We will keep fighting, disabled activists warn DWP as they protest against benefit cuts outside Tate Modern

Disabled people have warned the Labour government that they will “not go quietly” and plan to keep fighting its plans to cut spending on their benefits by billions of pounds a year, as they staged a dramatic “die-in” outside a London landmark.

The protest outside the Tate Modern art gallery on the south bank of the Thames (pictured) – led by disabled actors and artists – was held to remember all those who have died because of cuts and all those who might die if the government’s cuts go ahead.

There was also a parallel protest online, with disabled people contributing pictures of their own die-ins with homemade placards.

Disabled writer and actor Polly Wiseman, one of the organisers of the Fight4Life protest, told activists gathered outside Tate Modern on Tuesday that they had all gathered there in “fear and sorrow and solidarity, but mostly in anger”.

She said the lives of disabled people were at risk from the “most heinous disability cuts any of us have ever seen”.

The Fight4Life campaign was set up by disabled people who will be directly affected by the cuts to universal credit and PIP and are determined to fight back.

Tamm Reynolds, who performs as Midgitte Bardot, told protesters that she believed disabled people had so far been “a bit too polite and a bit too understanding” and needed to “start being unreasonable” and “start kicking back”.

Another disabled activist, Priscilla Eyles, said the government had failed to “reckon with how we will fight back” and that Labour had proved to be even worse than the last Conservative government.

She said the cuts were “an intersectional issue”, and that the government’s cuts to Access to Work “shows you all you need to know about how much they care about whether we actually work or not”.

Ian Jones, co-founder of the WOWpetition, spoke of the demands he and others had made of the coalition government in the 2010s to carry out a cumulative assessment of the impact of the austerity cuts on disabled people.

He said Labour had supported those campaigns, and he said it was also important to remember that disability benefit deaths had started under a Labour government, and he pointed to the suicide of Stephen Carré in January 2010.

He said: “The first coroner’s report landed on Yvette Cooper’s* desk.

“Labour started the cull of us, let’s stop them finishing it.”

Another disabled activist, Michael, said he would no longer be entitled to personal independence payment (PIP) if the government cuts become law.

He said the “meagre amount of £290 a month makes my life go from a miserable no-reason-to-exist to being able to do little things that give glimmers of hope”.

Daniel Hooks told the protest that cuts to disability support “cost lives” and that many disabled people have been “marginalised and separated from society, but we won’t go quietly”.

Paul Atherton, who said he had been fighting DWP’s systems for more than 20 years, including a successful two-year judicial review battle to force the department to communicate with him by email, said it had been hugely expensive for the government to fight his case.

He said: “If the government is serious about cutting costs, look after us, don’t fight us.”

Edward, a wheelchair-user, said the cuts were “absolutely disgusting”.

He said: “The government is coming after disabled people in a big way.”

And he said disabled people were struggling to survive even before the cuts, and there was an “enormous gap” between what is provided through PIP and the much higher disability-related costs disabled people face.

He said: “If you take away vital money from people… it will only force more people into poverty.”

Edward said he used his PIP for medication that costs hundreds of pounds a month, which he would not be able to afford if he lost his PIP, and this would leave him unable to consider working.

Arti Dillon, a member of the Unite union and Disabled People Against Cuts, said disabled people had lost so much over the last 15 years and “we have to keep standing up, and it’s so tough”.

She said the knock-on effects of the cuts would worsen the crises in social care and homelessness.

She said: “This is the worst and barbaric side of capitalism.

“They are dividing us racially, disability, trans brothers and sisters and comrades, as much as they can.

“The concentration of wealth is continuing, and they are doing it on the backs of us.”

*Cooper was Labour’s work and pensions secretary from June 2009 until the general election in May 2010

**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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