Disabled people need to be at the heart of Left Unity: here’s why

Merry Cross, a supporter of the Left Unity initiative and a  member of Disabled People Against the Cuts [DPAC], explains the importance of disability struggles to building the new movement we all want

The attacks on benefit claimants began quietly during the last Labour administration, in 2008, with the introduction of the Work Capability Assessment for sick and disabled people. It took the disability movement a while to realise what it was really about, but it became much more vicious under the current coalition government. Some of you will be aware of the appalling numbers of people dying within six weeks of their assessment; according to the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) own figures, this was 10,600 in just 11 months of 2011. We don’t yet have more up-to-date figures, and the DWP do not record what percentage of those deaths related to terminal illnesses endured by claimants who were still dragged in for assessment.

Protesters block Regent St

You are probably aware of the collusion of much of the tabloid press with the government’s agenda and the demonisation of disabled and sick people as cheats and scroungers. You may not realise that one result of this has been a horrifying 40% increase in hate crime against disabled people as well is a massive rise in abuse experienced by people in their own homes or residential institutions. We have now been hit not only by this, but by the closure to new applicants of the Independent Living Fund (for the most profoundly disabled people who wish to live in their own homes) to be closed completely in 2015, housing benefit cap, loss of the Disability Living Allowance as Personal Independence Payment for far fewer people is introduced, council tax increases and, of course, the bedroom tax too, come April.

As the horrors of the Work Capability Assessment (or WCA), as conducted by ATOS, became clear, the movement began to probe the background to this slashing of the numbers of people able to get support when they were either seriously ill or disabled. What we uncovered is, I believe, of great importance to understanding the nature of the whole agenda of destroying the welfare state.

The model of disability underlying the WCA is called the biopsychosocial model. Needless to say it was never developed by disabled people and nor do we approve of it. It had begun to be developed back in the 80s but has been cruelly sharpened by Prof (now Sir) Mansell Aylward. Despite claiming to some activists last year, that he no longer considered it was being used appropriately, because assessments actually pay no heed to social factors whatsoever, he continues to travel the world promoting it as an excellent way to withdraw benefits from disabled and sick people. What this model really does is focus primarily on people’s attitudes to their own condition as if a positive attitude would solve everything and get them back into work. The most obvious debilitating conditions tend to be dismissed as irrelevant as do most of the reports by consultants and GPs. So, for example, a man with deteriorating multiple sclerosis was found fit for work because he could lift an empty cardboard box once during the assessment. Needless to say this has no bearing whatsoever on the world of work, especially when it comes to employers’ willingness to take on sick or disabled people.

So how has all this come about? Some of you won’t be surprised to learn that it has its roots in the intervention of a large private company as far back as 1992. This company, Unum Insurance, once the Unum Provident, is the largest disability insurer in the world. Its origins are in the United States where, as Michael Meacher pointed out in the Parliamentary debate in January, it has been condemned in many states by the judiciary as a fraudulent company and disability denier. Nevertheless it has worked with government to build to this point, where as more and more people are thrown off benefits, the hope is that they will turn to Unum for employment insurance – assuming they ever get another job. So guess which company initially bankrolled Aylward’s Department of the University of Cardiff, to develop the biopsychosocial model and ensure it was used by government. Yes it was Unum.

To me then this indicates one of the greatest challenges for any party that might seek to govern and wished to rebuild the already decimated welfare state. How would the demands and pressures of large multinationals be resisted? (It is somewhat depressing for me that I remember asking this question at hustings about 20 years ago!)

Whilst we may be able to re-nationalise utilities and services such as the railways, it would surely take global unity on an astonishing scale to effectively diminish the power of the multinationals.

Anyway the point is that as a relatively small minority with a very small “voice”, it is instructive that disabled people were the first targets. It is also instructive how long it took the left to recognise what was being done to us. Had they done so earlier and supported us appropriately, it may have blown the whistle on the whole so-called welfare reform agenda. In the movement we remember that the gas chambers of Nazi Germany were perfected on disabled people. Conversely we also recognise that when buildings, institutions, systems et cetera are made fully accessible to disabled people, the entire community benefits. If that needs explaining, it is the subject of another article!

A woman on her wheelchair clashes with riot police in the centre of La Paz, February 23, 2012. Hundreds of people with disabilities arrived in La Paz after completing a protest march of some 1600 km over a hundred days to demand that Bolivia’s government recognise and support people with disability

So I believe that Left Unity would be well advised to keep the disability movement firmly at its centre in order to ensure the widest and best possible perspective. This does require commitment to learning about access issues and working hard to provide access to information and of course meetings. I do not pretend that that is simple, but nor would we have to reinvent the wheel. There is plenty of information out there already about how to do it. There are also plenty of articulate disability activists to turn to for help. So the only question is, does the will exist to do this?

Thanks to Mo Stewart for research work.