I believe it was very important to be at this protest because the so-called ‘welfare reforms’ are extremely harmful and dangerous to Disabled people, their families and their carers, and were being recklessly rushed through, for minimal financial gain, as something called a ‘money bill’ which evades proper scrutiny in the House of Lords.
Meanwhile the concessions they’d made prior to the 30th June only served to create an inequitable and arbitrary two-tier system, which would have badly affected all new claimants and wouldn’t have even left current claimants safe if they had been re-assessed.
The changes were simply cynical face-saving measures to get the bill passed.
There is little trust that there will be any proper consultation or co-production with disabled people and disabled organisations at a later stage either as promised, when key changes such as the 4-point rule weren’t even consulted on.
Government employment programmes rolled out after 2010, in the wake of the Coalition Government’s austerity programme, have also, much like these latest proposed reforms, placed great weight on fear and economic punishment, subjecting people on benefits to sanctions and conditionality (Marmot, 2020).
The results have been poor, especially for disabled people and those aged over 50, with many of those forced into work taking on low paid, insecure and health-damaging jobs (Marmot, 2020).
What has the new Government learned from all this? Nothing, apparently.
As least I gain some comfort from my fellow activists. There was a strong sense of solidarity between us at the protest and I’ve been heartened by the amount of people who have participated in rallies such as this since these cuts were announced. It was also good to see support from MPs such as Jeremy Corbyn, Shockat Adam and Ian Lavery who spoke up for us at the event.
It was however very disturbing and upsetting to see how an apparent alliance of pro-Israeli and pro-Iranian royal family protestors attempted to provoke us by encroaching on our space and verbally abusing us, calling us ‘parasites’ and telling us to just ‘die’. But at the same time it was great to see how we rose to the occasion and formed a line to shield our community and also protect Jeremy Corbyn from their targeted aggression.
