Why we need a NEW ‘Disabled People’s Resistance Movement’ by Bob Williams-Findley.

“We have campaign groups like DPAC and BT, and I’m aware of the effort that is going into what disabled people are doing right now, but I believe we need to have a visible “resistance movement” which brings all the strands together in a ‘Rock Against Racism’ style approach.

“This doesn’t need to be organised in the traditional Disabled People’s Organisations style; our central drive has to be to gather support for disabled people in face of the savage attacks that are falling upon us.

“This ‘movement’ needs to be militant, visible, and extremely challenging – I agree with linking with UK Uncut and employing direct action methods to get our message across – we also need to use other media and alternative forms of protest too. Working with non-disabled people will be essential.

“Duncan Smith has demonstrated that the Government has a ‘kill or exploit’ policy which is creeping nearer and nearer to the Nazis’ T4 programme. Our lives ARE at risk; it’s no longer about being excluded or marginalised and offered inadequate services – the fact IDS used the word “fester” transforms the landscape – people with impairments are now viewed as “a sickness” – the same type of landscape the Nazis created for the Jews and other ‘unacceptable groups’.

“No doubt he’ll claim he used “fester” to mean ‘left without support’, but we know that this is bollocks because the Government like all of those before them maintain our social oppression. The mask has slipped, finally the ruling elite reveal their resentment and contempt for the “ABNORMAL, CRIPPLES and FREAKS” who have been burdensome due to the Welfare State. The knives are out; they ARE out to get us!

“We MUST mount a resistance, fighting cuts and oppressive policies, is not enough in relation to this ideological onslaught – it is a State run ‘hate campaign’ and more and more disabled people will die.

“I’m not going over the top or being alarmist, this is a measured political analysis of our current situation. Me simply putting out a “call to arms” will achieve nothing in itself; what is required is for disabled people, especially activists, to come together to shape our destiny – unless there is a genuine effort made to build a resistance movement, many of us will not have a future.”

Bob Williams-Findley is well known within the disabled people’s movement both as an academic and an activist. Please leave your responses to Bob’s article within the comments section of this blog. Thankyou.

The passing of a legend – Vic Finklestein

Photograph of Vic Finklestein 2011

Having been out of things for most of the last 12 months I was saddened to hear that the political activist and god-father of the disabled people’s movement Vic Finkelstein had recently died aged 73.

Originally deported from South Africa in the 60′s for his support of the anti-apartheid movement, Vic was the main architect of ‘The Fundamental Principles of Disability’, published in 1975, which argued that the problems faced by disabled people were caused by society’s failure to take account of their needs, not by their impairments.

In 1972 when Paul Hunt wrote his now famous letter to the Guardian, calling for a radical new disability organisation to be formed, Vic eagerly got involved along with other politically active disabled people in the UK.

It was the resulting organisation, called the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation, that published ‘The Fundamental Principles of Disability’. Not only was Vic a key participant in the discussions that produced this document, but he was the main drafter of it.

He was also prominent in setting up the BritishCouncil of Organisations of Disabled People in 1981 and became its first chair. In the same year he represented Britain at the first world congress, established by Disabled Peoples’ International.

‘To deny or not to deny disability’ by Vic Finkelsteinhas been hugely influential to countless numbers of both disabled and non disabled people new to the Social Model. Both simple and profound, it shows how that it is society that creates the barriers, and not our ‘defective’ minds and bodies, as the Medical Model would have us believe.

Vic was also instrumental in setting up the first Open University Disability Study courses, working with Colin Barnes and others at Leeds University.

My own memories of Vic are based around the comments he used to send me whenever one of my cartoons had caught his attention. Not one to mince words was our Vic and I learned a lot from him in this way. He’ll be sadly missed.

The Guardian’s obituary of Vic can be found by clicking on this link.

 

 

 

 

He’s back!

Crippen's Rogues Gallery cartoon

Just when you’ve all been lulled into a false sense of security and felt able to visit this blog section without the need for extra double-gusset strength protection, I’m afraid I have to break the news to you that … I’m back!

Described by one of my editors as ‘that old curmudgeon’ – A crusty irascible cantankerous old person full of stubborn ideas – I’ve left my bed of pain and incontinence and have once again picked up my pen ready to do battle on behalf of crips everywhere.

One thing I have noticed is that more and more non-disabled people, especially members of the Coalition, are joining the ranks of those who seem to enjoy giving us all a good kicking. What with companies taking contracts away from groups and organisations of disabled people (A4e), newspapers painting us all as benefits scroungers, Lansley wrecking our NHS, and the rest of the government dismantling what protective legislation that we did have and slowly but surely pushing us back towards the work house.

Plenty of material for me to get my teeth into then … watch this space!

Note: Crippen has also reopened his blog on the Disability Arts on Line web site. Click here to view. There’s also a new Flickr site where you can see about 200 of Crippen cartoons – Click here to view that. And if you’re a real masochist, you can visit his Facebook page by clicking here.

 

The spread of Atos tentacles

Atos tentacles

Atos Origin, the french owned company who undertake the ‘work capability assessment’ for the UK government have spread their tentacles still further into the world of disabled people.

Already a ‘worldwide partner’ of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), Atos founder and former chair Bernard Bourigeaud, has now been invited to join the IPC as a member of the Governing Board.

Bourigeaud, a non-disabled person who now runs his own consulting company, will take his place alongside the 14 other members of the Governing Board with immediate effect and therefore be part of the body primarily responsible for the implementation of policies and direction of the Paralympic Movement.

Bob Williams Findlay, a spokesperson for Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) commented:

“The chief agent of people’s oppression currently in the UK is Atos, and whilst I fully understand the outrage over the appointment of Bernard Bourigeaud as a co-opted member of the Governing Board of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), I can’t say I’m surprised … whilst western capitalist states may be slashing their welfare budgets, global corporations such as Atos, continue to exploit the potential markets surrounding medicine, ill health and disability.”

You can read more by Bob on the DPAC web site.

Click here to access the DPAC web site.

Black Triangle, another anti-cuts organisation of disabled people based in Scotland have called for a boycott of the Paralympics. John McArdle, Black Triangle’s facilitator told me:

“In a recent survey by Scope, 64% of all respondents said that they see the Paralympics as an opportunity for disabled people. We agree; it is an opportunity for grassroots disabled people and disabled people’s organisations to UNITE TOGETHER and BOYCOTT this event!”

You can read more what John has to say about this on the Black Triangle web site.

Please click here to access the Black Triangle web site.

No future for the NHS

Crippen's No Future cartoon

Recent legal advice given to 38 Degrees, the ‘Save our NHS’ campaigning group makes sobering reading. It states that the government’s changes to the NHS plans could pave the way for a shift towards a US-style health system, where private companies profit at the expense of patient care and those without money go untreated.

Barrister Rebecca Haynes found that the government’s plans could pave the way for private healthcare companies and their lawyers to benefit most from changes, not patients. Another barrister, Stephen Cragg, found that we were right to be worried that Andrew Lansley was planning to remove his duty to provide our NHS.

Conservative MPs are being told by their bosses these changes fit with party ideology. But many would be horrified to know that the NHS would be subject to European competition laws and front-line services could be held up with procurement red tape. 38 Degrees are urging people to lobby these MPs who are due to vote on massive changes to our NHS in a few days time.

They state that if enough people email now, it could tip the balance. To find out how to do this, click on this link.

38 Degrees’ independent lawyers have identified two major problems in the new legislation:

1. The Secretary of State’s legal duty to provide a health service will be scrapped. On top of that, a new “hands-off clause” removes the government’s powers to oversee local consortia and guarantee the level of service wherever we live. We can expect increases in postcode lotteries – and less ways to hold the government to account if the service deteriorates.
2. The NHS will almost certainly be subject to UK and EU competition law and the reach of procurement law rules will extend across all NHS commissioners. Private health companies will be able to take new NHS commissioning groups to court if they don’t win contracts. Scarce public money could be tied up in legal wrangles instead of hospital beds. Meanwhile, the legislation lifts the cap on NHS hospitals filling beds with private patients.

So who are MPs going to listen to when casting their vote – you, or lobbyists from private health companies? This is our NHS, and it’s up to us to defend it. Email your MP now by clicking on this link.

ATOS – the facts

Crippen's Atos appeals cartoon

Several web sites and blogs carrying information about ATOS, the french owned company who undertake the ‘work capability assessment’ for the UK government have been forced to close down after receiving legal threats.

ATOS, whose parent company is run by a former French finance minister, Thierry Breton, have thrown the full weight of their legal department against several disabled groups and individuals who have been attempting to share information about their experiences during the assessment process.

Click here to access the link to one such blog.

So, here are some unequivocal facts about ATOS, based upon both their own and the UK government’s published figures, information from a cross party select committee, along with information published by various investigative journalists. Let’s see what their legal department make of this?!

Cross party select committee savage ATOS

Last month ATOS, the French-owned company who are paid by the government to assess people claiming disability benefits, was savaged by a cross-party work and pensions select committee after it found that many people had “not received the level of service … which they can reasonably expect” when undergoing the government’s controversial ‘work capability assessment’.

It is understood that these concerns over the treatment of “vulnerable people” will add to fears over the pace and radical agenda behind the government’s welfare-to-work policy, a policy which led to protests in Westminster earlier this year by thousands of disabled people.

MPs further claimed that a combination of the company’s conduct and the test itself had prompted “fear and anxiety among vulnerable people throughout the country”.

The true cost of ATOS

ATOS, who have just been granted a three-year extension on their contract to assess people claiming disability benefits, are currently being paid £100 million a year to assess around 11,000 benefit claimants a week.

But the true figure is half as much again, as almost 45% of those people who are denied benefits by ATOS have them reinstated on appeal, a process that costs the taxpayer an additional £50m a year.

Therefore, if I’ve got my maths right, it’s currently costing the british tax payer £150 million to have about half a million claiments processed a year – four out of ten of which are later found to have been assessed wrongly!

ATOS doctors under investigation by GMC

Twelve doctors employed by ATOS are under investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC) over allegations of improper conduct. The doctors face being struck off if they are found not to have put the care of patients first.

The Observer newspaper claims that seven of the doctors have been under investigation for more than seven months. The other five were placed under investigation this year following complaints about their conduct.

Is MP Davies the real voice of the CONDEMs?!

Crippen's Puppet Man cartoon

According to conservative MP Philip Davies, disabled people should not expect to be offered the same pay rate as non-disabled individuals.

Davies, who has previously referred to people with learning, developmental, and physical disabilities as “scroungers,” said that they should accept less than the minimum wage in order to secure a job and stop having to be dependent upon benefits.

Davies claimed “people with disabilities” or who had “mental health problems” were disadvantaged in the workplace because they had to compete with able-bodied candidates for jobs.  He stated that it was inevitable that the employer would take on the person who hasn’t got any health problems given that they were both going to be having to be paid the same rate.

“Given that some of those people with a learning disability clearly, by definition, can’t be as productive in their work as somebody who hasn’t got a disability of that nature, then it was inevitable that given that the employer was going to have pay them both the same they were going to take on the person who was going to be more productive, less of a risk, and that was doing the disabled a huge disservice.” he told the House of Commons.

Naturally enough there’s been a massive response from disabled people throughout the UK. Most point out that the ten million disabled people in the UK already face countless ingrained prejudices in the working world. By describing us as a source of cheap labour, Davies is making it even more difficult for us to overcome these prejudices.

Even the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have felt the need to responded (having been conspicuous by its absence in most other disability related issues recently!). A spokesperson for the EHRC commented: “This is nonsense. It shows a total lack of understanding of the abilities and aspirations of Mr Davies’ disabled constituents. Disabled people have the right to work and to be treated equally in the workplace … We will be writing to Mr Davies in due course to remind him of his responsibilities.”

Davies, MP for Shipley and ‘parliamentary spokesman’ for the Campaign Against Political Correctness lobby group is no stranger to the EHRC. Over the past several years he has bombarded the government’s equalities watchdog with a series of extraordinary letters about race and sex discrimination, in a one-man campaign against ‘political correctness’.

What is interesting though, is that Davies never seems to be rebuked by the party leaders. Almost as if he’s the litmus paper they occasionally use to test out the public’s attitudes around possibly sensitive issues?!

They don’t give ATOS!

Crippen's ATOS cartoon

Many disabled people who have been directly affected by the ATOS Work Capability Assessment have been trying to share their experiences by coming together on Face Book, on blogs and on web sites.

But several blog creators have already been threatened with legal action unless they closed down their blog. The most recent of these being the ATOS Victims Group blog.

And from personal experience I know how vulnerable the Face Book sites are to attack, as I’ve had several of mine hacked and then closed down. Other people are reporting comments being erased from their pages and in some cases mis-information being inserted which appear to come from the account holders. Protest groups like Disabled People Against the Cuts (DPAC) have been busy backing up their Face Book files in anticipation of being hacked and shut down in this way.

Some disabled led web sites are also under attack and a couple have resorted to hosting their web sites off-shore (through a proxy server) which makes them more difficult to hack. These sites include the Black Triangle Protest Group, a group dedicated to the memory of the life of Edinburgh based disabled poet and author, Paul Reekie, who, after being notified by the Department for Work and Pensions that his benefits had been cancelled as the result of a Work Capability Assessment, tragically took his own life.

The focus for these cyber attacks seemed to be centred around comments directed against ATOS, the company commissioned by the government to carry out work capability assessments against benefits claimants. You’ll recall a recent Crippen blog (‘Sledge Hammer Tactics’) in which I addressed some of the issues around the amount of money being thrown at this project by the government.

So, how do we go about collecting all of this hard evidence from people who have been wrongly assessed by ATOS? It seems a simple enough task, especially as there must now be hundreds of disabled people who have been abused of their rights in this way. Such evidence will prove that ATOS are not ‘fit for purpose’ and should be removed from the whole benefits process as soon as possible.

I do remember hearing on the grapevine that a couple of the bigger charities were addressing this issue. Does anyone have any information on this? And I know that Brighton based Green MP Caroline Lucas has been acting on behalf of several of her constituants who have been wrongly assessed by ATOS. Are there other MPs doing similiar work

I’m happy for this blog to become a sign posting facility if there are people out there collecting this evidence, and other disabled people needing to locate them with experiences of their own. Leave your comment in the appropriate section of this blog or, if it feels safer, send me an email to ‘daveluptoncartoons@live.co.uk’ and mark the subject heading ATOS experiences. I’ll be sure to pass the information along.

Update

Since writing this blog a new group has risen from the ashes. Click here to open the new ATOS survivors blog.

Precautionary measures?!

Precautionary

It strikes me as strange that this government haven’t safe-guarded themselves by keeping the police forces around the country happy. As more and more people take to the streets in protest against the ConDem’s slash and burn tactics, I would have thought that they are going to need the boys and girls in blue to maintain public order and keep party members safe. But with the various police forces up and down the country being faced with their own cuts, there’s now a strong possiblity that some police officers will be joining in the protests.

I suspect that this government would initially react by playing one force off against another – having the Met control a protest march by the Yorkshire Constabulary for example. Although apart from adding further to the North-South divide if they did do this, I think it would allow for the more anarchistic elements of protest to exploit this and capitalise on the divisions created. Not something that Mr C and his cronies would want I suspect

History has shown us that in this sort of situation governments start to manipulate information, creating an atmosphere of fear that allows for new ‘emergency’ measurers to be implemented. New laws are rushed through that allow for people’s civil rights to be ignored or crushed under foot by those seeking to establish scapegoats for the situation that the country finds itself in … seem familiar?!

Let’s hope that there’s a whistle blower in government who is keeping watch for those signs of yet more political control appearing. Bulk orders for jack boots and black uniform material, the building of accessible internment camps to house those of us who are deemed too dangerous to be at large. It wouldn’t really suprise me as to what lengths the present government will go in order to recreate society in its own distorted image.

Keep a careful watch brothers and sisters. It’s not a big step for us to be branded tomorrow’s terrorists if this government has its way.

You can see more Crippen on the Disability Arts on Line blog by clicking here.

Defend our right to protest

Crippen's riot police cartoon

I’m not so naive as to imagine that all police officers model themselves on Dixon of Dock Green (yes, I am old enough to remember him!) nor have I ever challenged the belief that there are a few bad apples in the constabulary barrel. But I must confess to having had my view of the local friendly bobby severely challenged of late.

I’ve spoken to a wide variety of people of all ages over the past several weeks who have taken part in the various protests organised against the cuts to services. These are ordinary, law abiding citizens who feel that the Coalition is doing too much damage to our society without them making some kind of protest.

Some of the people who have been on both local and national protest marches have spoken about the aggressive tactics employed by the police when ‘controlling’ these events; the officers seemingly viewing each protester as a potential trouble-maker, and treating them all accordingly.

One middle aged woman I spoke to had attended a local protest rally and had stood listening to speakers whilst holding a banner that read ‘no more cuts!’. When she decided to leave, her protest having been made, she approached the cordon of police who had surrounded the protesters and asked to be allowed through. A young woman officer, in full riot gear started to scream at her “get back you scum” and began pushing her back with her riot shield. The woman, who works as a support worker for a disabled person, told me that she had never encountered such violence from a person before, and that it had left her shocked and in tears.

Immediately after this encounter, she told me that the whole police line began surging forward and pushing into the crowd with their shields, starting a movement that resulted in all of the protesters being corralled into a nearby cul-de-sac. When people tried to leave they were forcibly pushed back.

When a small group of older protesters went forward to try and reason with the officers, they were confronted with batons being beaten against shields and officers shouting at them. The whole period of being ‘kettled’ in this way lasted for over two hours and resulted in our woman protester feeling that her right to peaceful protest had been torn to shreds by the people that she believed were there to protect her!

She told me: “If I hadn’t been there to witness it myself, I wouldn’t have believed how aggressive and abusive our police have become.”

This is not the only story relating to ordinary people who have tried to assert their right to peaceful protest and have been on the receiving end of what another protester described to me as these ‘storm trooper tactics’.

As another person commented to me: “It seems so hypocritical when our government is the first to point its finger at other regimes where the right to protest has been removed and violence inflicted upon ordinary people by soldiers and police.”

For further accounts from people who have attended some of the anti-cuts protests around the country, and who have experienced similiar treatment you can visit the ‘defend the right to protest’ web site by clicking here.