Today is Blogging Against Disablism Day 2015. It’s the tenth annual day for disabled and non-disabled people to blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination (known as disablism or ableism). It aims to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we’ve made.
An online acquaintance of mine said he was going to write for #BADD2015 in terms of the political parties’ manifestos. Good Lib Dem that I am, I looked forward to hearing some positive stuff about my party. I know there’s lots to talk about.
The Lib Dems have budgeted the £8 billion a year the NHS will need during the next parliament, which is bound to be relevant to the lives of people with disabilities and other long-term conditions, as many of us do seem to see doctors, nurses and specialists often enough to be on a first-name basis with many of them!
The Lib Dems’ unique dedication to improving mental health care is also relevant to many disabled people, both those whose disability is primarily or entirely a matter of mental illness, and those who experience poor mental health as a result of other disabilities. Mental illnesses are some of the most common, and most “invisible,” disabilities in the UK, and at the moment the mental health care many people receive (or fail to) not only doesn’t help them but can actually make their mental health worse.
The Lib Dems have a manifesto for disabled people outlining policies concerning human rights, employment, education, health (including mental health), transport, and carers. From devoting another £3.5bn to mental health care in England over the next Parliament to protecting the Human Rights Act others parties want to eviscerate or get rid of all together, from scrapping Job Centre sanction targets and league tables to tackling disability hate crime, there’s a lot that could be mentioned.
So I must admit I was a little disappointed that the only Lib Dem-related thing mentioned was Nick Clegg leading a meeting of a “mental health taskforce” of “ministers from across government” (ie they’re not all Lib Dems!) which gained infamy a few weeks ago for suggesting mentally ill people could get cognitive-behavioural therapy at the Job Centre – a place many people have very poor experiences of and thus believe this would not help anyone’s mental health.
No mention of any of the other stuff I’ve mentioned here, though it’s all trivially easy to find.
As always, no one is going to make the Lib Dem arguments for us. We have to do it ourselves.
When members of other parties are comparing Ed Milliband to a stroke victim on Facebook it might seem like the bar for being a good party for disabled people is not very high.
That’s still no reason for us not to be ambitious in our attempts, not to make ourselves look good when there’s an election coming up, but just because we know It’s impossible for our society to be free from conformity, poverty and ignorance without robust support for disabled people.
* Holly is an immigrant, bisexual, disabled, and probably can tick most other diversity boxes that you have handy.
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6 Comments
A very good message. I
I don’t know much about disabilities policy (maybe we don’t talk about it enough), but in general helping the disabled has to be a priority.
This is an excellent article, Holly Mathies.
You have highlighted what’s good in the party’s approach and basic aims.
You have also accurately shone a light on some inadequate “campaigning, or lack of it, as well as some shocking attitudes.
Reference to a little disappointment on your part is very restrained. It would appear that every ten years or so we have to remind a new bunch of high flyers in the party that “conformity” comes wrapped in all sorts of prejudices spoken and unspoken.
I look forward to your next article in LDV.
Indeed, it is a good article.
But the Coalition’s record when it comes to disability issues is beyond abysmal. Disabled and mentally ill people have faced the harshest cuts from this government. The DWP’s regime of nonsensical sanctions and the not-fit-for-purpose WCA has become increasingly cruel and has led to at least 40 suicides (source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mps-report-benefits-cuts-driving-5388705).
Danny Alexander used to be a strong campaigner for those on welfare who were too mentally or physically ill to work. The Lib Dems as a whole used to be a champion for disabled and mentally ill people, whether they were on benefits or not. Sadly, as soon as the ink on the coalition agreement was signed, we soon saw Mr. Alexander on the telly supporting cuts aimed at disabled people. The Lib Dems went silent on the DWP regime (when they used to campaign to make it more humane during Labour’s administration). And with IDS in power, the regime instantly became more cruel and inhumane than when it was run by Labour.
Is driving some of the most vulnerable citizens to absolute poverty and suicide a record Lib Dems can be proud of? I don’t think so. Disabled and mentally ill people did not crash the economy. They are not responsible for the deficit. Yet they have been punished for the mistakes of the financial and political class. How many high-class bankers or politicians have been driven to such desperation by austerity that they took their own lives?
Of course, most of society and the right-wing media don’t care that austerity is causing deaths. After all, the people hit hardest are often painted by them as “scroungers”. They’re not a member of Dave’s “hardworking people” or Nick’s “Alarm Clock Britain”. I keep saying this, and I will keep on doing so until action is taken, but if any other section of society (say, comfortable middle-class people) were committing suicide due to austerity, it would be a national scandal.
This sends the message that the lives of sick and mentally ill people on benefits just don’t matter. It sends the message that if you are not working or generating profit for someone, you are worthless and unwanted. And as, inevitably, austerity intensifies, worse could be to come. This is a dangerous road we have embarked on. After all, calling someone who is too ill to work a “scrounger” or “shirker” is not that far removed from one notorious regime’s use of the term “useless eaters”, is it?
Thank you Stephen Campbell.
I’m the online acquaintance Holly mentioned. As BADD specifically focusses on the Disablism we face as disabled people, positives were never going to be a feature of my Manifestly Abusive piece, it was specifically looking at disablism in party political platforms. And I concentrated specifically on contemporary campaigning, which is as well for the Lib-Dems as disabled people are deeply furious at the way they have enabled Tory abuse of us throughout this parliament. About the best I can say for Nick’s JCP mental health careplan is that it’s probably the product of stupidity and an inability to understand the fears of disabled people with respect to DWP rather than calculatedly evil, and that I don’t expect him to be pleased by the vulnerable people it drives out of the welfare system. but drive them out of the system it will.
Thanks to the Lib-Dems and their participation in the Coalition we’ve faced stigmatisation that has convinced the man in the street we’re all faking scroungers, when we walk the streets as disabled people it is in fear of being attacked (as one of the BADD posts documents in shocking detail). Thanks to the Lib-Dems voting for the Welfare Reform Act and voting down amendments on measures which turned the stomach of even former hardline Thatcherite ministers, I’m one of hundreds of thousands of disabled people recognised as not fit to work, yet expected to survive on an income of precisely zero (time-limited Contributory ESA). Over a hundred disabled people a week are losing their Motability vehicle, not because they are not disabled, but because the Lib-Dems voted through the 20% cut in disabled people covered by PIP rather than DLA, and, as with other disability cuts, most of the impact has been delayed until after the election in order to deliberately disguise the reality from the voters. If you can stagger 20m you are not now eligible for Higher Rate Mobility – how far can you get in 20m? Can you get to your bank? The Post Office? Your Chemist’s? Your GP’s? The Lib Dems, as loyal coalition members, tell us that if we can walk this far than we don’t need your help. Then there’s the Bedroom Tax, the freezing of Employment Support Allowance – ‘but not disability benefits’, Danny Alexander’s Treasury proclaims, never mind the disabled people dependent on ESA as their only income, never mind ESA was specifically designed as a disability benefit. Cuts, lies and stigmatisation, that’s the legacy of a Lib-Dem government for disabled people.
These are the policies disabled people see when we look at the Lib Dems, the ones that are driving people to suicide, or killing them because sanctions mean they can’t refrigerate their insulin. This is the reality I would have written about had I chosen to address every aspect of Lib-Dem policy rather than just the disablism apparent in electoral platforms. You got off lightly.
And then your leaders say ‘It wasn’t us, it was the Tories’. and my contempt for your party knows no bounds.