Book will expose how DWP’s decades of ‘violent bureaucracy’ led to countless deaths

A new book will expose how decades of “violent” bureaucracy within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) led eventually to the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of disabled people who were claiming benefits.

The Department* reveals how the actions of civil servants, politicians and the private sector led to the dehumanisation, destitution and deaths of countless claimants.

But it also tells the stories of 12 of the disabled people who died, interweaving their ordeals with new evidence that exposes the deadly effect of 30 years of “slow violence” perpetrated by DWP.

The book has been written by John Pring, editor of Disability News Service, who has been researching the links between DWP and the deaths for more than a decade. It will be published by Pluto Press next August.

The Department traces the origins of the violence back to the reforms of the Conservative government of the early 1990s, which led to the introduction of what was known as the “all work test”, designed by the Department of Social Security (DSS) to assess whether disabled people were eligible for out-of-work disability benefits or, instead, were “fit for work”.

Following its introduction in 1995, further reforms led DSS – and its successor, DWP – to refine and reform the all work test until, as The Department describes, “the reckless hostility and discrimination that had built slowly over the previous two decades finally exploded into deadly violence” in the early years of the 2010 coalition government.

Meanwhile, two high-profile projects linking DWP with the deaths of benefit claimants are set to highlight the years of harm caused by the department.

Healing Justice Ldn, which works with marginalised and oppressed communities, has launched a new accessible website to host its Deaths by Welfare timeline.

The timeline, co-produced with disabled people and published in draft format last year, aims to “make visible the slow and bureaucratic violence of the State” and show how DWP spent years attempting to hide its role in the deaths of claimants.

It tracks the slow, accumulated violence caused by the social security system over the last three decades by highlighting hundreds of documents that are mostly publicly available.

Dr China Mills, who leads the Deaths by Welfare project, has described the timeline as “a story alive with resistance”.

She said: “The timeline shows that people are dying because of systems functioning as they were designed to, not only because of individual mistakes.

“We have created the timeline as a community resource and a tool for disability justice – for us all to come together to demand accountability and collectively imagine justice.”

She has led the work on the timeline, with Pring as co-creator and key input from disabled activist Rick Burgess, disabled activist Ellen Clifford, author of The War On Disabled People, disabled artist-activist Dolly Sen, and the much-missed welfare rights expert and researcher Nick Dilworth, who died earlier this year.

It is hoped the timeline will provide a solid database of evidence for researchers, activists and journalists to push for a public inquiry into the deaths.

The website has been launched as part of Healing Justice Ldn’s month-long Rehearsing Freedoms festival of community health, healing, movement-building, arts and culture in London.

Meanwhile, dates have been announced for the award-winning, mixed-reality installation Museum of Austerity (pictured, above left), which will be showing for four days in Manchester early next month.

The production uses the verbal testimony of family members and state-of-the-art technology to recreate the circumstances that led to the deaths of disabled claimants in the post-2010 decade of austerity.

The mixed reality production uses recorded interviews with the family members and ground-breaking “volumetric capture” techniques that have produced high-quality, three-dimensional images.

It focuses on the personal stories of disabled claimants, whose deaths have all previously been linked by DNS to flaws in DWP’s assessments, sanctions and safeguarding systems.

The production will have a week-long run at HOME Manchester from 8 to 11 November, followed by a tour in spring 2024, with dates and venues to be announced.

The installation is a co-production of English Touring Theatre, the National Theatre’s Immersive Storytelling Studio, and Trial & Error Studio.

Sacha Wares, director of the installation and founder of Trial & Error Studio, said: “Our aim is to document the human cost of austerity; to show how it has played out behind closed curtains across the nation.

“We have looked for a way to capture the hidden violence. Violence that there is little visual record of, but which must somehow be witnessed.”

Pring, co-editor and specialist advisor on Museum of Austerity, said: “The stories told in Museum of Austerity bring home the awful truth of how so many disabled people were failed by our country’s social security system in their moments of greatest need, and of how politicians, senior civil servants and private sector contractors averted their eyes and let it happen again and again and again.”

Running alongside the production on tour will be a programme of exhibitions and workshops, led by Healing Justice Ldn and local partners.

Museum of Austerity was nominated for Best Digital Innovation at the UK Theatre Awards, previewed at the London Film Festival in 2021 and won International Documentary Festival Amsterdam’s Best Immersive Production in 2021.

*Cover design by Steve Leard

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