The Labour government’s attack on disabled people’s support has led to a “massive resurgence” in the disabled people’s movement in the last year, a protest outside the party’s annual conference has heard.
Monday’s protest highlighted Labour’s failure to stop the “slow violence” that has led to the killing of countless disabled benefit claimants at the hands of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and the government’s refusal to act on the genocide in Gaza.
The Genocide Abroad, Democide at Home protest was held just outside the boundary fence of Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool.
The speeches were at one point being watched by nearly 100 protesters and passers-by.
The aim of the protest (pictured) was to draw parallels and links between the genocide in Gaza and the “democide at home”, with activists believing that thousands of disabled people have been killed by Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) state violence in the last 15 years.
But it also expressed solidarity with trans rights activists and called for links between the three movements.
The protest began with a recording of the names of more than 100 disabled people who had lost their lives through DWP’s actions and failings, including Errol Graham, Jodey Whiting, Stephen Carré, Roy Curtis and Faiza Ahmed and more recent victims of DWP bureaucratic violence such as Tracie, Kevin Gale, and David.
The protest was organised by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) branches from Merseyside, Leeds, Manchester and York.
Rick Burgess, from Manchester DPAC, said the Labour government had not tried to reverse the Conservative cuts to disability support but instead “attempted to push farther and further”.
He said the attempted cuts to personal independence payment would have led “to many more deaths”, but disabled people forced the government to back down.
He said: “We did that. We started the end of this absolutely pathetic and failed Starmer government.”
He then led a chant of “no more benefit deaths”.
Burgess added later: “We still have a political system that absolutely denies disabled people’s right to live a good life on equal terms with everyone else.
“We need social security, we need social care, and we need social justice.”
Referring to Gaza, he said: “If governments see genocide is a viable policy solution, they will start thinking about using it elsewhere.”
Billie Gibson, from Crips Against Cuts Merseyside, led a series of chants, including “Keir Starmer, disabled harmer” and “don’t cut PIP, tax the rich”, before telling the protest that the “warfare on disabled people needs to stop”.
Dr China Mills, who leads the Deaths by Welfare project at Healing Justice Ldn, told protesters: “Disabled people have been telling us for well over a decade that the welfare system is killing people, and Labour, from New Labour to now, have cooked up many of the policies that kill people.
“People are being killed because the government doesn’t think that disabled people matter or have any value and because to them work equals worth.
“We think that these killings go deeper than mistakes or flaws in the system.
“The system isn’t broken; it is functioning exactly as it was designed.”
Jessica Ryan, from Disability Rebellion, which helped promote the protest online for those who could not attend in person, highlighted the impact of Labour’s cuts on the next generation of disabled people, and the unfairness of the government’s treatment of disabled people.
Rhi, from Merseyside DPAC, but also a researcher for the Trans Safety Network, said: “This is a government that seems extremely determined to be remembered for its genocidal foreign policy and its democidal domestic policy, as well as attacking our right to protest.
“As a disabled and trans person, I have long insisted that disabled people’s liberation and trans people’s liberation will be one and the same fight, and that our oppression is built with the same tools, but these last few years have made this increasingly clear to more and more of us.
“It is a terrifying time to be a disabled person in the UK right now and it is a terrifying time to be a trans person here, too.
“Disabled people and trans people are under attack but when we join together to fight back, we are much, much stronger.”
Emma Hewitt, from Leeds DPAC, said she had been a disability rights activist for 20 years but it had only been in the last 18 months that she had “really seen the attacks on us”.
She said: “It’s not just the fact that they are cutting our services, it’s the fact that they are attacking us, they are attacking our right to live.
“It’s so painful that not only do they not care about us, but they are quite happy to spend the money that we need for our support on genocide (in Gaza).
“There has been a massive resurgence in the disabled people’s movement, and it just fills me with so much hope.
“Every town in this country, every city, has got a disability rights group, not just Disabled People Against Cuts, we’ve got Crips Against Cuts, who are this amazing new group, Disability Rebellion, you guys are my heroes, you’ve been finding new ways for us to be able to campaign so no-one gets left behind, so everyone has a voice.”
Disabled activist Flick Williams, from York DPAC, said it was “so important” to be at the protest because the imminent DWP white paper – which is expected to include a series of further cuts to benefits – will be published later this year.
She said she had been struck by the names of those who had been killed due to DWP “slow violence”.
She said: “I just thought: there are going to be so many more.”
Another disabled activist, Klint Durham, told DNS he had travelled to Liverpool from Leeds to show his “contempt for the Labour government and its attack on disabled people and the welfare cuts”.
After 14 years of Conservative austerity, he said, he could not believe that a Labour government “would think to introduce more cuts”, and that it was “very clear” that the Labour-run DWP needed to “listen to organisations of disabled people and not charities”.
*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press
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