how they would go about making a complaint. Others are too worried about losing the rest of their package to make a fuss. This is where the website DeafAtW has been invaluable, providing information and support on how to challenge decisions. There is a growing level of misinformation, confusion and chaos coming from AtW itself as a result of a restructuring that has seen a dramatic reduction in the numbers of contact centres and outsourcing. AtW invoices remain unpaid from months and months ago because the addresses of the payment centres changed but customers weren’t told. Meanwhile application backlogs have amassed. Given that Deaf and disabled people often cannot start a job until their AtW package is in place, yet can only make an application after an employment start date has been confirmed, this has presumably Deaf and disabled people unable to take up job offers. Money pledged by this government for the Access to Work budget has yet to appear. This was highlighted at the Work and Pension Select Committee oral evidence session when Remploy confirmed that the £80million per year “saved” from the closure of the factories hadn’t materialised in AtW support. There was also an additional £17million that hasn’t appeared. These two amounts would mean the AtW budget should have doubled in the past four years, yet cuts are being made. For a government that claims its welfare reform measures are all about supporting more people into employment, the changes to Access to Work appear counter-productive. Moreover, in a time of austerity, changes to the programme represent a cutting back of a scheme that actually makes money for the state: the Sayce report found that for every pound invested in Access to Work, £1.48 is recouped by the Treasury. But for anyone familiar with Tory welfare policies none of this comes as a surprise. Ill-thought through ideologically driven policies are seeking to reduce ‘dependency’ and dismantle the welfare state, removing social security from those that need it and creating situations that will end up costing more. While the Tories describe AtW as a ‘benefit’ and a dependency and fail to understand it as an investment, campaigners have beaten back some of the attacks. AtW eventually conceded that it was not realistic to expect employers to contribute the on costs for salaried interpreters under the 30 hour rule. In May the Minster for Disabled People announced a review into the 30 hour rule and the DWP Select Committee Inquiry agreed not only to take evidence on how changes were impacting on Deaf people but also extended the deadline for submissions whereas originally the inquiry had been intended to focus on employment support for people with mental health support needs and learning difficulties. Individual decisions have also been revised in the face of continued campaigning and challenges. More is needed though. We have yet to hear the outcome of the Minister’s review. Meanwhile we are hearing of cuts to AtW packages impacting ever wider, putting jobs at risk and pushing Deaf and disabled people out of employment. We need to step up our campaign to make sure information is available and accessible and people know what to do if they are impacted by the changes, to fight for the employment rights of Deaf and disabled people and to protect the terms and conditions of BSL interpreters and ensure we are not divided. StopChanges2ATW campaign open meeting – Thursday 23rd October 2014, 6 – 7.30pm, 336 Brixton Road, London, SW9 7AA. For more information read StopChanges2ATW and Inclusion London’s submissions to the DWP select committee inquiry: http://www.inclusionlondon.co.uk/ATW-ILs-%20and%20stop-changes2atw-respond-to-call-for-evidence

The difficulty of activism

For myself activism is a challenge constantly. I am not part of any political party or organisation of any sort but this shouldn’t exclude me and doesn’t but getting into activism is not easy. Ever since I’ve left the socialist party due to bullying and other such nastiness I’ve found myself re-examining my politics and where I go next. I have not changed my political ideas on the whole I still am a socialist and want to see a fairer society based on needs not profits. But I have not been on a protest or a picket line for a good while now for many reasons. Political parties are not for everyone and I have found myself moving more away from a formal top down leadership which many left parties use with a small group of leading figures making and calling the shots while the rest follow orders and the party line. I am someone who likes to think for myself and always have done and this I found became increasingly incompatible with a political party but I would still love a place to discussant develop my ideas. I have not found anything to replace this yet, if I ever will. Confidence for one. Since leaving a political party I have felt a little isolated and links to networks of activists is limited. Also due to being visually impaired there is a natural difficulty of reaching places and groups of people unless I had a really good friend. So as a result I am limited to online things including this very blog and my social media activity. I follow Novara fm every week which is an excellent radio show discussing radical politics and the world we live in today. I do however still challenge racism and other such discriminations wherein an and do still speak up for others who are suffering from the cuts and the austerity package raining down on many today. I see many people struggling around me and even in my town a Tory town in Hertfordshire called Ware has its own food bank which serves 200 odd people every week which is substantial even for there. There is much that I can still do don’t get me wrong but mainstream activism of attending meeting after meeting and going on every protest is just not easy for me and to be honest I do not feel that many of these events are made accessible for those with disabilities and other such difficulties. I think as a labour movement it is still very much a hallmark of the white male and I still do not see equality and a wide range of different people. This needs to change and I believe will change. For many the labourmovemnt is irrelevant and just does not speak for them and I can fully understand this this must change as I say. Likewise our language and our behaviour of becoming an open, welcoming and fair place for all to enter and participate in. My difficulties are one thing but others who are more capable to protest, stand up and fight back gains the cuts are amazing in my view and I have a lot of respect for them. I do what I can and others have criticised me for just sitting on facebook and discussing stuff but this is one way of getting the message out there and if others put themselves in my position they too would find things a challenge to make any real impact with their activism. I do think we need to be more understanding about others who have a passion to help out and get involved but feel unable to for a multitude of reasons. It is not good enough to just say oh well you can do what you can we need to be saying how can we involve more people from more backgrounds to get involved and support them in what they wish to do to help. Activism at the end of the day is not everything there are lotsof ways to be involved and contribute to a better society be that helping at your local food bank or offering support and ideas to a movement and a campaign. I do think we see activism in a very one dimensional way and we do need to broaden out our understanding to involve more of us to boost our own ideas. Lots of people’s talents and skills are being missed out on due to a movement largely white and male who marginalise others who are not like them and this is a toxic mix of disenfranchisement and apathy of totally giving up on any form of political thought or activism of any variety. We can do better, I can do better don’t get me wrong but we also must help each other out to embrace our differences and challenges and involve more of us all. Organising is not easy at all and is a lot of bloody hard work. There can be no shortcuts to changing society to benefit all but including all who wish to change is something we must start to do now not after the revolution .

Bedroom tax legal challenge dismissed in high court wall of resistance needed !

Today a high court ruling on the much hated bedroom tax was heard below i republish a article from todays Guardian on the matter. It is clear that legal route is one of th ways of defending ourselves but we cannot rely on the bourgeois courts and law to protect us. We must urgently organise mass resistance and solidarity in our communities including anti eviction armies to defend people under threat . "Ten families have lost their attempt to overturn the government's "bedroom tax" on the basis that it was highly discriminatory and contrary to article 14 of the European convention of human rights. Two judges ruled that courts should not "micromanage" policy decisions and that the provision of discretionary housing payments granted local authorities enough flexibility to deal with shortfalls in rent arrears. The new housing benefit rules took affect from April and mean that thousands of families have had to switch accommodation to meet either a 14% or 25% reduction in housing subsidies depending on whether they have one or two extra rooms. The 10 families, which include someone with spina bifida, brought the case to the high court in May arguing that the policy – which reduces financial subsidy for those considered to have one or more extra bedrooms than required – discriminated against those with disability. They have said that they will appeal against ]\the decision. However in their ruling, Lord Justice Law and Justice Cranston came down strongly against the secretary of state's inability to have set down other regulations following from a previous housing benefit challenge to payments made to families with disabled children in the private sector. In that case in March last year, judges founds that size critieria for housing benefit in the private sector could discriminate against disabled children who needed a bedroom each because of health needs. In their ruling today, judges said that the secretary of state was relying on "departmental circular" to implement policy ordered by the courts in March last year which was not sufficient. "The secretary of state has no business considering whether to introduce regulations to conform housing benefit provision with the judgment in Gorry. His is obliged to do so." In a statement from one of the three solicitors firms bringing the cases, Richard Stein from the human rights team at Leigh Day said: "This is a most disappointing result. We will be seeking an urgent appeal to the court of appeal. "Many people with disabilities including our clients may lose their homes unless the law is changed. Their lives are already difficult enough without the fear of losing their accommodation which has been provided specifically to meet their exceptional needs."

Call me what you want

Tonight I was politically undressed as it were with a right win landlord and a group of lads who were clearly right wing and opposing any sort of left wing idea going. This is my local pub and I felt quite intimidated to be honest feeling that I was in the minority. I took it all on the chin and brushed off any criticism which I felt was the best way to handle it. I clearly am in the minority in society and accept this fact. As I’ve said before this doesn’t as a rule make me straight away wrong and not worth hearing out. As I said before and will repeat time after time Karl Marx and Frederish Engel’s were always in the minority their entire lives and still till this very day correct on many issues so I have no shame in stating my point. I do not go into a new atmosphere looking to preach or push my own views but will defend my views when attacked. Some may say well best to leave it and let things go its not worth it but why just let things go and let the left face another defeat among many others. This all came about since Margaret Thatcher’s death where the local landlord who is clearly Tory and supports the idea of the individual spoke up about herand said what a great woman she was. Clearly I did not agree and looked to put the opposite point of view about the miners and the communities she devastated as any good leftie would. Maybe I should have shut up and said nothing and let things go but I have created a mole hill for myself perhaps by stating openly I’m a socialist and disagreed with Thatcher. I am told constantly I was not alive so how can I have any view on the matter. I reply well were you alive during the world war? So ho can you have an opinion on the war. To which it seems to escalate into all sorts of comments. Perhaps I’m speaking out of turn and I should keep my mouth shut. But I was then told I may not be welcome back in the pub. Is it the case you can be refused a drink if you disagree politically with a landlord. I’ve not come across this before I know there are discrimination laws and what not but simply disagreeing politically can you be refused entry and a drink to a pub? I will have to do more research but does seem harsh though. I always answer well you’re a leftie and all that with well I simply believe in fairness and can’t stand unfairness. Is that such a crime? As a socialist this is my basic principle that we are all equal but some more than others. We live under a capitalist system which’s deeply unfair which people find themselves marginalised by the smallest thing. In pubs and the like I hear lots of racist and homophobic comments and talk. This does offend me as I oppose any form of racism and homophobia not because I am black/ Asian or that I’m gay and even if I was it wouldn’t change anything I simply oppose discrimination. I am blind and as a result I’m disabled and face discrimination on a daily basis I could recount many incidents I’ve been through some that would shock even my nearest family fact is it goes on and will forever we live under a system of exploitation and greed. But I am a decent person I do genuinely feel I like to help people out that are my basic goal now as a socialist. I find happiness in helping others and others less fortunate than myself. Anyway I can help anyone I will. On the way back tonight from the pub I’d had a few drinks but someone was helping a friend home who’d had a few drinks themselves and was clearly struggling. I offered to help, knowing I am blind and cannot offer too much help I still went out of my way to offer support if I could. This is not to raise myself up as some sort of martyr or anything but was offered out of genuine concern and offering of help I didn’t hope to gain anything from this or anything just to see if I could help So many people have lost that basic level of human solidarity now any offer of help from someone they don’t know is alien to them and they do not know how to react. I believe many people are not alienated from society and society has as a result alienated them. Its time to reclaim good will and human solidarity. As workers we all face the same attacks. Whether your black, white, gay, straight, disabled or not you are all my fellow human beings who I stand by I do believe there are mostly good people out there and that there is good in most people but its what we do as a class which matters. Workers have the power to change society and running down of left/ socialist ideas is quite deliberate. I’ve been called all sorts, leftie, Trotskyist, commy, scrounger you name it I’ve been called it. Names are a name for a reason I personally do not worry about a name or a label it’s we do and interact with others which matters. Convincing others is no easy task that a socialist society would be better than what we have but it is certainly I’m not going to be bullied out of or intimidated out of. We all have different political views I accept that and respect others I would never revert to physical force or under hand tactics. You win a political debate on politics alone not the personal getting personal and resulting in insults means you’ve lost I’m afraid I’m not about to loose my nerve now.

The Demonising of disabled people and the benefits assessment failures

I’ve read some horror stories over the last year or so about fellow disabled people facing difficult decisions and having to go through awful ordeals at the hands of ATOS. A bit of news i’ve come across today describing a blind woman fighting back and winning her appeal. Margaret Allen was forced to give up work after being registered blind A blind woman has won a fight to have her benefits reinstated after she was told to get a job. Margaret Allen had to give up work because of her condition but was called up to a controversial ‘fit-to-work’ assessment – part of the government’s overhaul of the welfare system. The 49-year-old has progressive retinitis pigmentosa – a degenerative incurable disorder – and is registered blind. But an assessor ruled that she was not eligible for help and told her she must go back to work. Margaret has now successfully appealed against the decision but slammed the system for making her feel like a benefits cheat. She said: “The condition gets worse every day. I was diagnosed in 1988 and continued to work until 1999. “I even went part time because I didn’t want to quit but it got to the point where I just could not work safely any longer.” Margaret, who lives with her husband Robert in Chadderton, Oldham, is among thousands of people who have had to take part in the assessments. Those who currently claim incapacity benefit, income support for illness or disability or severe disablement allowance, are being transferred to a new payment called employment and support allowance (ESA). The tests – carried out by adjudicators Atos on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – decide whether claimants are still eligible to receive support. Margaret was called up by Atos in October and claims the assessment was crude with no regard to her medical condition. She said: “The assessor sat there wiggling his fingers in front of my eyes to test me. “I took along my blind certificate which has detailed information on it and asked if they wanted to see it – but they weren’t interested.” Participants must score 15 to be deemed unable to work – Margaret scored just nine points. Nationally, almost half of the sick or disabled people assessed had their benefits removed but about a third of appeals have been upheld at tribunals. Margaret, a former warehouse assistant, had her benefits reinstated after writing a letter challenging the initial decision. Within weeks she had been reassessed as having 24 points. She is now helping other people affected by the work capability assessments through online support groups and has had her case taken up by Oldham West and Royton MP Michael Meacher. She said: “I felt terrible and judged. It made me feel like a benefit cheat. “My whole family have worked all their lives and I worked for as long as I possibly could but I can’t live on fresh air. I’m blind not dead. “If anyone is going through the same thing please do not give up because the truth always prevails.” With extracts from http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/blind-chadderton-woman-ordered-back-1346646

17 thousand blind people at risk from bedroom tax, time to fightback!

I’m registered as blind myself and reports in the daily Mirror have shocked me. They describe that up to 17,000 blind and partially sighted people could be affected by the Tories bedroom tax a spare room subsidy in affect. A report in the Sunday People gave a taste of what this will mean: the Royal national Institute for the Blind (RNIB) “An estimated 17,000 registered blind [people] face a forced move." One blind woman explains how she will be affected: "If I had to move I'd face weeks in isolation, unable to step outside the front door because it's too dangerous. "It's a long process to learn a new area. I'd have to wait for a trained guide to teach me the roads." Funding cuts mean there is a long waiting list for trainers who can help by plotting routes from blind people's homes to shops and bus routes. This woman is contemplating absorbing the extra rent into her meagre income - adding another candidate to the queues in Foodbank Britain. But the bedroom tax can be beaten. The death of Thatcher has reminded us of the battle against the hated poll tax that saw the tax defeated by a mass movement and eventually removed Thatcher from power. While there are differences with Thatcher's poll tax, her descendents' bedroom tax is rapidly becoming a focus for workers' anger over wider austerity: council tax benefit cuts, housing benefit changes, and all the myriad forms of misery we face. All anti-cuts campaigners, trade unionists and socialists should get behind the anti-bedroom tax movement as part of the campaign to defeat austerity. The Socialist Party says: • Scrap the bedroom tax! • No evictions! Call on council and housing associations to refuse to evict all tenants that fall into rent arrears as a result of austerity cuts. Organise local campaigns to defend our homes • Stand against councillors who try to evict us. Build a new mass workers' party that draws together workers, young people and activists from workplaces and anti-cuts campaigns, to provide a fighting, political alternative to the pro-cuts parties • Cap rents and build homes. Invest in a major programme of council house building and refurbishment to provide affordable homes for all and decent jobs • End low pay! If workers are paid a genuinely living wage they would not need to claim housing benefit • Fight all the cuts. Trade unions must build for a 24-hour general strike as the next major step in the campaign against all the cuts

International disabilities day but we are going back not forward

Today is international disability day, whatever that means in the capitalist form of the term. Many today have been highlighting the disgraceful treatment of disabled people at the hands of this system and the Tories who look to manage it. In many ways the disabled are the hardest hit with cuts attacking them disproportionally than others. With DLA being phased out and the introduction of the Universal credit to come in next year many people are disgusted with the attacks on the disabled. Yet the media true to form continue with their anti scroungers, anti disabled benefits lines as if nothing had changed. Even just on Saturday night I stumbled across Ian Collins on LBC a presenter I used to respect but his show on Saturday night was all about our bloated welfare system. He moaned and moaned about students getting EMA why don’t they get a Saturday job he cried despite not realising how many young people struggle to get a job today. Such ignorance in the media is toxic as this feeds a political agenda to turn the non disabled against the disabled, the working class against the working class not in a job, public vs. private and so on all to create division and resentment the age old tactic of divide and conquer which the ruling class have employed for many many years. But the media focus heavily on benefit cheats and the disabled are lumped in with this never separated in my experience yet tax evaders of the super rich big business evade 120 billion a year more than enough to cover the deficit in one go if it was properly collected. This is a political decision not an economic one. We’ve had bigger deficits in the past yet built the NHS and a huge number of council housing. No one is standing up and putting an alternative in the media. Labour who presided over 13 years crows about tax evaders now but what did they do in their 13 years of government sweet nothing I would suggest. In fact one of their high profile figures Peter Mandelson was once quoted we are relaxed about the rich getting filthy rich in this country. But as for the international day of disability it’s a huge disgrace that the closures of the last remaining remploy factories that employed disabled workers will be closing very soon. This is a national disgrace in my view. This is not just limited to Britain either in Spain over the weekend over 50 thousand disabled people and friends and families marched in Madrid demanding an end to cuts to disabled people. All over the globe disabled people are treated with contempt and disrespect under capitalism there can be no fairness for the disabled or any section of workers. It’s got to be up to us to organise and build a movement which can remove this rotten exploitative system once and for all. Only a truly democratic socialist system can provide for the needs of everyone including disabled people to meet their daily needs to fulfil their potential in life in any way they can.

Coping with a disability and busting the myths

As people may or may not know I am registered as disabled being registered as blind. I have less than 30% vision I lost my central vision due to a rare genetic disease back in 2004. Life isn’t easy for me I’ll admit that. I make the best of a situation and do as much as I possibly can. Hearing the constant news of benefit scroungers and benefit fraud it worries me deeply that I’ll be next to see my benefits cut or ended. Ok I do work part time as there isn’t any more work I could do where I am at I would love to work full time but there simply isn’t the work for me as yet.

I decided to join the socialist party as I firmly believe they have the best ideas and the best strategy to creating a better fairer society for tee many not just the few. Other political parties talk a good game but no one puts their words and theories into action quite like the socialist party they do as they say and I’m glad to be apart of them.

But this government wish to make us disabled people including myself who are blind to pay for a crisis caused by the rich reckless bankers who gambled huge amounts of money more than you or I could ever possibly imagine and lost. We as ordinary working class people and the middle class lets not forget have to pay for their mistakes in the way of austerity measures.

I get by on little money any money I do get be that in a wage from work or benefits from the government are mostly given to my mum who I still live with due to the fact there is little chance of me moving out anytime soon as the lack of affordable housing out there in my area. I do not live the high life and I certainly don’t have it easy. The Tories and new labour before them have constantly attacked disabled people using various different terms such as scroungers, festering, work shy, drain on society, cost we cannot afford and the media have brought into this echoing these attacks in the daily press. Many people who read these papers and subscribe to such media take this in as gospel but I would like to shatter these illusions if I can and tell it how it is for me being disabled and a benefit claimer.

Sheffield socialist party have produced this myth buster which I hope they don’t mind me sharing with you all its fantastic. If this piece made it into the mass media or a opposition used this to defeat the lies we could really get somewhere as it is Labour buy into the scroungers idea too unfortunately something we must fight against too as they are no better.

The welfare state has led to a 'something for nothing' culture? IT'S A LIE. There are over 8 million people receiving benefits in this country. There are more people IN WORK who get benefits than not working. 90% of all housing benefit claimants are IN WORK. The Welfare state is actually a massive state subsidy to business which enables it to pay poverty wages and charge exorbitant rents.

You're all sick of paying a huge swathe of chavs to lay about watching Jeremy Kyle all day?
IT'S A LIE. Less than 5,000 people, out of a population of 60 million, have been on Job Seekers Allowance for more than 5 years. Historically, whenever jobs get created, they always get filled. The idea that there is a vast horde of the work-shy is a myth.
Living on benefits is a lifestyle choice?
IT'S A LIE.
More than 80% of benefit claimants are aged over 35. The vast majority of unemployed claimants have worked, and paid taxes, for years and are now on benefits due to redundancy, sickness, disability or having to care for someone. Millions more are receiving benefits due to poverty wages.
People won't work because benefits are too high?
IT'S A LIE. Average benefits amount to £3,400 a year. These people are living in poverty. Since 1997, due to various Government actions, the value of benefits has fallen sharply year on year in real terms. People on benefits are far worse off now than in the last 30 years.

People should get off their arses and look for work?
IT'S A LIE. When Iain Duncan Smith suggested the jobless in Merthyr Tydfil should get on a bus to Cardiff to find work, Merthyr had 43 people for every job vacancy. Problem was, Cardiff already had nine unemployed people for every job vacancy. The jobs just don't exist. In 2010, there was 1 million more unemployed than there were job vacancies.

Benefit cheats are bankrupting the country?
IT'S A LIE. Benefit fraud does amount to about £1.5 billion a year. However, £16 billion goes UNCLAIMED every year. Meanwhile, the amount of tax lost through avoidance and evasion is a whopping £120 billion a year. ( And don't give me the crap about avoidance being legal, the truth is, it shouldn't be. Not one of the major parties will openly state the real truth. The biggest causes of poverty in this country are lack of jobs, poverty wages and part time work. All the parties have social policies that they KNOW are based upon outright lies, lies that are allowing a whole section of society to be vilified as heartless people cast around to find a victim upon which to blame all this countries woes


The money is out there for us all to live comfortably I say lets tax the rich and bring their wealth into public ownership to benefit the many not just the few.
With thanks to Sheffield socialist party for the exert on myth busting benefits.

Who are the real scroungers in society ?

As many of you who know me will know i am registered as blind and have been since 2004. I lost my sight due to a rare genetic disease which attacked the cells at the back of my eyes connected my eyes to my brain the optic nerve in otherwords.
This has left me using a white cane and finding jobs and opportunities hard to come by despite my determination to try and live my life as normally as i possibly can still.
I do claim for Disability Living allowance and feel no shame in doing so. I cannot drive and i cant reach places by walking all the time so a taxi or two or to pay a bus fare is needed. I have never played the system as some of the capitalist media like to put it so kindly.
I do work part time at present mostly down to the fact there is little work around at the moment where i am at and a part time position i feel is better than sitting at home doing nothing. I feel proud that i can contribute in my own little way. Its not much i know i'm basically costing up parts for electrical control panels and quoting for prices. This gives me experience in the work place and a sense of belonging too.

But i do get benifits a working tax credit to top up what i dont earn as my wages are so low and a disability living allowance to aid with me living independently as best i can. Life is tough at times i have no bones about that and dont cheat the system but benifits are there to help people live not to fund a lifestyle which is where the government and the labour party have disabled people all wrong.

Benifit fraud although a tiny 1% of claiments are frauding the system is clearly a serious thing people shouldnt be cheating the system of course but we can all understand why people may be forced into such measures by this system we live under. The increasing desperation of people in todays society may be forced into such hard choices.

But we are always being told by every newspaper and every polititian these days be them tory labour or lib dem that benifit cheaters are more of a problem than anything we have ever faced.

In cash terms, it amounts to around £1bn. Yeah, I know. A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you are talking big money. Even so, it is little more than small change in comparison with the £850bn spent on the bank bailout. That comparison is one that everybody on the left should commit to memory ahead of the debates with the right that inevitably lie ahead.

HAVING MUGGED the public with £83 billion of cuts in public spending (to plug the budget deficit caused by bailing out the failed banking system), millionaire chancellor George Osborne has, hypocritically, rounded on alleged benefit fraudsters, accusing them of 'mugging taxpayers'.

While identifying an estimated £1.5 billion in benefit and tax credit fraud, Osborne failed to mention any measures the government will implement to resolve the estimated £16 billion in means-tested benefits and tax credits that currently goes unclaimed every year.

According to Citizens Advice: "Up to three million households are missing out on an average £13 a week in council tax benefit, while as many as 1.7 million pensioners are missing out on an average of £31 a week in pension credit."

Applying for means-tested benefit is complicated and many are discouraged from claiming.

While speaking out against benefit fraud, Osborne is also silent over the estimated £120 billion that is lost to government income through tax avoidance, evasion or uncollected taxes. Collecting this enormous sum has been made more difficult by the government sacking 25,000 tax workers and closing 200 tax offices. Osborne may also be reticent to pursue these billions as several high profile Tory backers are 'non-dom' tax dodgers.

Prime minister David Cameron recently announced that Experian - a profit-making company - will get a 'bounty' for each person that it identifies as defrauding on benefit payments. Such a system is open to abuse as Experian has a financial incentive to throw accusations at people.




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I am a socialist for the reasons i have previously stated i care about others and want us all to be equal. I dont want the world i just want to live comfortably and not ahve to worry about money and i wish for the same for everybody else too. I joined the socialist party last year for this very reason. Finding like minded people who share my outlook on life and the world is a place i want to be involved in.

I think its always important to present the facts as they are and link them to a personal situation it helps you get your point across better i always find and asking people to look up from their copies of the sun and the mail and open their eyes to the real injustices in the world and to find taht people who have benifits oftn often do not wish to be on them and feel stigmatised for it. But it is something they need to help them live. If there were enough well paid jobs to go around for all we wouldnt have this problem. For those who cant work there should be sufficient things in place for them to be still able to contribute to society in some way or fashion.

This is my idea of a socialist society of the future where society is based on the needs of the many not the profits of a few, what is your future world going to look like ?

The hardest hit march, May 11th Disabled people fighting for dignity

This wednesday myself- hhopefully if i can get there and thousands of other disabled people will be marching in centrel London organised by several disabled groups including Scope, RNIB, MENCAP amoung many many others.

Disabled people will sadly be the hardest hit when these cuts start to bite. We are already seeing cases of some on disability support benifits being hounded to come off of their benifits to go ona much lower job seakers allowance. In some cases this is causing so much stress it is leading to patients wanting and in some rare cases taking their own life as they feel sucha burden to the state and others around them.

This i find absolutely disgusting and our polititains should be utterly ashamed of themselves. The rich greedy bastards want to make the people who are worst off in society pay for the mess they had nothing to do with creating. It is a outrage in my opinion and this government needs to be shamed. Not only this government but the one before was no better.
The previous labour government, the one who claimed to care so much for the poor and disabled people were the ones who started this ball rolling. The tories and the lib dems are just carrying this program through a lot quicker.

So if we want to look at who started this we can look no further than those smug labour MP's some who have gone on to get nice jobs in teh lords now for starting a attack on the working class and most notably the disabled of us out there.

I myself wrote a little piece in the socialist paper last week i do hope you can read it. It not only features me but has some excellent points in the article too.

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But as for the march on wednesday we aim to tell this government they are wrong and shame them for their inhumane actions of making the working class and the disabled pay for this mess while their rich friends in the city get off scot free and even get themselves tidy little tax breaks. How nice for them !!

So much for making those with the broadest shoulders shoulder the burden ay Mr Cameron ?

Everything that comes out of a tories mouth is a lie i'm afraid and they cannot be trusted so they must be opposed and stopped.

SO please do join us if you can on Wednesday 11th of May.

The march will begin on Victoria Embankment between Horseguards Avenue and Bridge Street and will assemble at 11.30. There will be a rally on Victoria Embankment with speeches between 12.00 and 12.30 before the march sets off. The march will then begin at 12.30.

The march will take about an hour. It will take in Victoria Embankment,Parliament Squareand Millbank and finish in Dean Stanley Street.

Methodist Central Hall, which is near the end of the march route, will be available as a quiet space during the day.
The lobby

After the march the group will be lobbying MPs as the Welfare Reform Bill reaches a critical stage in the House of Commons. They will be sharing their stories, making sure that Parliamentarians understand the combined impact of the cuts on their lives and futures. Crucially, they will be asking MPs to challenge policies that will push disabled people further into poverty and isolation. The lobby will take place in Westminster Hall and Methodist Central Hall between 13.30 and 17.30.

Cuts hit the disabled hard

I thought i'd share a excellent article in our paper - the socialist this week where i feature towards the end.

Disabled people and family carers are now experiencing an unprecedented attack. Cuts made and planned by the Tory/Liberal coalition will hit the public and community services they use and the benefits they rely on.
All but the most severely disabled will be expected to look or prepare for work, and face the loss of benefits if they refuse even a few hours of employment. As these articles show, the cuts will have a devastating impact unless a mass campaign is built to stop them.
Benefits slashed
A recent Care and Support Alliance survey of 1,000 disabled people and family carers, found that 22% have support needs but are not receiving services; 54% said changes to services had a negative impact on their health; 52% said their independence had been negatively affected; and 43% were less able to afford essentials such as food or heating. This was before the latest round of cuts.

In the name of a 'deficit' caused by the greed of the bankers and their profit-driven system, £81 billion in public spending cuts are planned to be carried out over the next four years.

The 28% cut in government funding to local authorities has already led to £1 billion cuts in social care spending this year and the tightening of eligibility criteria. This is at a time when there is a growing population of older disabled people.

£18 billion cuts in welfare spending will also lead to significant changes in benefits. Of the 70,000 who lost all benefits in October 2010, 20,000 were disabled people.

For example, a new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) will replace the mobility and care components of the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) from 2013. This is a move to reduce entitlement by at least 20%. Automatic entitlements will end, and the successful use of aids, such as a wheelchair, could lead to the loss of benefits.

PIPs will require incapacity benefit claimants to be reviewed. They will face the possibility of sanctions for making mistakes when claiming. Already 20,000 disabled people lose their benefits every month.

Increasing rents for some social housing to 80% of market rates, and cutting the amount given in housing benefit will have an impact on thousands of disabled people, placing many vulnerable people at risk of homelessness. Also, the National Housing Federation has warned that over 400,000 including vulnerable people, such as pensioners and victims of domestic violence, are at risk of losing essential housing support funded by the Supporting People programme.

The misnamed Welfare Reform Bill being rushed through Parliament is the vehicle for most of these cuts. It will also introduce, from October 2013, a Universal Credit that will eventually replace tax credits, housing benefit, social fund loans, income support and income based Employment Support and Jobseeker's Allowances.


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United action can stop cuts
A disabled Unison member

Disabled people protest against cuts, photo S Civi (Click to enlarge)
Given the scale of these cuts, the initial response of disabled people's organisations has been mixed. Following the autumn spending review, Inclusion London published a briefing that condemned outright the Tory/Liberal cuts. Both they and the Norfolk Coalition of Disabled People have since produced a detailed analysis of what the cuts will mean for disabled people and family carers in their areas.

But the United Kingdom Disabled People's Council (UKDPC) post-spending review statement said it had discussions with the Tory minister for disabled people, Maria Miller, and stressed the need for full impact assessments that would 'identify the effect the cuts will have' on disabled people.

The winter 2010-11 edition of UKDPC's Activate newsletter contained no outline or analysis of the cuts, but did announce the setting up of a Disability Rights Watch UK to gather evidence "to show the UK government where they need to improve the law, policies and practices to ensure that disabled people can enjoy their full human rights".

Gathering personal stories of how the cuts and discrimination are impacting on people can have an effect in countering government propaganda if they are widely circulated. But reasoning with a coalition that sees its historical legacy as completing the dismantling of the welfare state, started by Margaret Thatcher, is like trying to scratch a diamond.

There has also been a failure to publicly condemn the planned closure of the Independent Living Fund (ILF) that will put many of its 21,000 users at risk of having to choose between living independently with the most basic of support or being forced into residential care.

The government's announcement in December that the ILF is 'financially unsustainable' was supported by the Fund's trustees, and made only after consulting with 'disability organisations' that still have to be named.

In response to the ILF planned closure and the broader cuts, the National Centre for Independent Living has reiterated its long-term demand for a 'right to independent living'. But granting this right, without the billions in resources needed to achieve it, would ring hollow.

In fact, the current statutory duty on local authorities to assess and provide social services, contained in section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, is under threat. This is a primary target of Communities Secretary Eric Pickles' war on local authority legal duties in preparation for the mass privatisation or closure of services.

The decision by the UKDPC and the Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC) in January to organise 'The Hardest Hit' (THH) march, rally and lobby of Parliament on Wednesday 11 May reflects the groundswell of anger and alarm building among disabled people and family carers since the autumn spending review.

However, it must be used as a starting point to build a national campaign against the cuts. Disabled people's and carers' organisations and the disability charities involved in the DBC employ several thousand workers and have tens of thousands of members across the country.

Mobilised into a national campaign with active groups in every town and city, it could quickly give disabled people, family carers and not-for-profit sector workers, many of whom are facing redundancies and wage cuts, the confidence to fight back together and build a mass movement that would find an echo among millions.

On their own disabled people and carers' organisations cannot beat this government. Although it is possible that partial retreats such as the decision to continue to give mobility benefits to those in residential care could be achieved.

It is vital that links are developed with the public sector trade unions and the developing anti-cuts movement. Disabled people and family carers must play a role in them and support the call for a one-day public sector strike, as the next step in the campaign following the 26 March trade union demo.

Together we can defeat this government, reverse the cuts made so far, and demand decent benefits, pensions, jobs, homes and services for all.

We call for:
No cuts in benefits, jobs and public services
Oppose the Welfare Reform Bill
Decent benefits, education, training or work for all, without compulsion
No privatisation of services. Take back in-house all privatised services
Sack Atos Origin and scrap the Work Capability Assessment
A living wage and provision of respite for all family carers
Provide free health and social care services to all who need them
Stop using children and family members as a substitute for professional services
A national campaign to save the Independent Living Fund
Massive investment in social housing, services and infrastructure to create jobs and meet need
For a 24-hour public sector general strike as the next step in the campaign to defeat all the cuts
For a socialist society that puts the needs of the millions before the profits of the millionaires

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Little help for carers
Pamela Smith
"Families are crumbling across the country as carers cannot cope". Bristol mum Riven Vincent posted this online in January. David Cameron had visited her before the 2010 general election and pledged that, if elected, he'd protect disabled children.

Yet across the country, centres for disabled people and their carers are closing. The services and charities that form the scaffolding for the shaky edifice of Cameron's Big Society have had funds cut. Key welfare benefits are being axed and it's harder than ever for carers to get respite.

Hypocritically the Tories praise carers but expect families to bear the brunt of the cuts. They preach good traditional values but it is costs, not values that matter to them.

Thousands of children care for relatives to the detriment of their own welfare. Women in particular are often thrust into caring roles in the home - and into poverty.

Cameron famously knows what it's like to have a disabled child and the tragedy of losing a child is immeasurable. But millionaire Cameron and his rich wife had all kinds of resources at their disposal.

The millionaires, sitting in Cabinet or inhabiting the boardrooms of big companies, probably never empty bedpans for their parents, go without holidays or, like Riven, care 24/7 for tube-fed, doubly-incontinent children without their nannies, drivers, cleaners, gardeners and personal assistants.

Most carers have to leap hurdles before they get any help, waiting months for an answer to requests and when help comes it's often too little too late. Dave and Sam didn't crack under the pressure whereas Riven did. After six hard years and being told not to expect more than six hours weekly respite, she sadly asked for her child to be taken into care.

An extra £800 million has been allocated to respite care over the next four years, but it's not ring-fenced. Local councils can decide how to spend it and they are making cuts. Under Labour only 23% of the £400 million given for respite care in 2008 actually went into carers' breaks.

We deserve better
Caring involves financial, physical and psychological costs to the carer. It's a cheap option for the Con-Dem government.

But we and the people we love and care for deserve better: professional, dedicated support; training; weekly respite and proper holidays; a decent living income.

But let's face it - many of us wouldn't be doing it at all if there was a good, free and well-funded care system worthy of the name.

My mum told me: "Wheel me to the local DWP office or the NHS. Tell them you're on strike. Imagine if all the carers did that"!

She's right: we deserve a break. But expect nothing from the Con-Dems, although the last lot were no better. Somehow we'll have to fight for it!


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Profiteer vultures circle over services
Jackie Russell
Since 2008 Labour and Con-Dem governments have paid around £100 million a year to Atos Healthcare, a division of Atos Origin, to assess new sickness and disability related benefit claimants for the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). By using the unfair Work Capability Assessment (WCA), many were found 'fit to work'.

From April 2011 the WCA will be used by the Tory/Liberal government to assess one and a half million current disabled and ill Incapacity Benefit claimants. Of these, only about a quarter of a million will be transferred on to ESA.

Even then, many receiving ESA will only be able to claim it for a year. Those transferred to Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) will receive £26 a week less, causing further and unnecessary hardship.

Some disabled people, particularly people with learning difficulties or mental health problems or cognitive impairments such as dyslexia, will be at risk of sanctions.

Since the introduction of the WCA, there has been a massive rise in appeals at the tribunal service. At least 40% of those appealing have been found 'not fit to work.' This process is a waste of taxpayers' money that is better used to create jobs, as well as hugely stressful.

Incredibly, many reports have stated that claimants, diagnosed with cancer, have been declared as fit to work; many blind and deaf people will also no longer automatically receive sickness benefit and are unlikely to qualify for extra help in finding work.

While most disabled people want to work, the government has also failed to appreciate that there are few supported jobs available to them and has not fully recognised the barriers that they experience in obtaining jobs - the institutional discrimination and prejudicial attitudes.

Atos Origin's renewed contract will involve them reassessing all existing Disability Living Allowance claimants to check if they are eligible for the new Personal Independent Payment.

This transition aims to save the government a further £1 billion plus that will result in many disabled people being found no longer eligible or placed on a lower rate than before.

Along with the privatisation of the welfare state, it seems that we are reverting to what working class and poor disabled people had to go through in the 19th century, where they had to provide for themselves and in times of crisis, were forced to go cap in hand to workhouses and philanthropists.

Most of the capitalist newspapers are aiding the government's ability to divide and rule by blaming the vulnerable in society, for example, scapegoating disabled people as 'scroungers', "greedy skivers" and "benefit cheats" for claiming benefits.

For the last six decades, the country has been governed by all three political parties and disabled people are no further forward in securing their right to live as equal citizens. They are still being denied welfare services. This indicates the need for society to become a socialist one, that puts people first, not profit.


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The way I see things
Mark Wright
For me, someone who is registered blind, the cuts are a very real and worrying thing. Like many other blind and visually impaired people, I rely on Disability Living Allowance (DLA), not totally, but to top up the income we often can't receive.

Due to finding work difficult to come by I have only been able to get a part-time job. Many may ask why do I require DLA if I can work. That is missing the point.

Contrary to what Iain Duncan Smith, minister for work and pensions, has to say, the DLA is a non work-based benefit that has two components.

Access to work
The first is the mobility part which is used to help disabled people get about and remain as independent as they can be, given their disability.

The other part is the care component which goes towards helping you pay the costs of living. If you require a carer it would go towards that.

Also, as someone who is registered blind, I have had mixed experiences with the 'access to work' scheme set up by the previous Labour government.

Despite its slowness and inefficiency it is still a very good service which helps many disabled people into work. My workplace was adapted for me to carry out tasks like any other employee.

None of the cost of this is funded by the employer, be they in the non-governmental public or private sector.

Cuts affect productivity
Instead a government grant can cover things like taxi transport to and from work if a bus service is not available or equipment like screen readers for use with computers, which I take full advantage of.

Cuts in these areas will not only affect me but will affect my productivity. I really think the government should be looking to encourage disabled people into work rather than making them feel like criminals for needing support and assistance to be on a level playing field with the rest of society.


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The Hardest Hit march & rally
Wednesday 11 May, 11.30am
by Horseguards Avenue,
Victoria Embankment, London

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The criminalisation of the disabled

Something which angers me every day is the way this tory government gives the impression it is a crime to be disabled and we must pay for the mistakes of the bankers. Why should we feel like we have always done something wrong and made to feel we shouldnt be supported financially if we struggle for support.


All we hear in the media and the papers is that we are a country who are work shy and rely too heavily on benifits. We are a country of people who feel it is better to live a life on benifits rather than working. This is so wrong. I really dont think the tories get it at all. Many i know who are disabled would love to work and pay their way if they could. Fact is many of them cant due to severe disabilities and struggles to work. The second fact is that even once these disabled people are passed somehow for work the jobs are frankly not there for them. There is still much discrimination out theer when it comes to employing disabled people. I am blind myself and have found it very hard to come by a job that are willing to support your every need. It is far worse in the private sector where money is everything and any cost they dont have to pay for they wont. This goes for any nessesary adjustments that are needed to adapt the working environment for a disabled people to carry out the work as to the best of their ability.

If we were all garunteed a job and paid a fair wage as i'd love to see happen the disabled would be able to work and not feel victimised for their struggle into work.

I think the drive by the right wing media in this country to alienate the disabled and the people who find it hard to get into work by claiming they are all hooked on benifits and wont attempt to work at all is a false assumtion. What angers me most about this is that our benifit payment as part of our annual public payout is minimal not even 1 % of our national outgoings. What is wrong is how the media fail to see that we loose far more money in tax evasion to the tune of 120 billion pounds plus. This leaves a greater hole in the public purse so why not focus on the bigger picture rather than a group of vunrable people who are only trying to make the best of a life for themselves.

How ridiculous is it that we can afford illegal wars in Iraq and western interventions in Libya now yet we say we cant afford to properly look after our disabled and the elderly too. It is a disgrace in my opinion. What kind of society do we live in really ?

disabled people join TUC march against the cuts, march 26th, join us

please pass on this information to others



DISABLED PEOPLE AGAINST CUTS



Join us to protest on March 26th, London.



The main TUC march will assemble at Victoria Embankment, 11am to march to a rally in Hyde Park. We are still finalising arrangements of where we can meet beforehand and about a static protest for those unable to march to Hyde Park.



Disabled people are facing continuing attacks against their lives, living standards and basic human rights to live independently from almost every conceivable quarter and it is time for us to fight back against these cuts. Many disabled people are living in fear on a daily basis not knowing when or if their benefits and care funding will be slashed and whether they will be left to rot in their own homes without the support they need to live any sort of meaningful life.



These savage spending cuts damage not only our lives, but our public services, and threaten economic recovery. They're dangerous, unfair and unnecessary.



There are fair alternatives - a Robin Hood tax on the banks, end tax evasion, policies for jobs and green growth, scrap Trident replacement.

We're going to march to tell the government we demand “Rights not Charity” and to show we are not easy victims of their cuts even though they may think we are.



For information about transport to the march (some trains may be accessible) go to www.righttowork.org Transport information will be regularly updated here.



To join our events page

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=122497767819841&index=1



For more information email linda_burnip@yahoo.co.uk , ( underscore) 0771 492 7533, or mail@dpac.uk.net

Only 10 more days to campaign to keep the DLA benifit

As the days draw ever closer to febuary the 14th, Whilst most people look forward to this day for Valentines day many of disabled people across the country including myself will be on tender hooks worried to death that the government will vote to scrap the disability living allowance. We only have 10 days left to lobby our Mp's whilst i myself dont hold out much hope of this being voted down i do want to get the message out there that it is important to a lot of people and does need saving.

take a look at this thread on this page here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/messageboards/NF2322273?thread=8034533
It explains a lot and highlights a excellent campaign from the broken of britain to protect the disability living allowance. The governments replacement will b ea personal independance payment which will be more strict and therefore making it harder for borderline disabled people to claim for this.

For the government who promised that the weakest and the most vunrable in our society would be protected it is a absolute outrage that they are being allowed to get away with these attacks on our disabled population. So where is our beloved opposition when it matters and we need them to defend the voice-less ? ? no where to be seen. As the reality is the labour government of the last 13 years was the ones who started the raids and attacks on the disabled. They were starting to cut disability benifits even whilst still in government. I'm not one of these people who see's what they did through rose tinted spectecles i have to live through it and are being affected by these cuts and so called reforms.

So i hope as many of yo who do read this blog and those who dont can lobby your MP to urge them to vote to keep the DLA. I dont hold out much hope myself as DLA in the large part is not a very well known benifit to the majority of people and due to that fact the ignorance of most people they will cut it with no thought spared.

Take a well known policy change the trebling of student university tuitian fees a month or so ago that was hugely popular movement and protests were formed and even that got voted through, all be it narrowly. So what chance does a little benifit that only the disabled benifit from have of surviving these vicious government cuts ?

Despite this i do hope it can be saved or at least protected and Labour and the lib dems who stand for fairness and for the vunrable in society can find their backbone on this vote in the commons on 14th of feb.

To many the DLA is a lifeline. It enables them to get to the local shops by taxi and get out of their house rather than being house bound. It is a benifit which enables people to gain some of their independance back. It may not be perfect and i'm sure many do claim it wrongly that could be looked at. But a major reform of it is not nessesary in my view.

So once again it is the poorest and the most vunrable in society are left picking up the bill for the rich bankers mistakes. Where the government has over spent on illegal wars and other such needless matters. When their money runs out in the capitailist system they dont turn to each other at the top for a bail out they turn on the poor and working class who have little say in anything anyway.

If Mp's vote to scrap this including my own MP they can rule themselves out of me ever voting and supporting them again. But then again i'm sure they wont care as they dont have to face the difficulties disabled people have to face on a daily basis.

As a excellent placard spelled out at a recent disability protest i attended in LOndon said, If you want my benifits you can have my disability. Too right, if money is taht important to them they'd happily take it off those who need it most, It clearly shows how broke the capitailist system is. Lets expose them for who they really are.

Marxist thoughts towards disabilities

i was just reading this excellent article on international socialism in the latest issue of their publication

http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=702&issue=129

This article was wrote by

Roddy Slorach


you may find this interesting as i did .
Many young women full of devotion and good-will have been engaged in superficial charities. They have tried to feed the hungry without knowing the causes of poverty. They have tried to minister to the sick without understanding the cause of disease. They have tried to raise up fallen sisters without understanding the brutal arm of necessity that struck them down… We attempt social reforms where we need social transformations.1

Evidence shows the recession in the UK has already hit disabled people hard.2 The new government’s huge public spending cuts include further attacks on meagre but vital disability benefits.3 Their aim is to roll-back hard-won ‘social reforms’ affecting all sections of the working class.. Understanding the nature of disability discrimination can therefore play a part in defending these reforms and uniting resistance to the attacks which lie ahead.

This article aims to articulate a Marxist approach to the issues of disability and impairment and to begin a debate which is perhaps overdue. Is the discrimination faced by disabled people a form of oppression like that suffered by other minorities under capitalism? What happened to the disability movement and the social model of disability which inspired it? Is it possible—and desirable—to achieve a society free of disability?

The nature and extent of impairment
Disability is a widely misused and misunderstood concept, as illustrated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) definition:

Disabilities is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. Thus disability is a complex phenomenon, reflecting an interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives.4

These definitions reflect the progress made since disabled people were referred to officially as spastics, imbeciles and cripples. However, they also obscure the vital distinction established by the disability movement between individual impairment and disability as social discrimination.5 Leaving aside terminology for the moment, WHO figures do indicate the extent of impairment globally:

Hearing loss, vision problems and mental disorders are the most common causes of disability… Worldwide, an estimated 650 million people (10 percent of the total population) live with disabilities, the vast majority in low-income and middle-income countries… A significant proportion of disabilities are caused by traffic crashes, falls, burns, and acts of violence such as child abuse, youth violence, intimate partner violence, and war…up to one quarter of disabilities may result from injuries and violence. [These] include: physical and/or cognitive limitations due to neurotrauma; paralysis due to spinal cord trauma; partial or complete amputation of limbs; physical limb deformation resulting in mobility impairments; psychological trauma; sensory disability such as blindness and deafness.6

The WHO’s 2008 report also highlights mental disorders as among the 20 leading causes of disability worldwide, with depression alone affecting around 120 million people. Fewer than 25 percent of those affected have access to adequate treatment and healthcare. In 2004 the Labour government estimated Britain’s disabled population to be 10 million. The statistics show beyond doubt that a very large number of people are disabled. Second, many of their impairments are socially caused, and third, a large majority of disabled people are poor.

The creation of disability
Weaker, older or impaired members of pre-class societies were more likely to survive with the development of settled agricultural production and surplus crops. Feudal societies saw impairment in religious terms, as a mark of either good or evil, which meant those affected often faced persecution. However, the rural production process, and the extended nature of the feudal family, allowed many to make a genuine contribution to daily economic life. Families living and working as large groups were able to provide networks of care for children and the elderly. This way of life, typical for much of the world’s population for thousands of years, was to virtually disappear in the last three centuries.

The rise of capitalism forced people off the land. In Britain production for the market began on a scale sufficiently small as to be carried out in the home, and therefore impaired people could still play a role. However:

the rural population was being increasingly pressed by the new capitalist market forces, and when families could no longer cope the crippled members would have been most vulnerable and liable to turn to begging and church protection in special poor houses. Market forces soon favoured machinery which was more efficient and able to produce cheaper more plentiful woven material. Those working larger looms would more likely survive and cripples would have had greater difficulty working such equipment.7

The Industrial Revolution accelerated the pace of change enormously. Larger-scale machinery concentrated in factory towns increasingly destroyed the old cottage industries as well as traditional family structures, with members forced to find work away from the home or patch of land. The new factory worker “could not have any impairment which would prevent him or her from operating the machine. It was, therefore, the economic necessity of producing efficient machines for large-scale production that established ablebodiedness as the norm for productive (ie socially integrated) living…production for profit undermined the position of physically impaired people within the family and the community”.8

Working lives previously shaped by the hours of daylight and the seasons were now determined by the rhythm of the factory—even more so with the invention of gaslight and round the clock working. People’s bodies were now valued according to their ability to function like machines:

Factory discipline, time keeping and production norms broke with the slower, more self-determined and flexible work pattern into which many disabled people had been integrated. As work became more rationalised, requiring precise mechanical movements of the body, repeated in quicker succession, impaired persons—the deaf or blind, and those with mobility difficulties, were seen as—and without job accommodations to meet their impairments, were—less “fit” to do the tasks required of factory workers, and were increasingly excluded from paid employment. [The Industrial Revolution] removed crippled people from social intercourse and transformed them into disabled people.9

Specialisms were developed to help maintain and reproduce the new working class. Poor Law officials and an expanding medical profession developed pseudo-scientific categories to identify those of the poor who were unfit for work—”the sick, the insane, defectives, and the aged and infirm”. Dependence on others was now identified as a social problem and impairment equated with sickness and illness. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries those identified as disabled were segregated into workhouses, asylums, prisons and special schools. This had “several advantages over domestic relief: it was efficient, it acted as a major deterrent to the able-boded malingerer, and it could instil good work habits into the inmates”.10

Isolating disabled people in institutions—barbaric and oppressive as they were—led to the intensive study and treatment of impairments, creating the basis for clearer scientific understanding and classification. Mental impairment, for example, was seen as a single category until Langdon Down’s reports for the London Hospital in 1866. These identified, among other conditions, what later became known as Down’s Syndrome.11

With labour power now a commodity whose components were separately identified and valued, people with mental health problems were also increasingly categorised and placed in segregated institutions. In 1826, the first year for which statistics are available, fewer than 5,000 people were confined in asylums throughout England. By 1900, this had increased to 74,000.12

Capitalism represented a huge advance from previous societies in many ways. For the first time in history the productive capacity existed to feed, clothe and house the entire global population, while scientific and medical advances offered the prospect of understanding and curing diseases. But the new working class creating this wealth were excluded from any say over what was produced and how, suffering for their pains physical and mental impairment on an unprecedented scale. Those marginalised or excluded from production, either by injury or already existing impairments, also became marginalised or excluded from wider society. In this way capitalism created disability as a particular form of social oppression.

Reform and reaction
Life expectancy in the industrial towns was incredibly short. Manchester’s Medical Officer of Health reported in 1875 that “the average age at death of the Manchester upper middle class was 38 years, while [for] the labouring class [it] was 17; while at Liverpool these figures were represented as 35 against 15”.13 Cholera epidemics, poor hygiene and sanitation were not only a threat to the poor, and social reformers increasingly saw an unregulated free market as counter to the interests of British capitalism. Charities such as Barnardo’s and the Spastics Society took a growing role in caring for disabled people. Their often wealthy patrons lobbied for state intervention, better standards of treatment, and education for their disabled children.

The years of explosive strikes and growth in trade unions known as “New Unionism” also saw the formation of the British Deaf Association and the National League of the Blind and Disabled (NLBD). Founded as a trade union in 1899, the NLBD affiliated to the Trades Union Congress three years later.14 Its members (including blind war veterans), mainly working in sheltered workshops, campaigned for better working conditions and state pensions. The league organised a national march of blind people on Trafalgar Square in 1920, carrying banners with a new slogan—”Rights Not Charity”. Despite the small numbers, its aims were widely supported. The first legislation specifically for blind people was passed in the same year, followed by more in 1938.15

The upsurge of reforms also led to a reaction from the right. Eugenicists believed that, just as weaker or “inferior” members of a species weren’t meant to survive in nature, they were not meant to survive in a competitive human society. From the late 19th century,

advocates of eugenics…propagated the myth that there was an inevitable genetic link between physical and mental impairments and crime and unemployment. This was also linked to influential theories of racial superiority, according to which the birth of disabled children should be regarded as a threat to racial purity. In the notorious Buck v Bell decision of 1927, the US Supreme Court upheld the legality of the forced sterilisation of disabled people… By 1938, 33 American states had sterilisation laws and between 1921 and 1964 over 63,000 disabled people were involuntarily sterilised… Whether or not codified into law, the sterilisation of disabled people was common in a number of countries in the first half of the 20th century, including Britain, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, and Canada.16

Eugenics theory advocated the enforcement of a new concept, “normalcy”, through the elimination of “defectives”. It attracted widespread establishment support in Europe and the US, but was taken to its logical and genocidal conclusion by Hitler’s fascist regime. The extermination of disabled people was the first stage in its plans to “purify” the Aryan race of those considered weak or unproductive:

Nazi ideology considered disability to be a sign of degeneracy and viewed nearly any disabled person as a “life not worthy of life” [or] as [a] “useless eater”... Compulsory sterilisation for people with disabilities became German law in 1933. More than 400,000 people with disabilities were forcibly sterilised… A formal killing operation known as Aktion T-4 quickly followed, designed specifically for people with disabilities. The Nazi mechanisms for mass extermination of Jewish victims, such as carbon monoxide poisoning in “shower rooms”, were first developed and perfected through the disability programme. As a result, more than 275,000 people with disabilities were murdered in the Aktion T-4 programme, not counting all those who lost their lives in the concentration camps and after the formal phase of T-4 ended.17

The Holocaust was unique in its scale and barbarity, but it was also the product of a system that sees human beings as commodities to be bought and sold—or discarded as insufficiently profitable. As for eugenics, the theory fell from favour only after the nature and scale of Nazi atrocities became known in the years following the Second World War.

The rise and fall of the disability movement
The war economy had seen disabled people as well as women—previously considered respectively as incapable of or unsuitable for factory work—play a substantial role in wartime production. The need to rehabilitate huge numbers of wounded servicemen prompted legislation that in practice led to the expansion of existing sheltered workshops, usually paying below minimum wages. The post-war decades, however, brought virtually full employment and high levels of social spending. The foundation of the National Health Service and the expansion of the welfare state boosted further specialism within the professions. Medical advances led to more people living longer, and enabled others to carry out activities of which they were previously incapable:

Of particular importance was the availability of domestic appliances which could be operated with the minimum of physical energy and skill. Teaching a physically impaired person how to go to a well, fetch a pail of water, collect firewood and light a fire to make a pot of tea may have been impossible last century, but teaching a similarly impaired person to fill an electric kettle with water, switch on a button, etc to make a pot of tea today is well within the accepted aims of modern rehabilitation practice.18

The long economic boom created space to challenge institutionalisation and the patronage of charities, with significant numbers of disabled people joining the workforce. By the 1960s some had begun to reject their labelling by the professions as deviants or patients, and to speak out against discrimination. Inspired in particular by the black civil rights struggle, the disability movement began in the US.

The “Rolling Quads”, a group of student wheelchair users at the University of California, established the first Independent Living Centre in 1971. Within a few years hundreds more were created across the US and other countries including Britain, Canada and Brazil. Its opposition to institutionalisation and stress on the self-reliance of disabled people was to give the independent living movement an enduring influence.

Jimmy Carter’s 1976 election campaign pledged his presidency to signing Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. These regulations, incorporating anti-discrimination law into the public sector, were partly the result of years of campaigning by disabled people, which had attracted Vietnam War veterans such as Ron Kovic.19 In April 1977, as part of a series of nationwide protests against the refusal to ratify Section 504, a group of disabled people occupied the San Francisco Health Education and Welfare Department. The sit-in, whose numbers grew to around 120, attracted widespread support (including from the local branch of the Black Panther Party). After 25 days Carter caved in. It was a stunning victory. The protesters left en masse, singing “We Have Overcome”.20 The US disability movement, however, had focused so much on campaigning for Section 504 that it virtually fell apart once it was finally implemented. It was a pattern that was to be repeated.

The UN declared 1981 the International Year of Disabled People. For reasons little to do with the UN, that year turned out to be a turning point. Disabled Peoples’ International (DPI) was formed by 250 disabled people at a conference in Canada, advocating “equal opportunity and full participation of handicapped people in all aspects of society as a matter of justice rather than charity”.21 DPI urged disabled people to unite in multi-impairment coalitions, and by 1989 had 69 members, each representing national organisations of disabled people.22

The coalition that emerged in the UK, the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP), had by its mid-1990s peak grown to 106 affiliated organisations representing 400,000 disabled people.23 Its protests, sometimes involving several thousand people, included a “Rights Not Charity” demonstration at the Department of Health and Social Security in 1988, and two mobilisations against ITV’s “Telethon” in 1991 and 1992—the latter putting an end to the notoriously patronising charity fundraiser. BCODP activists were from the outset hostile to organisations “for” (as opposed to “of”) disabled people—primarily the professions and the hugely better-funded disability charities. This was even truer of smaller, more radical organisations such as the Direct Action Network (DAN). However, these principles rapidly gave way to joint campaigns with the big disability charities, on the grounds that the overriding priority was now to secure anti-discrimination legislation similar to that passed in the US in 1990.

John Major’s weakened Tory administration formed a task force to draft new laws. The BCODP refused to participate as a body, but some activists argued they could exert more influence by being involved. 24 The result, 1995’s Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), was widely criticised as both narrow and toothless. New Labour’s landslide election in 1997 led to a new Disability Rights Commission (DRC), which the government pledged would publicise, strengthen and enforce the DDA. The DRC successfully absorbed much of the remaining leadership of the disability movement.25 The truth is that few activists had an alternative strategy.

The alliance with the charities and New Labour seemed for many disabled people the only way to achieve broader social change. Single impairment charities had long been a vital source of welfare support or social networks. To many, disability was simply a human rights issue: “The principal thing is that we’re getting together…to make it different in terms of the politics of disability, which is about the rights of individuals; it is about the right to control our own lives”.26 Many activists saw “able-bodied society” in general as the problem, believing that people who were disabled had different and separate interests from those who were not. DAN activists were most explicitly separatist, seeing all able-bodied people as oppressors. This led to even more divisive notions such as who was “really disabled”. Meanwhile, blacks, gays and women pointed to discrimination against them by fellow disabled activists.

New Labour’s promised reforms effectively neutered the movement.27 As Oliver and Barnes put it at the time:

[We have seen] the growing professionalisation of disability rights and the wilful decimation of organisations controlled and run by disabled people at the local and national level by successive government policies despite rhetoric to the contrary. As a result we no longer have a strong and powerful disabled people’s movement… Since the late 1990s the combination of government and the big charities have successfully adopted the big ideas of the disabled people’s movement, usurped its language, and undertaken further initiatives which promise much yet deliver little.28

The crucial difficulty, however, was that the disability movement grew in Britain (and elsewhere) during and after a period of defeats for the working class, when other movements of the oppressed had already passed into decline (a fact reflected in the title of one early history, “The Last Civil Rights Movement”).29 Few activists saw any evidence then that the working class could successfully unite struggles of the oppressed with a shared interest in more fundamental change. As left and right alike within the movement agreed that disabled people needed firstly to organise for themselves, it was inevitable that the politics of identity would increasingly come to dominate those of class.

All this said, the disability movement helped win a wider understanding of the inequalities faced by disabled people, and in doing so achieved legislation addressing that inequality. How successful were these reforms in achieving this aim?

Reforms and neoliberalism
The most significant and best-known anti-discrimination laws of the last 20 years are the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and in Britain the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) of 1995 (with its subsequent amendments). However, the record since their implementation is not impressive. One US observer noted in 1999 that “the unemployment rate of disabled people has barely budged from its chronic 65-71 percent…in the first eight years [of the ADA], defendant-employers prevailed in more than 93 percent of reported ADA employment discrimination cases decided at the trial court level”.30

In 2005 Tony Blair went so far as to pledge full equality for all disabled people within 20 years.31 Two years later—and 12 years after the passage of the original DDA—the UK government had to acknowledge continuing and “unacceptable” levels of inequality among disabled people. It found that disabled workers earn between 6 and 17 percent less than non-disabled workers.32 More recent government figures show that among those of working age, fully 50 percent of disabled people are unemployed (compared with 20 percent of non-disabled people) and 23 percent have no qualifications (compared with 9 percent of non-disabled people). People with mental health problems have the lowest employment rates of all impairment categories, at only 20 percent.33

The ADA and the DDA share key weaknesses. Both require individuals wishing to pursue a legal complaint to prove first that they have a recognised impairment, with tribunals placing a primacy on medical evidence. Both also place the onus on individual disabled people pursuing—usually at their own expense—court cases which carry no guarantee of success, far less legally binding change.

The fault did not and does not lie solely in the legislation. A report produced by the Public Interest Research Unit on the effectiveness of the DRC found that “neglect of its enforcement powers, along with the difficulties individuals face in taking action themselves, has helped ensure that the majority of discriminators have got away with committing unlawful acts”.34 There is little evidence that the DRC’s successor, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has performed any better. When Trevor Phillips (notorious for his claims that multiculturalism in Britain was not working) was reappointed as EHRC chair in July 2009, six board members resigned, several blaming the new body’s ineffectiveness under
his leadership.35

The politics of independent living
We are often told that the gains of the post-war years have led to “a demographic time bomb”. That so many people are now living longer lives should be a cause for celebration. However, the concern to capital is that a rising proportion of the population cannot be exploited, and constitute a growing economic burden. The huge public spending cuts expected in the wake of the current recession are therefore likely to include further attacks on the living standards—and lives—of old age pensioners, who comprise by far the biggest proportion of the disabled population.

With the closure of the hated institutions and the onset of community care, subsequent debates have focused on how appropriate care can be provided at home, and how disabled people can get more control over the services they use. The disability movement therefore campaigned for government policies based on this philosophy.

John Major’s dying government conceded a system of “direct payments” alongside the DDA in the mid-1990s. The scheme was championed by figures such as Colin Barnes and Jenny Morris, on the basis that disabled people must have choice over how their personal care needs are met—even if this meant further privatisation.36 Low take-up by local authorities, however, led to a rebranding under New Labour. “Personalisation” obliged the former, from 2003 onwards, to offer “individual budgets” to any applicants for disability-related services. Hopes that user-led organisations controlled by disabled people, particularly Centres for Independent Living, would provide the infrastructure and expertise to help run these schemes proved unfounded. Contracts have instead gone mainly to local authorities, charities or the private sector.37

These initiatives have so far led to little real change. One 2009 study found that 60 percent of disabled people with social care needs rely on informal help from relatives or friends to meet those needs.38

Over 70 percent of local authorities provide services only to those whose needs are considered “critical or substantial”; the rest are left to go it alone. While our politicians have adopted the language of the Independent Living Movement, users receiving services are lucky to get anything extending beyond being washed and fed.39

Labour’s approach has been adopted with a vengeance by the new government. In a keynote speech in July 2010 health secretary Andrew Lansley adopted a familiar slogan of the disability movement: “[Our] guiding principle will be ‘no decision about me without me’... We will extend personal budgets, giving patients with long-term conditions real choices about their care”.40 But the rhetoric is accompanied by budget cuts which threaten the widespread closure of existing services such as day centres and respite care. The cuts are also likely to mean that “the trend towards narrowing the eligibility criteria for support will continue, as demand for social care grows and budgets are increasingly restricted”.41 Many local care agencies have already been privatised, staffed by typically low-paid and unskilled workers. With further restrictions on disability benefits, individual budgets and/or personalisation are likely to promise meaningful choice or independence only to those who can afford to pay. For most disabled people, they offer instead an increasingly impoverished existence, atomised and isolated in their own homes.42

Health and social care services are increasingly provided by “third sector” bodies (voluntary organisations, charities and businesses), with government funding of around £7 billion a year. In 2008 Barnardo’s total income was £253 million, while in 2008-9 Scope received over £100 million and Leonard Cheshire (running care homes and supported accommodation) over £145 million.43 But these figures are dwarfed by public sector spending: the NHS budget in 2008-9 alone was £100 billion.44 The fact that most welfare services in Britain are still both free at point of use and (in the main) universally available is considered a major problem by many in the ruling class. The neoliberal solution, which US writer Marta Russell has aptly called “free market civil rights”, is a society of individualised consumers forced to shop around for services no longer run by public authorities, but by charities or private businesses. Much of the present UK cabinet may favour this solution—but they are a long way yet from achieving it.

The social model of disability
The pioneering distinction between impairment and disability was first made explicit by a group of disabled socialists in 1976, including anti-apartheid activist Vic Finkelstein. The tiny Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) declared that disability, far from being biologically determined, was a social creation that could be challenged and eliminated:

In our view, it is society which disables physically impaired people. Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society. Disabled people are therefore an oppressed group in society.

Thus we define impairment as lacking all or part of a limb, organ or mechanism of the body; and disability as the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organisation which takes little or no account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from the mainstream of social activities.45

These “Fundamental Principles” were later developed, principally by Oliver, into the social model of disability. He described it as a “tool for action” rather than a thoroughgoing theory:

[If disability] is seen as a tragedy, then disabled people will be treated as if they are the victims of some tragic happening or circumstance. This treatment will…be translated into social policies which will attempt to compensate these victims for the tragedies that have befallen them… If disability is defined as social oppression, then disabled people will be seen as the collective victims of an uncaring or unknowing society… Such a view will be translated into social policies geared towards alleviating oppression rather than compensating individuals.46

As he put it later, this oppression “is ultimately due to our continued exclusion from the processes of production… The social model of disability is concerned with the personal and collective experiences of disabling social barriers and how its application might influence professional practice and shape political action”.47

These ideas turned received wisdom on its head and had a hugely liberating impact on many disabled individuals. The social model played an important role in helping activists, particularly in Britain, understand and challenge discrimination. It won widespread acceptance as the disability movement grew under the Tory governments of the 1980s until the mid-1990s.48 As the movement receded, however, and hopes increasingly centred on a future New Labour government, the social model of disability began to be identified with a “rights” model centred on achieving legislative change. This “reclaiming” or “rectifying” of the social model often turned into its outright rejection, not least in the growing academia of Disability Studies departments.

The social model met increasing criticism (largely, it is true, from the right) on the grounds that it ignores impairment, a problem claimed to be at least as important, if not more than discrimination in the lives of disabled people. Oliver replied that the social model is “a campaigning aid concentrating on the collective experience of disablement, not the individual experience of impairment”. This wish to avoid divisions is understandable. Drawing on the precedents of the struggles for black, gay and women’s liberation, and rejecting biological explanations of social inequality, Oliver insists that “there is no causal relationship between impairment and disability”.49

In his influential book The Politics of Disablement, Oliver attacks the “medicalisation” of disability. This refers to the way disabled people have for many decades been made the objects of oppressive medical practice and research, focused on individual cures and treatment. Refusing to integrate impairment into the social model, Oliver argues the former is a less useful campaigning focus. However, this is to overlook struggles such as those in South Africa for affordable drugs to combat AIDS, as well as others against drugs such as thalidomide or ritalin, which have actually caused impairment. There continue to be fierce debates on the subject of medical cures or therapy among disabled people. The point here is that they are neither the whole answer to impairment nor “incompatible with social change and civil rights”, but that each should be taken on its merits.50

Other critiques of the social model highlight its lack of relevance to other forms of oppression, cultural issues or those of representation. These arguments miss the central issue—the social model’s aim was to outline a materialist understanding of disability as a form of oppression that could be fought against and overcome. 51 It dealt a huge blow to the idea that disability was simply about personal tragedy or individual medical conditions. It pointed to major social and economic change as the cause of disability and to further change as its solution. It is therefore on this basis—as a starting point in any theory of disability liberation—that the social model should be examined.

Disability and oppression
The idea that disabled people are less productive and “able”, and more dependent in general remains common sense, and in capitalist terms is largely correct. Without some form of assistance to compensate for the particular impairment or lack of function, many disabled people are likely to be less economically productive as individuals.

The advanced capitalist societies invest heavily in health, education and social services that help reproduce the labour force (keeping workers skilled, fit and healthy enough to work). Rehabilitating back into the workforce people with short-term impairments or illnesses is relatively inexpensive. But those with more severe long-term illnesses or impairments receive far less priority, as meeting their needs often carries no guarantee of future profits.

All forms of oppression share similarities but also important differences. Discrimination against black people, women, or gays and lesbians is not directly rooted in the way work is organised. Gender, ethnic origin and sexual orientation have no direct bearing on how productive individuals are under capitalism. Other oppressed groups were not and often still are not considered capable of particular kinds of work. But this is not the same as employers wishing to avoid paying the additional costs of hiring a disabled worker, whether in the form of work station adaptations, interpreters, readers, environmental modifications or liability insurance:

[The] root of our oppression is the fact that capitalism sees everything in terms of profit and profitability—and this colours how capitalists view disabled workers. Most employers see disabled employees as a “problem”—something difficult, something different, something that will cost them more to employ. That isn’t to say that capitalists are incapable of realising that disabled people can be a source of cheap labour. So the oppression of disabled people is a reflection of the way in which capitalism reduces everything to profit—effectively, capitalism says disabled people are surplus to requirements. This is especially true in periods of economic crisis—provision for disabled people is always one of the first things to be hit.52

Disability discrimination is a distinct but complex form of oppression, based on the (negligibly to substantially) greater expense to capital of the labour power of impaired people. This oppression was not particular to the Industrial Revolution. Disability continues to be rooted in the way the capitalist mode of production subordinates concrete labour (and the concrete labourer) to abstract, interchangeable and homogeneous labour. The very nature of work in capitalist society constantly undercuts any potential for liberation.

The social model’s weakness in relation to impairment needs to be addressed. Limitations or lack of “part of a limb, organ or mechanism of the body” or mental function are the raw material on which disability discrimination works, and as such cannot be divorced from the latter. We have seen how disability is historically and socially determined. But this is also true of impairment. The “particular social and historical context…determines its nature… Where a given impairment may be
prevented, eradicated or its effects significantly ameliorated, it can no longer be regarded as a simple natural phenomenon”.53

The nature and heterogeneity of impairment distinguishes disability from other forms of oppression. Impairments may be physical or mental (or both), single or multiple, temporary or permanent, and acquired before or after birth. They may be mostly invisible, severely disfiguring or incapacitating, painful or even terminal. “The limitations which individual bodies or minds impose…vary from the trivial to the profound… The majority of disabled people do not have stable, congenital impairments…or sudden traumatic lesions (such as spinal cord injury), but instead have rheumatism or cardio-vascular disease or other chronic degenerative conditions associated with ageing”.54

Most people don’t fit neatly into two categories of able-bodied or disabled. People with slight visual or hearing defects, for example, can render these almost irrelevant by using spectacles or hearing aids (although they may need to pay for them), but those who are completely blind or deaf face far greater obstacles to social integration. The most severely impaired people are highly dependent on able-bodied support, provided in Britian by six million carers.

Finkelstein raises an associated problem. Disabled people “constantly fear that they may become associated with those that they see as less employable and more dependent. By trying to distance themselves from groups that they see as more disabled than themselves they can hope to maintain their claim to economic independence and an acceptable status in the community”.55 A more recent study shows that “[both] disabled and non-disabled people regard those with a learning disability or a mental illness as the least desirable groups”.56

The issue of who is “really” disabled can be highly divisive. Mike Barratt of the NLBD recalls being told that blind people are not disabled.57 The disability movement in Britain primarily organised around a fairly narrow stratum of physical impairment and was led mainly by wheelchair users.58 As one activist with learning difficulties complained, “We are always asked to talk about advocacy and our impairments as though our barriers aren’t disabling in the same way”.59

Most disabled people do not actually consider themselves disabled. Department of Work and Pensions research in 2006 found this was true of “around half of those covered by the DDA”.60 Deaf people pose a particular problem in these terms. Many whose first language is sign see themselves as a linguistic minority, and regard integration as a threat to a history and culture at least 250 years old.61 Other disabled people may see themselves as impaired, for example, some of those identified as having behavioural or mental health problems who arguably are not, but still suffer discrimination. This highly subjective element is partly why disability, to use a cliché, means different things to different people.

The extent and nature of these differences are other reasons (besides the more fundamental one of timing) why the disability movement attracted neither the opposition nor the scale of mobilisations and involvement experienced by other movements of the oppressed. Disability has no comparable equivalent to Stonewall or the great marches for
black civil rights.

Capitalism in general does not scapegoat disabled people in order to divide and rule in the way it does with other forms of oppression. Such discrimination plays a less central ideological role than that of homophobia, women’s oppression or racism. Neither is it generally popular. A recent UK survey, for example, found that 91 percent of people believe disabled people should have the same opportunities as everyone else.62 Disabled people are often the victims of prejudice and ignorance, but they are rarely targeted solely because of their impairment. Even where this was true, for example, with the mass murder of disabled people in Hitler’s gas chambers, this was not central to the Nazi movement in the way that scapegoating the Jews was. Similarly, bigotry against those with AIDS remains largely linked to anti-gay prejudice. Disability is fundamentally about neglect and marginalisation. Those who defend it ultimately do so using a much more central ideology—capitalism’s need to extract the maximum profit from labour with the minimum possible expense.

David Cameron’s government echoes its predecessor in its approach to “equalities” with a “corporate approach to diversity” which projects an inclusive image but in reality changes little.63 The DRC, before its recent demise, largely portrayed discrimination in terms of unacceptable attitudes (for example, “See the person not the disability” advertisements). Many disabled people also see individual prejudice and social barriers as the central problem. Some believe further progress depends on strategies such as cultivating “disability pride” or urging more people to “come out” as disabled.

If disability is rooted in the economic organisation of society, real change must involve a new economic organisation of society. If it is not primarily a political or ideological construct, the key cannot be to change attitudes or language, important as these are. Achieving real change requires a power which disabled people alone do not possess.

While the differences may be significant, the experience of other social movements has shown that the common and fundamental problem in attempting to unite an oppressed group is the issue of class. The huge struggles for black liberation turned into demands for black businesses, while the fight against sexism has been appropriated by raunch culture on the one hand and concerns about the “glass ceiling” for a minority of high-achieving women on the other. For gays and lesbians too, genuine equality, despite (as well as because of) the rise of the “pink economy”, remains elusive. Despite legislation outlawing discrimination against these oppressed groups, inequality remains deeply entrenched within the system.

b2. Class and disability

Like its counterparts in the US ruling class, the Economist complained about the potential costs of anti-discrimination legislation:

Everyone agrees that it is desirable to cater for [disabled people’s] needs. But if those needs are treated as rights, the obligation to help them could become limitless… Rights for the disabled must be balanced against the goal of a competitive economy.64

After these initial warnings about its alleged unaffordability, objections to anti-discrimination legislation focused on limiting its provisions, excluding “scroungers” (including alcoholics or drug addicts) and “fakers” deemed undeserving of rights or benefits. This issue of cost underpins most debates about disability, as well as those more generally around the “social costs of labour”.65 British capitalism needs some social spending in order to compete on the world market. But in recessions this conflicts with demands for reductions in spending, leading to arguments over what and how much is to be cut.66

Disability does not impact on all individuals equally. The incidence of impairment is much higher in poorer families.67 In England people living in the poorest neighbourhoods die on average seven years earlier than those in the richest. The average difference in impairment-free life expectancy is 17 years. So working class people not only die sooner, but will also spend more of their shorter lives as disabled.68 Secondly, wealthy disabled people can afford to pay for goods and services to compensate for the effects of oppression, in the same way that rich women employ nannies or cleaners. The majority of disabled people have no such option. Their lives are dominated by poverty, poor education and housing—as is the case for most other workers. As Glynn Vernon once said, “[My main problem is] I don’t have enough money, and I don’t have enough sex”.69

The greater visibility of disabled people in the labour force means they are more likely to be accepted as workmates, rather than social or economic burdens. In Britain the first disability trade union conference (organised by Nalgo, one of Unison’s predecessors) took place in Hull in 1988. Today disabled members’ sections exist in most British trade unions, with notable efforts to unite able-bodied and disabled workers. Recent trade union campaigns (for example, the PCS’s Public Services Not Private Profit campaign and Unison’s against the Private Finance Initiative/Public Private Partnerships), as well as others such as Keep Our NHS Public or Defend Council Housing, have brought unions together with service providers and user groups, including those of disabled people.

Aids and adaptations originally designed for disabled people have often proved to have much wider benefits. The typewriter, for example, was first invented over two centuries ago to help blind individuals communicate more effectively, while e-mail and internet chat rooms originated with inventions made for the deaf in the 1960s and 1970s. Today dropped kerbs on pavements benefit parents with pushchairs or shoppers with trolleys, closed captions on TV allow hearing viewers to watch in silence, and automatic doors in local supermarkets make access easier, not just for wheelchair users, but for everyone.70 The principles of “universal design” (products and environments usable by all which need no adaptations) are now increasingly popular in education.71

Disability rights for socialists must be part of building a collective working class consciousness. The provision of aids and adaptations in schools, universities and workplaces both helps disabled individuals to participate on an equal basis and builds unity in practice. This means ensuring, for example, that the Disability Equality Duty (DED), limited as its provisions may be, is fully implemented wherever possible.72 It may also mean defending sheltered workshops such as Remploy, even though we oppose segregation, and defending “special needs” education against cuts, though we believe everyone’s needs are special.73 Social reforms must be defended—not least in order to show the possibility of winning greater change in the future—but without illusions. Working class disabled people cannot afford to pay for their rights, either in the form of services or legal proceedings to secure access to them. While individual rights are important, they are in the final instance no substitute for collective liberation.

Other social movements helped achieve important legal change, while leaving intact fundamental inequalities. Over three decades after the British Equal Pay Act women’s earnings are still on average 21 percent less than men’s.74 Disability discrimination too can never be simply legislated away, because, like women’s oppression, it is embedded deeply in the structures of capitalist society.

In its earlier days the disability movement represented and organised those who saw social change—no matter how narrowly conceived—as the key to a better life for all. As UPIAS recognised, disabled people are a minority in society who lack the power to achieve lasting change on their own. Disabled people often in practice express a broader political or class identity, rather than one based purely on disability. The biggest demonstrations on record, the huge mobilisations against the Iraq war, were also the biggest demonstrations of disabled people.

The “festival of the oppressed” has been a feature of every major period of working class struggle, where previously demonised or marginalised groups have championed a common cause. Immigrant workers helped lead movements such as the Chartists and the Wobblies. At the peak of the struggle in Poland in 1980 one hospital doctor related how working class patients discharged themselves, suddenly well enough to join the Solidarno´s´c workers’ movement.75 The Russian Revolution of 1917, which saw women and Jews elected as its leaders, producing new ideas about disability many decades ahead of its time.76 Just as oppressed minorities rose to the forefront of these struggles, disabled people will be among those leading the revolutions of the 21st century.

An end to disability?
The horrors of the past are not simply abstract history lessons. The assumptions of eugenics are still present in claims that human society and behaviour are determined by our genes. Discussing online the death of David Cameron’s disabled son Ivan, senior British National Party activist Jeffrey Marshall complained about “an excess of sentimentality towards the weak and unproductive”, adding later that “there is not a great deal of point in keeping these people alive”.77 Although such ideas remain largely confined to the margins, this can change quickly.78 Cuts on a scale unseen since the 1930s are likely to rapidly polarise society, as the media and the government round on the latest scapegoats for the crisis. The coalition’s plans to privatise workplace safety inspections, increase its predecessor’s restrictions on disability benefits and promote the expansion of “special” (segregated) schools will create more impairment and more disability. But attacks on social services, pensions and benefits risk provoking generalised resistance.

From Mumbai to Mexico City, slums similar to those Marx, Engels and Dickens exposed 150 years ago now house an estimated 1 billion people, with poverty creating more disease and opening pathways for epidemics like HIV/Aids. Much of modern capitalism, with its ageing population, service industries and technological advances, differs markedly from the Industrial Revolution. Today’s workforce is as likely to be affected by repetitive strain injury or depression as by other workplace injuries. But the remorseless global drive to accumulate continues to cause disabling accidents and conditions at an unprecedented rate. The essence of humanity, our capacity to reshape ourselves and our world through social labour, remains controlled by a small minority whose sole interest in production is profit. The removal of this exploitation—the most fundamental divide in society—is a prerequisite if humanity is to achieve its liberation.

Marx provided a new definition of meaningful labour:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of individuals under division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour, from a mere means of life, has become the prime necessity of life…society [can] inscribe on its banner: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.79

A socialist society will not liberate disabled people from their impairments. But eradicating competitive accumulation, the basis for capitalism’s wars, waste and pollution, will also eradicate the source of so much impairment. Simple measures implemented globally, for example, could prevent or cure the vast majority of all visual defects and blindness.80 In an economy planned and controlled by the majority, science, medicine and social care will be socialised and restructured by providers and users alike. Cooperation on a scale unprecedented in history will provide the basis for a real individualism celebrating diversity difference, and mutual interdependence. Only such a society can significantly reduce both the causes and the effects of impairment—as well as providing an end to disability.



Roddy Slorach
Many young women full of devotion and good-will have been engaged in superficial charities. They have tried to feed the hungry without knowing the causes of poverty. They have tried to minister to the sick without understanding the cause of disease. They have tried to raise up fallen sisters without understanding the brutal arm of necessity that struck them down… We attempt social reforms where we need social transformations.1

Evidence shows the recession in the UK has already hit disabled people hard.2 The new government’s huge public spending cuts include further attacks on meagre but vital disability benefits.3 Their aim is to roll-back hard-won ‘social reforms’ affecting all sections of the working class.. Understanding the nature of disability discrimination can therefore play a part in defending these reforms and uniting resistance to the attacks which lie ahead.

This article aims to articulate a Marxist approach to the issues of disability and impairment and to begin a debate which is perhaps overdue. Is the discrimination faced by disabled people a form of oppression like that suffered by other minorities under capitalism? What happened to the disability movement and the social model of disability which inspired it? Is it possible—and desirable—to achieve a society free of disability?

The nature and extent of impairment
Disability is a widely misused and misunderstood concept, as illustrated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) definition:

Disabilities is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. Thus disability is a complex phenomenon, reflecting an interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives.4

These definitions reflect the progress made since disabled people were referred to officially as spastics, imbeciles and cripples. However, they also obscure the vital distinction established by the disability movement between individual impairment and disability as social discrimination.5 Leaving aside terminology for the moment, WHO figures do indicate the extent of impairment globally:

Hearing loss, vision problems and mental disorders are the most common causes of disability… Worldwide, an estimated 650 million people (10 percent of the total population) live with disabilities, the vast majority in low-income and middle-income countries… A significant proportion of disabilities are caused by traffic crashes, falls, burns, and acts of violence such as child abuse, youth violence, intimate partner violence, and war…up to one quarter of disabilities may result from injuries and violence. [These] include: physical and/or cognitive limitations due to neurotrauma; paralysis due to spinal cord trauma; partial or complete amputation of limbs; physical limb deformation resulting in mobility impairments; psychological trauma; sensory disability such as blindness and deafness.6

The WHO’s 2008 report also highlights mental disorders as among the 20 leading causes of disability worldwide, with depression alone affecting around 120 million people. Fewer than 25 percent of those affected have access to adequate treatment and healthcare. In 2004 the Labour government estimated Britain’s disabled population to be 10 million. The statistics show beyond doubt that a very large number of people are disabled. Second, many of their impairments are socially caused, and third, a large majority of disabled people are poor.

The creation of disability
Weaker, older or impaired members of pre-class societies were more likely to survive with the development of settled agricultural production and surplus crops. Feudal societies saw impairment in religious terms, as a mark of either good or evil, which meant those affected often faced persecution. However, the rural production process, and the extended nature of the feudal family, allowed many to make a genuine contribution to daily economic life. Families living and working as large groups were able to provide networks of care for children and the elderly. This way of life, typical for much of the world’s population for thousands of years, was to virtually disappear in the last three centuries.

The rise of capitalism forced people off the land. In Britain production for the market began on a scale sufficiently small as to be carried out in the home, and therefore impaired people could still play a role. However:

the rural population was being increasingly pressed by the new capitalist market forces, and when families could no longer cope the crippled members would have been most vulnerable and liable to turn to begging and church protection in special poor houses. Market forces soon favoured machinery which was more efficient and able to produce cheaper more plentiful woven material. Those working larger looms would more likely survive and cripples would have had greater difficulty working such equipment.7

The Industrial Revolution accelerated the pace of change enormously. Larger-scale machinery concentrated in factory towns increasingly destroyed the old cottage industries as well as traditional family structures, with members forced to find work away from the home or patch of land. The new factory worker “could not have any impairment which would prevent him or her from operating the machine. It was, therefore, the economic necessity of producing efficient machines for large-scale production that established ablebodiedness as the norm for productive (ie socially integrated) living…production for profit undermined the position of physically impaired people within the family and the community”.8

Working lives previously shaped by the hours of daylight and the seasons were now determined by the rhythm of the factory—even more so with the invention of gaslight and round the clock working. People’s bodies were now valued according to their ability to function like machines:

Factory discipline, time keeping and production norms broke with the slower, more self-determined and flexible work pattern into which many disabled people had been integrated. As work became more rationalised, requiring precise mechanical movements of the body, repeated in quicker succession, impaired persons—the deaf or blind, and those with mobility difficulties, were seen as—and without job accommodations to meet their impairments, were—less “fit” to do the tasks required of factory workers, and were increasingly excluded from paid employment. [The Industrial Revolution] removed crippled people from social intercourse and transformed them into disabled people.9

Specialisms were developed to help maintain and reproduce the new working class. Poor Law officials and an expanding medical profession developed pseudo-scientific categories to identify those of the poor who were unfit for work—”the sick, the insane, defectives, and the aged and infirm”. Dependence on others was now identified as a social problem and impairment equated with sickness and illness. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries those identified as disabled were segregated into workhouses, asylums, prisons and special schools. This had “several advantages over domestic relief: it was efficient, it acted as a major deterrent to the able-boded malingerer, and it could instil good work habits into the inmates”.10

Isolating disabled people in institutions—barbaric and oppressive as they were—led to the intensive study and treatment of impairments, creating the basis for clearer scientific understanding and classification. Mental impairment, for example, was seen as a single category until Langdon Down’s reports for the London Hospital in 1866. These identified, among other conditions, what later became known as Down’s Syndrome.11

With labour power now a commodity whose components were separately identified and valued, people with mental health problems were also increasingly categorised and placed in segregated institutions. In 1826, the first year for which statistics are available, fewer than 5,000 people were confined in asylums throughout England. By 1900, this had increased to 74,000.12

Capitalism represented a huge advance from previous societies in many ways. For the first time in history the productive capacity existed to feed, clothe and house the entire global population, while scientific and medical advances offered the prospect of understanding and curing diseases. But the new working class creating this wealth were excluded from any say over what was produced and how, suffering for their pains physical and mental impairment on an unprecedented scale. Those marginalised or excluded from production, either by injury or already existing impairments, also became marginalised or excluded from wider society. In this way capitalism created disability as a particular form of social oppression.

Reform and reaction
Life expectancy in the industrial towns was incredibly short. Manchester’s Medical Officer of Health reported in 1875 that “the average age at death of the Manchester upper middle class was 38 years, while [for] the labouring class [it] was 17; while at Liverpool these figures were represented as 35 against 15”.13 Cholera epidemics, poor hygiene and sanitation were not only a threat to the poor, and social reformers increasingly saw an unregulated free market as counter to the interests of British capitalism. Charities such as Barnardo’s and the Spastics Society took a growing role in caring for disabled people. Their often wealthy patrons lobbied for state intervention, better standards of treatment, and education for their disabled children.

The years of explosive strikes and growth in trade unions known as “New Unionism” also saw the formation of the British Deaf Association and the National League of the Blind and Disabled (NLBD). Founded as a trade union in 1899, the NLBD affiliated to the Trades Union Congress three years later.14 Its members (including blind war veterans), mainly working in sheltered workshops, campaigned for better working conditions and state pensions. The league organised a national march of blind people on Trafalgar Square in 1920, carrying banners with a new slogan—”Rights Not Charity”. Despite the small numbers, its aims were widely supported. The first legislation specifically for blind people was passed in the same year, followed by more in 1938.15

The upsurge of reforms also led to a reaction from the right. Eugenicists believed that, just as weaker or “inferior” members of a species weren’t meant to survive in nature, they were not meant to survive in a competitive human society. From the late 19th century,

advocates of eugenics…propagated the myth that there was an inevitable genetic link between physical and mental impairments and crime and unemployment. This was also linked to influential theories of racial superiority, according to which the birth of disabled children should be regarded as a threat to racial purity. In the notorious Buck v Bell decision of 1927, the US Supreme Court upheld the legality of the forced sterilisation of disabled people… By 1938, 33 American states had sterilisation laws and between 1921 and 1964 over 63,000 disabled people were involuntarily sterilised… Whether or not codified into law, the sterilisation of disabled people was common in a number of countries in the first half of the 20th century, including Britain, Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, and Canada.16

Eugenics theory advocated the enforcement of a new concept, “normalcy”, through the elimination of “defectives”. It attracted widespread establishment support in Europe and the US, but was taken to its logical and genocidal conclusion by Hitler’s fascist regime. The extermination of disabled people was the first stage in its plans to “purify” the Aryan race of those considered weak or unproductive:

Nazi ideology considered disability to be a sign of degeneracy and viewed nearly any disabled person as a “life not worthy of life” [or] as [a] “useless eater”... Compulsory sterilisation for people with disabilities became German law in 1933. More than 400,000 people with disabilities were forcibly sterilised… A formal killing operation known as Aktion T-4 quickly followed, designed specifically for people with disabilities. The Nazi mechanisms for mass extermination of Jewish victims, such as carbon monoxide poisoning in “shower rooms”, were first developed and perfected through the disability programme. As a result, more than 275,000 people with disabilities were murdered in the Aktion T-4 programme, not counting all those who lost their lives in the concentration camps and after the formal phase of T-4 ended.17

The Holocaust was unique in its scale and barbarity, but it was also the product of a system that sees human beings as commodities to be bought and sold—or discarded as insufficiently profitable. As for eugenics, the theory fell from favour only after the nature and scale of Nazi atrocities became known in the years following the Second World War.

The rise and fall of the disability movement
The war economy had seen disabled people as well as women—previously considered respectively as incapable of or unsuitable for factory work—play a substantial role in wartime production. The need to rehabilitate huge numbers of wounded servicemen prompted legislation that in practice led to the expansion of existing sheltered workshops, usually paying below minimum wages. The post-war decades, however, brought virtually full employment and high levels of social spending. The foundation of the National Health Service and the expansion of the welfare state boosted further specialism within the professions. Medical advances led to more people living longer, and enabled others to carry out activities of which they were previously incapable:

Of particular importance was the availability of domestic appliances which could be operated with the minimum of physical energy and skill. Teaching a physically impaired person how to go to a well, fetch a pail of water, collect firewood and light a fire to make a pot of tea may have been impossible last century, but teaching a similarly impaired person to fill an electric kettle with water, switch on a button, etc to make a pot of tea today is well within the accepted aims of modern rehabilitation practice.18

The long economic boom created space to challenge institutionalisation and the patronage of charities, with significant numbers of disabled people joining the workforce. By the 1960s some had begun to reject their labelling by the professions as deviants or patients, and to speak out against discrimination. Inspired in particular by the black civil rights struggle, the disability movement began in the US.

The “Rolling Quads”, a group of student wheelchair users at the University of California, established the first Independent Living Centre in 1971. Within a few years hundreds more were created across the US and other countries including Britain, Canada and Brazil. Its opposition to institutionalisation and stress on the self-reliance of disabled people was to give the independent living movement an enduring influence.

Jimmy Carter’s 1976 election campaign pledged his presidency to signing Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. These regulations, incorporating anti-discrimination law into the public sector, were partly the result of years of campaigning by disabled people, which had attracted Vietnam War veterans such as Ron Kovic.19 In April 1977, as part of a series of nationwide protests against the refusal to ratify Section 504, a group of disabled people occupied the San Francisco Health Education and Welfare Department. The sit-in, whose numbers grew to around 120, attracted widespread support (including from the local branch of the Black Panther Party). After 25 days Carter caved in. It was a stunning victory. The protesters left en masse, singing “We Have Overcome”.20 The US disability movement, however, had focused so much on campaigning for Section 504 that it virtually fell apart once it was finally implemented. It was a pattern that was to be repeated.

The UN declared 1981 the International Year of Disabled People. For reasons little to do with the UN, that year turned out to be a turning point. Disabled Peoples’ International (DPI) was formed by 250 disabled people at a conference in Canada, advocating “equal opportunity and full participation of handicapped people in all aspects of society as a matter of justice rather than charity”.21 DPI urged disabled people to unite in multi-impairment coalitions, and by 1989 had 69 members, each representing national organisations of disabled people.22

The coalition that emerged in the UK, the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP), had by its mid-1990s peak grown to 106 affiliated organisations representing 400,000 disabled people.23 Its protests, sometimes involving several thousand people, included a “Rights Not Charity” demonstration at the Department of Health and Social Security in 1988, and two mobilisations against ITV’s “Telethon” in 1991 and 1992—the latter putting an end to the notoriously patronising charity fundraiser. BCODP activists were from the outset hostile to organisations “for” (as opposed to “of”) disabled people—primarily the professions and the hugely better-funded disability charities. This was even truer of smaller, more radical organisations such as the Direct Action Network (DAN). However, these principles rapidly gave way to joint campaigns with the big disability charities, on the grounds that the overriding priority was now to secure anti-discrimination legislation similar to that passed in the US in 1990.

John Major’s weakened Tory administration formed a task force to draft new laws. The BCODP refused to participate as a body, but some activists argued they could exert more influence by being involved. 24 The result, 1995’s Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), was widely criticised as both narrow and toothless. New Labour’s landslide election in 1997 led to a new Disability Rights Commission (DRC), which the government pledged would publicise, strengthen and enforce the DDA. The DRC successfully absorbed much of the remaining leadership of the disability movement.25 The truth is that few activists had an alternative strategy.

The alliance with the charities and New Labour seemed for many disabled people the only way to achieve broader social change. Single impairment charities had long been a vital source of welfare support or social networks. To many, disability was simply a human rights issue: “The principal thing is that we’re getting together…to make it different in terms of the politics of disability, which is about the rights of individuals; it is about the right to control our own lives”.26 Many activists saw “able-bodied society” in general as the problem, believing that people who were disabled had different and separate interests from those who were not. DAN activists were most explicitly separatist, seeing all able-bodied people as oppressors. This led to even more divisive notions such as who was “really disabled”. Meanwhile, blacks, gays and women pointed to discrimination against them by fellow disabled activists.

New Labour’s promised reforms effectively neutered the movement.27 As Oliver and Barnes put it at the time:

[We have seen] the growing professionalisation of disability rights and the wilful decimation of organisations controlled and run by disabled people at the local and national level by successive government policies despite rhetoric to the contrary. As a result we no longer have a strong and powerful disabled people’s movement… Since the late 1990s the combination of government and the big charities have successfully adopted the big ideas of the disabled people’s movement, usurped its language, and undertaken further initiatives which promise much yet deliver little.28

The crucial difficulty, however, was that the disability movement grew in Britain (and elsewhere) during and after a period of defeats for the working class, when other movements of the oppressed had already passed into decline (a fact reflected in the title of one early history, “The Last Civil Rights Movement”).29 Few activists saw any evidence then that the working class could successfully unite struggles of the oppressed with a shared interest in more fundamental change. As left and right alike within the movement agreed that disabled people needed firstly to organise for themselves, it was inevitable that the politics of identity would increasingly come to dominate those of class.

All this said, the disability movement helped win a wider understanding of the inequalities faced by disabled people, and in doing so achieved legislation addressing that inequality. How successful were these reforms in achieving this aim?

Reforms and neoliberalism
The most significant and best-known anti-discrimination laws of the last 20 years are the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and in Britain the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) of 1995 (with its subsequent amendments). However, the record since their implementation is not impressive. One US observer noted in 1999 that “the unemployment rate of disabled people has barely budged from its chronic 65-71 percent…in the first eight years [of the ADA], defendant-employers prevailed in more than 93 percent of reported ADA employment discrimination cases decided at the trial court level”.30

In 2005 Tony Blair went so far as to pledge full equality for all disabled people within 20 years.31 Two years later—and 12 years after the passage of the original DDA—the UK government had to acknowledge continuing and “unacceptable” levels of inequality among disabled people. It found that disabled workers earn between 6 and 17 percent less than non-disabled workers.32 More recent government figures show that among those of working age, fully 50 percent of disabled people are unemployed (compared with 20 percent of non-disabled people) and 23 percent have no qualifications (compared with 9 percent of non-disabled people). People with mental health problems have the lowest employment rates of all impairment categories, at only 20 percent.33

The ADA and the DDA share key weaknesses. Both require individuals wishing to pursue a legal complaint to prove first that they have a recognised impairment, with tribunals placing a primacy on medical evidence. Both also place the onus on individual disabled people pursuing—usually at their own expense—court cases which carry no guarantee of success, far less legally binding change.

The fault did not and does not lie solely in the legislation. A report produced by the Public Interest Research Unit on the effectiveness of the DRC found that “neglect of its enforcement powers, along with the difficulties individuals face in taking action themselves, has helped ensure that the majority of discriminators have got away with committing unlawful acts”.34 There is little evidence that the DRC’s successor, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has performed any better. When Trevor Phillips (notorious for his claims that multiculturalism in Britain was not working) was reappointed as EHRC chair in July 2009, six board members resigned, several blaming the new body’s ineffectiveness under
his leadership.35

The politics of independent living
We are often told that the gains of the post-war years have led to “a demographic time bomb”. That so many people are now living longer lives should be a cause for celebration. However, the concern to capital is that a rising proportion of the population cannot be exploited, and constitute a growing economic burden. The huge public spending cuts expected in the wake of the current recession are therefore likely to include further attacks on the living standards—and lives—of old age pensioners, who comprise by far the biggest proportion of the disabled population.

With the closure of the hated institutions and the onset of community care, subsequent debates have focused on how appropriate care can be provided at home, and how disabled people can get more control over the services they use. The disability movement therefore campaigned for government policies based on this philosophy.

John Major’s dying government conceded a system of “direct payments” alongside the DDA in the mid-1990s. The scheme was championed by figures such as Colin Barnes and Jenny Morris, on the basis that disabled people must have choice over how their personal care needs are met—even if this meant further privatisation.36 Low take-up by local authorities, however, led to a rebranding under New Labour. “Personalisation” obliged the former, from 2003 onwards, to offer “individual budgets” to any applicants for disability-related services. Hopes that user-led organisations controlled by disabled people, particularly Centres for Independent Living, would provide the infrastructure and expertise to help run these schemes proved unfounded. Contracts have instead gone mainly to local authorities, charities or the private sector.37

These initiatives have so far led to little real change. One 2009 study found that 60 percent of disabled people with social care needs rely on informal help from relatives or friends to meet those needs.38

Over 70 percent of local authorities provide services only to those whose needs are considered “critical or substantial”; the rest are left to go it alone. While our politicians have adopted the language of the Independent Living Movement, users receiving services are lucky to get anything extending beyond being washed and fed.39

Labour’s approach has been adopted with a vengeance by the new government. In a keynote speech in July 2010 health secretary Andrew Lansley adopted a familiar slogan of the disability movement: “[Our] guiding principle will be ‘no decision about me without me’... We will extend personal budgets, giving patients with long-term conditions real choices about their care”.40 But the rhetoric is accompanied by budget cuts which threaten the widespread closure of existing services such as day centres and respite care. The cuts are also likely to mean that “the trend towards narrowing the eligibility criteria for support will continue, as demand for social care grows and budgets are increasingly restricted”.41 Many local care agencies have already been privatised, staffed by typically low-paid and unskilled workers. With further restrictions on disability benefits, individual budgets and/or personalisation are likely to promise meaningful choice or independence only to those who can afford to pay. For most disabled people, they offer instead an increasingly impoverished existence, atomised and isolated in their own homes.42

Health and social care services are increasingly provided by “third sector” bodies (voluntary organisations, charities and businesses), with government funding of around £7 billion a year. In 2008 Barnardo’s total income was £253 million, while in 2008-9 Scope received over £100 million and Leonard Cheshire (running care homes and supported accommodation) over £145 million.43 But these figures are dwarfed by public sector spending: the NHS budget in 2008-9 alone was £100 billion.44 The fact that most welfare services in Britain are still both free at point of use and (in the main) universally available is considered a major problem by many in the ruling class. The neoliberal solution, which US writer Marta Russell has aptly called “free market civil rights”, is a society of individualised consumers forced to shop around for services no longer run by public authorities, but by charities or private businesses. Much of the present UK cabinet may favour this solution—but they are a long way yet from achieving it.

The social model of disability
The pioneering distinction between impairment and disability was first made explicit by a group of disabled socialists in 1976, including anti-apartheid activist Vic Finkelstein. The tiny Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) declared that disability, far from being biologically determined, was a social creation that could be challenged and eliminated:

In our view, it is society which disables physically impaired people. Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society. Disabled people are therefore an oppressed group in society.

Thus we define impairment as lacking all or part of a limb, organ or mechanism of the body; and disability as the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organisation which takes little or no account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from the mainstream of social activities.45

These “Fundamental Principles” were later developed, principally by Oliver, into the social model of disability. He described it as a “tool for action” rather than a thoroughgoing theory:

[If disability] is seen as a tragedy, then disabled people will be treated as if they are the victims of some tragic happening or circumstance. This treatment will…be translated into social policies which will attempt to compensate these victims for the tragedies that have befallen them… If disability is defined as social oppression, then disabled people will be seen as the collective victims of an uncaring or unknowing society… Such a view will be translated into social policies geared towards alleviating oppression rather than compensating individuals.46

As he put it later, this oppression “is ultimately due to our continued exclusion from the processes of production… The social model of disability is concerned with the personal and collective experiences of disabling social barriers and how its application might influence professional practice and shape political action”.47

These ideas turned received wisdom on its head and had a hugely liberating impact on many disabled individuals. The social model played an important role in helping activists, particularly in Britain, understand and challenge discrimination. It won widespread acceptance as the disability movement grew under the Tory governments of the 1980s until the mid-1990s.48 As the movement receded, however, and hopes increasingly centred on a future New Labour government, the social model of disability began to be identified with a “rights” model centred on achieving legislative change. This “reclaiming” or “rectifying” of the social model often turned into its outright rejection, not least in the growing academia of Disability Studies departments.

The social model met increasing criticism (largely, it is true, from the right) on the grounds that it ignores impairment, a problem claimed to be at least as important, if not more than discrimination in the lives of disabled people. Oliver replied that the social model is “a campaigning aid concentrating on the collective experience of disablement, not the individual experience of impairment”. This wish to avoid divisions is understandable. Drawing on the precedents of the struggles for black, gay and women’s liberation, and rejecting biological explanations of social inequality, Oliver insists that “there is no causal relationship between impairment and disability”.49

In his influential book The Politics of Disablement, Oliver attacks the “medicalisation” of disability. This refers to the way disabled people have for many decades been made the objects of oppressive medical practice and research, focused on individual cures and treatment. Refusing to integrate impairment into the social model, Oliver argues the former is a less useful campaigning focus. However, this is to overlook struggles such as those in South Africa for affordable drugs to combat AIDS, as well as others against drugs such as thalidomide or ritalin, which have actually caused impairment. There continue to be fierce debates on the subject of medical cures or therapy among disabled people. The point here is that they are neither the whole answer to impairment nor “incompatible with social change and civil rights”, but that each should be taken on its merits.50

Other critiques of the social model highlight its lack of relevance to other forms of oppression, cultural issues or those of representation. These arguments miss the central issue—the social model’s aim was to outline a materialist understanding of disability as a form of oppression that could be fought against and overcome. 51 It dealt a huge blow to the idea that disability was simply about personal tragedy or individual medical conditions. It pointed to major social and economic change as the cause of disability and to further change as its solution. It is therefore on this basis—as a starting point in any theory of disability liberation—that the social model should be examined.

Disability and oppression
The idea that disabled people are less productive and “able”, and more dependent in general remains common sense, and in capitalist terms is largely correct. Without some form of assistance to compensate for the particular impairment or lack of function, many disabled people are likely to be less economically productive as individuals.

The advanced capitalist societies invest heavily in health, education and social services that help reproduce the labour force (keeping workers skilled, fit and healthy enough to work). Rehabilitating back into the workforce people with short-term impairments or illnesses is relatively inexpensive. But those with more severe long-term illnesses or impairments receive far less priority, as meeting their needs often carries no guarantee of future profits.

All forms of oppression share similarities but also important differences. Discrimination against black people, women, or gays and lesbians is not directly rooted in the way work is organised. Gender, ethnic origin and sexual orientation have no direct bearing on how productive individuals are under capitalism. Other oppressed groups were not and often still are not considered capable of particular kinds of work. But this is not the same as employers wishing to avoid paying the additional costs of hiring a disabled worker, whether in the form of work station adaptations, interpreters, readers, environmental modifications or liability insurance:

[The] root of our oppression is the fact that capitalism sees everything in terms of profit and profitability—and this colours how capitalists view disabled workers. Most employers see disabled employees as a “problem”—something difficult, something different, something that will cost them more to employ. That isn’t to say that capitalists are incapable of realising that disabled people can be a source of cheap labour. So the oppression of disabled people is a reflection of the way in which capitalism reduces everything to profit—effectively, capitalism says disabled people are surplus to requirements. This is especially true in periods of economic crisis—provision for disabled people is always one of the first things to be hit.52

Disability discrimination is a distinct but complex form of oppression, based on the (negligibly to substantially) greater expense to capital of the labour power of impaired people. This oppression was not particular to the Industrial Revolution. Disability continues to be rooted in the way the capitalist mode of production subordinates concrete labour (and the concrete labourer) to abstract, interchangeable and homogeneous labour. The very nature of work in capitalist society constantly undercuts any potential for liberation.

The social model’s weakness in relation to impairment needs to be addressed. Limitations or lack of “part of a limb, organ or mechanism of the body” or mental function are the raw material on which disability discrimination works, and as such cannot be divorced from the latter. We have seen how disability is historically and socially determined. But this is also true of impairment. The “particular social and historical context…determines its nature… Where a given impairment may be
prevented, eradicated or its effects significantly ameliorated, it can no longer be regarded as a simple natural phenomenon”.53

The nature and heterogeneity of impairment distinguishes disability from other forms of oppression. Impairments may be physical or mental (or both), single or multiple, temporary or permanent, and acquired before or after birth. They may be mostly invisible, severely disfiguring or incapacitating, painful or even terminal. “The limitations which individual bodies or minds impose…vary from the trivial to the profound… The majority of disabled people do not have stable, congenital impairments…or sudden traumatic lesions (such as spinal cord injury), but instead have rheumatism or cardio-vascular disease or other chronic degenerative conditions associated with ageing”.54

Most people don’t fit neatly into two categories of able-bodied or disabled. People with slight visual or hearing defects, for example, can render these almost irrelevant by using spectacles or hearing aids (although they may need to pay for them), but those who are completely blind or deaf face far greater obstacles to social integration. The most severely impaired people are highly dependent on able-bodied support, provided in Britian by six million carers.

Finkelstein raises an associated problem. Disabled people “constantly fear that they may become associated with those that they see as less employable and more dependent. By trying to distance themselves from groups that they see as more disabled than themselves they can hope to maintain their claim to economic independence and an acceptable status in the community”.55 A more recent study shows that “[both] disabled and non-disabled people regard those with a learning disability or a mental illness as the least desirable groups”.56

The issue of who is “really” disabled can be highly divisive. Mike Barratt of the NLBD recalls being told that blind people are not disabled.57 The disability movement in Britain primarily organised around a fairly narrow stratum of physical impairment and was led mainly by wheelchair users.58 As one activist with learning difficulties complained, “We are always asked to talk about advocacy and our impairments as though our barriers aren’t disabling in the same way”.59

Most disabled people do not actually consider themselves disabled. Department of Work and Pensions research in 2006 found this was true of “around half of those covered by the DDA”.60 Deaf people pose a particular problem in these terms. Many whose first language is sign see themselves as a linguistic minority, and regard integration as a threat to a history and culture at least 250 years old.61 Other disabled people may see themselves as impaired, for example, some of those identified as having behavioural or mental health problems who arguably are not, but still suffer discrimination. This highly subjective element is partly why disability, to use a cliché, means different things to different people.

The extent and nature of these differences are other reasons (besides the more fundamental one of timing) why the disability movement attracted neither the opposition nor the scale of mobilisations and involvement experienced by other movements of the oppressed. Disability has no comparable equivalent to Stonewall or the great marches for
black civil rights.

Capitalism in general does not scapegoat disabled people in order to divide and rule in the way it does with other forms of oppression. Such discrimination plays a less central ideological role than that of homophobia, women’s oppression or racism. Neither is it generally popular. A recent UK survey, for example, found that 91 percent of people believe disabled people should have the same opportunities as everyone else.62 Disabled people are often the victims of prejudice and ignorance, but they are rarely targeted solely because of their impairment. Even where this was true, for example, with the mass murder of disabled people in Hitler’s gas chambers, this was not central to the Nazi movement in the way that scapegoating the Jews was. Similarly, bigotry against those with AIDS remains largely linked to anti-gay prejudice. Disability is fundamentally about neglect and marginalisation. Those who defend it ultimately do so using a much more central ideology—capitalism’s need to extract the maximum profit from labour with the minimum possible expense.

David Cameron’s government echoes its predecessor in its approach to “equalities” with a “corporate approach to diversity” which projects an inclusive image but in reality changes little.63 The DRC, before its recent demise, largely portrayed discrimination in terms of unacceptable attitudes (for example, “See the person not the disability” advertisements). Many disabled people also see individual prejudice and social barriers as the central problem. Some believe further progress depends on strategies such as cultivating “disability pride” or urging more people to “come out” as disabled.

If disability is rooted in the economic organisation of society, real change must involve a new economic organisation of society. If it is not primarily a political or ideological construct, the key cannot be to change attitudes or language, important as these are. Achieving real change requires a power which disabled people alone do not possess.

While the differences may be significant, the experience of other social movements has shown that the common and fundamental problem in attempting to unite an oppressed group is the issue of class. The huge struggles for black liberation turned into demands for black businesses, while the fight against sexism has been appropriated by raunch culture on the one hand and concerns about the “glass ceiling” for a minority of high-achieving women on the other. For gays and lesbians too, genuine equality, despite (as well as because of) the rise of the “pink economy”, remains elusive. Despite legislation outlawing discrimination against these oppressed groups, inequality remains deeply entrenched within the system.

b2. Class and disability

Like its counterparts in the US ruling class, the Economist complained about the potential costs of anti-discrimination legislation:

Everyone agrees that it is desirable to cater for [disabled people’s] needs. But if those needs are treated as rights, the obligation to help them could become limitless… Rights for the disabled must be balanced against the goal of a competitive economy.64

After these initial warnings about its alleged unaffordability, objections to anti-discrimination legislation focused on limiting its provisions, excluding “scroungers” (including alcoholics or drug addicts) and “fakers” deemed undeserving of rights or benefits. This issue of cost underpins most debates about disability, as well as those more generally around the “social costs of labour”.65 British capitalism needs some social spending in order to compete on the world market. But in recessions this conflicts with demands for reductions in spending, leading to arguments over what and how much is to be cut.66

Disability does not impact on all individuals equally. The incidence of impairment is much higher in poorer families.67 In England people living in the poorest neighbourhoods die on average seven years earlier than those in the richest. The average difference in impairment-free life expectancy is 17 years. So working class people not only die sooner, but will also spend more of their shorter lives as disabled.68 Secondly, wealthy disabled people can afford to pay for goods and services to compensate for the effects of oppression, in the same way that rich women employ nannies or cleaners. The majority of disabled people have no such option. Their lives are dominated by poverty, poor education and housing—as is the case for most other workers. As Glynn Vernon once said, “[My main problem is] I don’t have enough money, and I don’t have enough sex”.69

The greater visibility of disabled people in the labour force means they are more likely to be accepted as workmates, rather than social or economic burdens. In Britain the first disability trade union conference (organised by Nalgo, one of Unison’s predecessors) took place in Hull in 1988. Today disabled members’ sections exist in most British trade unions, with notable efforts to unite able-bodied and disabled workers. Recent trade union campaigns (for example, the PCS’s Public Services Not Private Profit campaign and Unison’s against the Private Finance Initiative/Public Private Partnerships), as well as others such as Keep Our NHS Public or Defend Council Housing, have brought unions together with service providers and user groups, including those of disabled people.

Aids and adaptations originally designed for disabled people have often proved to have much wider benefits. The typewriter, for example, was first invented over two centuries ago to help blind individuals communicate more effectively, while e-mail and internet chat rooms originated with inventions made for the deaf in the 1960s and 1970s. Today dropped kerbs on pavements benefit parents with pushchairs or shoppers with trolleys, closed captions on TV allow hearing viewers to watch in silence, and automatic doors in local supermarkets make access easier, not just for wheelchair users, but for everyone.70 The principles of “universal design” (products and environments usable by all which need no adaptations) are now increasingly popular in education.71

Disability rights for socialists must be part of building a collective working class consciousness. The provision of aids and adaptations in schools, universities and workplaces both helps disabled individuals to participate on an equal basis and builds unity in practice. This means ensuring, for example, that the Disability Equality Duty (DED), limited as its provisions may be, is fully implemented wherever possible.72 It may also mean defending sheltered workshops such as Remploy, even though we oppose segregation, and defending “special needs” education against cuts, though we believe everyone’s needs are special.73 Social reforms must be defended—not least in order to show the possibility of winning greater change in the future—but without illusions. Working class disabled people cannot afford to pay for their rights, either in the form of services or legal proceedings to secure access to them. While individual rights are important, they are in the final instance no substitute for collective liberation.

Other social movements helped achieve important legal change, while leaving intact fundamental inequalities. Over three decades after the British Equal Pay Act women’s earnings are still on average 21 percent less than men’s.74 Disability discrimination too can never be simply legislated away, because, like women’s oppression, it is embedded deeply in the structures of capitalist society.

In its earlier days the disability movement represented and organised those who saw social change—no matter how narrowly conceived—as the key to a better life for all. As UPIAS recognised, disabled people are a minority in society who lack the power to achieve lasting change on their own. Disabled people often in practice express a broader political or class identity, rather than one based purely on disability. The biggest demonstrations on record, the huge mobilisations against the Iraq war, were also the biggest demonstrations of disabled people.

The “festival of the oppressed” has been a feature of every major period of working class struggle, where previously demonised or marginalised groups have championed a common cause. Immigrant workers helped lead movements such as the Chartists and the Wobblies. At the peak of the struggle in Poland in 1980 one hospital doctor related how working class patients discharged themselves, suddenly well enough to join the Solidarno´s´c workers’ movement.75 The Russian Revolution of 1917, which saw women and Jews elected as its leaders, producing new ideas about disability many decades ahead of its time.76 Just as oppressed minorities rose to the forefront of these struggles, disabled people will be among those leading the revolutions of the 21st century.

An end to disability?
The horrors of the past are not simply abstract history lessons. The assumptions of eugenics are still present in claims that human society and behaviour are determined by our genes. Discussing online the death of David Cameron’s disabled son Ivan, senior British National Party activist Jeffrey Marshall complained about “an excess of sentimentality towards the weak and unproductive”, adding later that “there is not a great deal of point in keeping these people alive”.77 Although such ideas remain largely confined to the margins, this can change quickly.78 Cuts on a scale unseen since the 1930s are likely to rapidly polarise society, as the media and the government round on the latest scapegoats for the crisis. The coalition’s plans to privatise workplace safety inspections, increase its predecessor’s restrictions on disability benefits and promote the expansion of “special” (segregated) schools will create more impairment and more disability. But attacks on social services, pensions and benefits risk provoking generalised resistance.

From Mumbai to Mexico City, slums similar to those Marx, Engels and Dickens exposed 150 years ago now house an estimated 1 billion people, with poverty creating more disease and opening pathways for epidemics like HIV/Aids. Much of modern capitalism, with its ageing population, service industries and technological advances, differs markedly from the Industrial Revolution. Today’s workforce is as likely to be affected by repetitive strain injury or depression as by other workplace injuries. But the remorseless global drive to accumulate continues to cause disabling accidents and conditions at an unprecedented rate. The essence of humanity, our capacity to reshape ourselves and our world through social labour, remains controlled by a small minority whose sole interest in production is profit. The removal of this exploitation—the most fundamental divide in society—is a prerequisite if humanity is to achieve its liberation.

Marx provided a new definition of meaningful labour:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of individuals under division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour, from a mere means of life, has become the prime necessity of life…society [can] inscribe on its banner: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.79

A socialist society will not liberate disabled people from their impairments. But eradicating competitive accumulation, the basis for capitalism’s wars, waste and pollution, will also eradicate the source of so much impairment. Simple measures implemented globally, for example, could prevent or cure the vast majority of all visual defects and blindness.80 In an economy planned and controlled by the majority, science, medicine and social care will be socialised and restructured by providers and users alike. Cooperation on a scale unprecedented in history will provide the basis for a real individualism celebrating diversity difference, and mutual interdependence. Only such a society can significantly reduce both the causes and the effects of impairment—as well as providing an end to disability.