Forgotten and abandoned, young disabled people are fighting back against cuts through a new collective

Hundreds of “forgotten” and “abandoned” young disabled people across the country have taken part in peaceful protests against government cuts to disability benefits, as part of a new movement of activists powered by social media.

The Crips Against Cuts (CAC) collective has grown in just a few weeks from a single disabled campaigner who felt abandoned by charities and politicians, to organising actions in more than 20 towns and cities across Britain last Saturday.

Actions were organised across England, Scotland and Wales, including Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Hull, Darlington, Leeds, Sheffield, London, Brighton, Portsmouth, Truro, Exeter, Bournemouth, Coventry, Cambridge, Thanet, Nottingham, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester.

CAC believes there were about 500 disabled people and allies at Saturday’s action in central London, on the South Bank, near London Eye and County Hall, and about 200 in most of the actions in the larger cities.

The new collective is being driven by users of the social media platform Instagram – with younger disabled people making up the bulk of its membership – and to a lesser extent other social media platforms like Bluesky and Threads.

Linsey McFadden, one of the first disabled campaigners to join CAC, told Disability News Service: “I think our success in that sort of mass mobilization really comes down to the fact that we’re tapping into that younger Instagram audience.

“I think millennials and younger generally have less [money] because of the way the prolonged austerity has hit us.”

She added: “There’s a very human health toll to the more than decade of austerity that we’ve had.

“There’s a very human health toll to all the money that’s been taken out of the NHS, the rate of disability from long Covid, and the impact of rising cost-of-living amid stagnating wages.

“If you consider the impact that even one of those things has on mental health, it is no shock at all that we have rising mental health problems.”

McFadden said the loss of PIP would be “life-destroying”.

She said: “My best friend lives in the negative; her bank balance is always minus several hundred even when PIP hits… and she works, but it’s just not enough.

“They keep saying that those of us with ‘severe disabilities’ will still keep our benefits and I’m not happy with that.”

She said she wanted all disabled people to be able to access PIP, a sentiment that “has been very well echoed across the community”.

At the London action, she said, “a lot of the speeches were very raw and emotional because it comes from such a deep place.

“We were already the poorest demographic in the UK before the cost-of-living crisis hit.

“We’re just kind of sat here, forgotten and suffering, and most of us aren’t receiving the treatment we need, or we don’t have our pain managed, or the barriers to accessing specialists are impossible to navigate.

“It’s a very difficult feeling to describe, but I would also say that in all of that and the rawness of the emotion, there was tremendous support for each other.

“All of us have been talking about how wonderful it’s been for us to connect with each other, because as disabled people, we are often so alone and isolated.

“All of a sudden I’ve got all of these disabled friends, and we all want to listen to each other and we all want to amplify each other.”

The origins of the new movement are in the West Country.

CAC began with Mac, a disabled campaigner from Bristol, who relies on PIP and was frustrated at the lack of response to her concerns about the government’s proposed cuts from her MP and traditional charities.

McFadden said: “After reaching out to lots of spaces that claim they support disabled people, she just felt really abandoned and so figured that lots of us were probably feeling the same… and she was very right.”

CAC was contacted soon after it launched by Paula Peters, from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), which McFadden said had “welcomed us into the crip liberation movement” and had been “very supportive”.

Both grassroots groups are now supporting each other’s actions.

McFadden said: “I think for disabled liberation, it’s really important for there to be multiple groups who are all serving different demographics to some extent, and then collaborating together to ensure that everyone’s needs are being met.”

CAC is now discussing how to move forward, developing resources, deciding what contributions members can make, with plans to allow the community to vote on what its next actions should be, and a determination to remain a non-hierarchical organisation.

They also want to work with groups from other marginalised communities, as they hope to address the intersectional nature of the oppression many disabled people face.

And although the focus of their anger is the planned cuts to PIP, they will not ignore the other cuts the government is planning, such as those to the health element of universal credit (see separate story).

McFadden said: “This is very much not going to be a sprint.

“Today we’re talking about PIP, but PIP is not the be-all, end-all of cuts against disabled people.”

CAC’s actions are likely to remain peaceful, but she said: “I really feel like [the government] thought that we would be an easy target, but millennials and younger are very much in the mindset of ‘we’re not going to be quiet’.

“We would really encourage both the government and British society as a whole to consider why they have so quickly jumped to using the most vulnerable population in the country as the scapegoat for our money problems, rather than looking at the very real problems that have led us here.”

The scapegoating and hate crime that disabled people are increasingly reporting was illustrated when last weekend’s action in Exeter was marred by a member of the public who threw a chair at some of the activists.

McFadden said the incident was “quickly diffused”, but she added: “I understand that quite a lot of people in the UK are angry for quite a lot of reasons.

“Everyone is struggling to some extent unless you are wealthy, but really, why are we your scapegoat?”

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