Non-disabled people and their non-disabled families have been living off the backs of disabled people for centuries. They have had better housing and better education while disabled people were incarcerated in institutions, sterilised, abused and denied the basic freedoms that the rest of society enjoyed, ie. life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Disabled people have been the perpetual sacrificial lambs, the natural victims of a society whose members want to forget that they might one day become one of us. Disabled people’s rights are still seen by politicians as the icing on the cake, funded by small change from the Chancellor’s back pocket, cut back during times of hardship.
The benefits we receive are not an extra, they merely get us to the front door. Even if savings could be made disabled people have their own shopping list. We need funds:
This Government has talked about the stick without holding out a carrot. If we reduce the level of funding going to disabled people’s issues, incarceration, poverty, abuse, segregation, fear and inequality will increase to dangerous levels.
Like its Conservative predecessor, this Government knows that there is a time-bomb ticking away which will explode in ten to twenty years and will affect the whole fabric of our society. The bomb is the ageing of the baby boomers of the 50s and early 60s. We are living longer, and the longer you live the more likely you are to acquire an impairment. In the next twenty years the welfare state will self-destruct unless we reconstruct it.
We have just ended 18 years of Tory Government. The biggest enemy to our national security which emerged from this period is the ideology of selfishness instilled expertly by Margaret Thatcher and somewhat clumsily by John Major. Thatcher appealed to the general public’s baser instincts, encouraging people to ask: Why should I pay for someone else’s kids to go to school? Why should I pay for someone else’s health care if I’m fit as a fiddle? Taxation, in this country and others, has become a dirty word. The name of the game now is cutting public expenditure and giving the money back to the individual.
The Labour Prime Minister and Cabinet seem trapped in this ideology. They are so scared, so transfixed, that they see no hope of challenging it if they are to remain in what they see as power. The proposed cuts in disabled people’s benefit are disastrous for this country and everyone who wants to live in a free society.
We agree that a reform of the welfare state is absolutely crucial. We agree that disabled people should be on a level playing field with everyone else. We agree that funds should be re-directed to those disabled people at the sharp end of discrimination in this country. We agree that this reform is the big idea.
Tony Blair and his Cabinet have got themselves into a hole of their own digging, and believe me if he keeps digging it will only get deeper. You don’t begin the reform of the welfare state, the new Beveridge, by scaring people with hints about cuts, and short-term cuts at that. Disabled people are naturally anxious, and distrustful of a government that, yet again, sees them as sacrificial lambs. If this is how we are going to reform the welfare state, by picking off groups one by one in an atmosphere of fear and distrust, the time bomb will explode in our faces.
In employing tactics of non-violent civil disobedience — such as DAN used outside Downing Street — Gandhi was always careful to give the target a way out. Tony Blair still has a way out. To stop this conflict now, Tony Blair and his Cabinet must:
When the new Labour Government was elected DAN and other disabled people’s groups were looking forward to working with it on a programme of real and radical change for disabled people. We believed that as disabled people our experience, skills and understanding of the issues that face us day-to-day would be crucial in shaping policy and creating the new Beveridge. Instead, Tony Blair has succeeded like no one before in uniting the disabled people’s movement against the Government.
The longer the rumours about cuts persist, the more irrevocable the damage will be done to a relationship absolutely crucial to any government seeking genuine reform of the welfare state. We want to send a clear, unequivocal and urgent message to Tony Blair that it is time to talk to disabled people before all trust in his Government fades.
Failing this, we are in for a long fight and disabled people will be looking across the political spectrum for support. We are urging all MPs from all parties to oppose any Bill put forward. We are urging all members of the labour movement — CLPs, trades unions, individuals — to help us mobilise public support for an honest and open reform of the welfare state. While the traditional charities hold millions in their bank accounts, the disabled people’s movement faces this campaign with less than £1000. We urgently need donations from our supporters so that disabled people themselves can lead the fight back.
The collections need to start now. The money will be used to ensure that disabled people can get involved in the campaign and that organisers do not have to go into more debt because they are spending every hour God sends organising.