Assisted suicide vote will make other campaigning tougher, say activists

The decision of MPs to vote in favour of legalising assisted suicide will make it harder to find the time and resources to campaign on many other crucial disability rights issues over the next six months, disabled activists have warned.

Many campaigners who attended a vigil outside parliament on Friday were left demoralised by the vote by 330 MPs in favour to 275 against to allow the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill to proceed to the committee stage.

But despite anger and frustration at the result of the vote, there was determination from key figures in the disability movement to continue to fight to defeat the bill (see separate story).

The bill’s progress through the Commons is almost certain to demand a huge commitment of time and resources from disabled people’s organisations, grassroots groups and individual disabled activists over the next nine months.

Many of those activists at the vigil told Disability News Service on Friday that this was a real concern.

Rensa Gaunt, communications manager for Inclusion London, said disabled people “are not able to fight everything all the time”, with key legislation and policies “coming through so quickly it’s alarming”.

She said Inclusion London had been forced to “split our attention”, with the assisted dying bill, the mental health bill and social security reform among its priorities.

She said: “I worry that people have not even been talking about the mental health bill when it’s a massive piece of legislation. The timing is shocking.”

When asked before the vote if it could swamp other key campaigns if MPs voted in favour, Baroness [Tanni] Grey-Thompson said: “Completely, because it already has.”

Disabled activist Anna Landre said the disabled people’s movement “was already stretched so thin, given austerity and cuts”.

She said: “I am concerned about that, but we are going to continue to keep fighting.”

She had said earlier: “I am worried about the things that are in the pipeline; we know DWP is doing research on potential changes to personal independence payment and other things that could need our energy, and certainly this passing would take away from meaningful efforts on other fronts where we are fighting.”

Disabled student Nye Steele, who travelled from Coventry to take part in the vigil – speaking before the vote – said campaigning against the bill “definitely” would edge out other activism, such as work on the mental health bill and fighting austerity.

He said: “How are we going to fight this as well?”

Paula Peters, a member of the national steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts, said: “It’s going to have an impact. We are all burned out from constant fighting.

“Yes, it’s going to impact on our capacity to campaign, but somehow we have got to give hope to disabled people across the UK that we continue to fight, organise and mobilise.

“In the dark days of Cameron and Osborne we kept going. We have got to. You can see that in the vigil today, [disabled people] united in a common cause.”

Picture: Baroness Grey-Thompson (left) and Rensa Gaunt at the vigil

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