Frustration with Labour resurfaces at TUC disabled workers’ event

Union and Labour activists have expressed fresh fears that the party will fail to fight for the rights of disabled people if it wins power at the next general election.

They spoke out at an online meeting, held by the TUC, to mark UK Disability History Month and examine how the cost-of-living crisis has been impacting disabled people.

Panellists were asked by one union activist who was attending the event if they thought a Labour government under Keir Starmer would prioritise disability issues.

Ann Galpin, co-chair of the TUC disabled workers’ committee, and herself a disabled Labour member, said she had been “very disappointed” to learn that the party had backtracked on its commitment to increase disabled and black members’ representation within party structures.

Disability News Service reported earlier this month how Labour’s national executive committee had decided it would be too expensive to set up national and regional committees for its disabled members and hold a disabled members’ conference, and had decided instead to focus funding on winning the next general election.

It made a similar decision to backtrack on an agreement to set up party structures for black, Asian and minority ethnic members.

Galpin, who also chairs the disabled members’ council of the National Union of Journalists, said: “That to me, as a committed Labour activist, and disabled worker, and disabled person, is very disheartening.

“If we can’t be true and say that here, how can we say it?

“I know that the TUC will do everything that it can, I know that our DPOs [disabled people’s organisations] do everything that they can, but how can we continue to have hope when we get kicks like that?”

Jon Luxton, who has been a special adviser on disability to the Welsh government for the last three years and is also a Labour party member, said Galpin had made “a very good point”.

Colleen Johnson, a member of the TUC disabled workers’ committee and a representative of the National Education Union, said her optimism had disappeared under Starmer’s leadership.

She said: “A few years ago, when there were different folks at the helm, I would absolutely be certain that [disabled people’s rights would have been prioritised] and it’s quite an inspiring thought really.”

She said people at senior levels of the party, such as shadow chancellor John McDonnell, had listened to disabled people and had been “asking questions” under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

She said: “A few years ago, I think I was incredibly optimistic. I’m just so downhearted really that all of that seems to have disappeared.”

Johnson also highlighted the “obsession” with “working people” among senior Labour figures.

At this year’s party conference, leading party activists accused Starmer of using “divisive rhetoric” and of a “deliberate” failure to mention disabled people and those who are out of work in his main conference speech (pictured).

He mentioned “working people” 25 times in his 5,400-word speech but failed to mention disabled people once as he addressed the annual conference in Liverpool.

Johnson said: “I know that we are all members of the TUC, some of the panellists are members of the TUC disabled workers’ committee, but there is a broader group of disabled people who are unable or only partly able to work, and this obsession, every few sentences, with working people, really worries me.

“So I’m not convinced yet, but we can only hope.”

Dave Allan, co-chair of the TUC disabled workers’ committee, and a member of the Unite union, said: “We have had meetings with Starmer and he has made certain categorical promises.

“He has promised that a Labour government will fully implement into UK law the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

“He has promised to have a new Equality Act, he has promised to repeal all the anti-trade union legislation.”

But Allan said that austerity “isn’t a crisis of a Conservative or a Labour government, it’s a crisis of capitalism, and unless you are prepared to take on capitalism, you cannot make the reforms that the disabled community would require”.

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