• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / Politics / Election 2019: Shadow chancellor says disabled voters ‘will make Tories pay for austerity’
John McDonnell speaking into a microphone

Election 2019: Shadow chancellor says disabled voters ‘will make Tories pay for austerity’

By John Pring on 11th December 2019 Category: Politics

Listen

Disabled voters will tomorrow make the Conservatives pay for what they have done to them over the last decade of austerity, Labour’s shadow chancellor has told a rally of party activists.

John McDonnell told the pre-election rally of disabled Labour supporters in central London on Monday that activists had built a disability movement within the Labour party over the last 10 years which was so strong that it could not be ignored.

He said tomorrow’s general election was about disabled people “getting our own back” after 10 years of austerity and the repeated abuses of their human rights, as highlighted by the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

McDonnell (pictured, speaking at the rally) told the rally that these abuses were “a bloody disgrace” and showed the “brutality of this current regime”.

He said: “They can’t ignore us because we won’t let them ignore us.

“All those demonstrations and occupations and public meetings and discussions, when we were in the face of people all the time, has worked.”

He said the Conservatives and their Liberal Democrat coalition partners thought in 2010 that they could target disabled people “and there would be no resistance”.

But McDonnell said: “What we have demonstrated over this near decade now is the fundamental resistance that we have organised.

“We have harassed them, we have shamed them, we have forced them to look at what the consequences of their actions are.

“And on Thursday, I tell you, by our votes we will make them pay for what they have done.”

McDonnell, who has consistently supported the disabled people’s anti-cuts movement over the last decade, also promised again that Labour would work with disabled people if it formed the next government.

He said: “This is not going to be like anything in the past. It is not about electing a group of Labour MPs who we expect to go off and change the world.

“That will never happen. We will only succeed because we will all go into government.”

He said that the party’s disability movement would “go into government” alongside its MPs to both “sustain” that government and “radicalise it at every stage”.

Among the areas that have been impacted by austerity, he highlighted homelessness and the more than 700 homeless people who died in England and Wales last year (an increase of more than a fifth on the previous year).

He said that “700 of our fellow citizens died out there” and most of them would have been disabled people, who often had not had the mental health support they had needed.

McDonnell added: “We are the fifth richest country in the world, and we have 700 fellow citizens dying on our streets. What does that say about the values of this government?”

He said a Labour government would launch – on its first day in office – a programme of support for homeless people, while it had also set aside “significant sums” for their mental health support and would start a huge house-building programme and “will be proud to call those homes that we build council houses”.

 

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…

Share this post:

Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on Reddit

Tags: Conservatives Election 2019 General election John McDonnell Labour Liberal Democrats

Related

MPs who refused to quiz minister on benefit deaths ‘have failed disabled people’
21st July 2022
Labour and Lib Dems give half-hearted welcome to DWP deaths evidence
14th July 2022
Disabled councillor describes how PIP and access failings stalled her political career
16th June 2022

Primary Sidebar

Image shows a man wearing glasses sitting by an open laptop The text reads: Free Career Support for Disabled People Our services include: 1-2-1 Coaching Online Career Resources Find Support near you Search for Inclusive Jobs Career Events and Workshops Visit the Evenbreak Career Hive today to find out how we can help you

Access

Latest Stories

Government’s long-awaited accessible housing plan ‘does not go far enough’

Government’s advisers say ministers’ plans will not deliver an accessible railway

Thousands of disabled customers waiting months for cars, Motability admits

Commission ‘will hold government to account over pandemic failures’

Grenfell: Court challenge for Home Office over rejection of evacuation policy

More than half of care homes inspected are failing, says regulator

MPs’ silence on deaths evidence ‘shows they have abandoned benefit claimants’

Staff levels ‘completely inadequate’ for rail access, say government advisers

Watchdog threatens government with legal action over ‘unacceptable’ detentions

Benefit claimants back up MP’s claims of assessment secret tricks

Advice and Information

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2022 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web