By Laurie Penny - 24 January 2011 - New StatesmanDisabled people and their allies are fighting back against cuts - shame on the rest of us if we do not fight with them.
Of all the obdurate lies peddled by the Conservative party in the run-up to the last General Election, perhaps the most callous was when Tory disability spokesperson Mark Harmer told key representatives of Britain's millions of disabled and mentally unwell citizens "I don't think disabled people have anything to fear from a Conservative government". It turns out that disabled people have a great deal to fear.
Despite a fraud rate of just 1%, the government is determined to toss 500,000 people who currently rely on sickness benefits into the open arms of the bleakest labour market in a generation, to cut already meagre disability stipends to starvation levels, to confiscate mobility scooters and community groups from the most needy, and to remove key services that make life bearable for thousands of families with vulnerable relatives. The party assures us that someone's got to pick up the tab for the recklessness of millionaire financiers. So, naturally, they're going to start with the disabled and the mentally ill.
Disabled people, their friends, family members and allies, have much to fear - and much to fight. Today has been designated a national day of action against benefit cuts, and resistance groups across the country will be staging protests and spreading the word about how the government's plans to dismantle most of the welfare state and privatise the rest will affect them. Housing benefit cuts mean I'm probably going to lose my home," says Carole, 32, "but the removal of the Incapacity Benefit safety net means that I'm terrified of looking for work. If I'm made to do a job I'm not well enough for and have to leave, I'll be left penniless. I don't know what to do."
Many of the demonstrations will target private companies like Atos Origin, which have been given government tender to impose punitive and - studies have shown - largely unreliable medical testing of welfare claimants before forcing the sick to seek work that even the healthy can't get. Campaigns like Benefit Claimants Fight Back are quite clear what they think about these companies - they are "poverty pimps".
