Hello again, on ‘IDPD2024!’
It’s been a while since I wrote this because among other things, I’ve been deep in writing my book. And after spending so long focusing on writing about how the government and media systematically and deliberately turned the public against disabled people to the point where they didn’t care when they let us all die (multiple times), its nice to be back to reality and less bleaker topics.
LOL if only.
It seems Keir and his lot don’t ever want me to end this book as they just keep giving me more and things to write about. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be left out and ensure he has a prime place in next years summer bestseller (hopefully) Ramping Up Rights: An Unfinished History of British Disability Activism (out 3 July 2025, available to preorder now).
As my therapist said to me just last week when I expressed concern about how my house was a shit tip whilst I focused on pushing out thousands of words and supporting sick loved ones:
It’ll still be there when you’re done.
Unfortunately, the only thing more disgusting than my washing-up pile is the way the Labour Party government are treating disabled people.
#IDPD2024: what a crock
I remembered mid-yesterday afternoon that it was the United Nations International Day of Persons With Disabilities (IDPD2024) when I realised that not a single disabled person I knew had been asked to speak at events, write, or talk about it. In previous years newspapers have ran special series, disabled people have been asked on radio or TV, and you couldn’t move for the amount of events.
But this year – tumbleweed.
The only thing more drawn out than the name the United Nations International Day of Persons With Disabilities (IDPD2024) is the media and government’s pretence of seeing us as humans worthy of an agency, I suppose.
IDPD2024 feels a little bit like a farce when you live in a country that treats disabled people like we do. The purpose of the day, according to the UN, is to:
promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society.
However, this feels impossible in a country that just this year had it’s government was hauled in front of the UN Committee on the Rights of Disabled People for its “grave and systemic violations” against them. And to answer to these crimes the DWP sent a civil servant many disabled organisers in the room had never heard of.
It feels like a particularly cruel slap in the face of disabled people for the DWP to tweet about today whilst crowing about disability inclusion when you look at the events of the last week.
For #IDPD2024 we are committed to better inclusion and accessibility for disabled people
The plan to get Britain working announced last week is the first step in this Government’s goal to put disabled people at the heart of employment support and benefits reform#IDPD pic.twitter.com/1wApUBNKO0
— Department for Work and Pensions (@DWPgovuk) December 3, 2024
Assisted Dying Bill: a clear line from the past to the present
Last Friday of course saw the reading Kim Leadbeater’s Assisted Dying Bill in parliament; one disabled people had campaigned against ferociously because we could all see how easily the government could use this to kill us – after all successive governments have been trying to do so for decades.
The Bill sadly passed with 330 votes for, weirdly this is exactly the same number that voted against Rob Marris’s Bill on the same subject in 2015. It’s hard not to see some significance there and how emblematic it is of the death march that has been coming for disabled people, led by the government and media.
When the vote was announced on Friday, I was nearing the end of writing my book’s first draft. I’d rather unfortunately had a particularly disgusting earworm all week which horrifically seemed too fitting.
Whilst researching for the book, I was reminded by John Pring (of Disability News Service) of Peter Lilley’s 1992 Conservative Party Conference speech in which he takes a song from the Mikado by the high executioner and changes it to be about “benefit offenders”. The unfortunate thing that I’d had stuck in my head all week was the line he repeats to gleeful applause:
they never would be missed.
IDPD2024 in context
After being so immersed in all the disgusting ways the government had used the media to turn society against disabled people throughout the last few decades, it was impossible not to see a very clear line from Lilley singing about how he wanted to murder all benefits claimants to how disabled people were being treated as hysterical doomsayers for having legitimate concerns about how a program which allowed sick people to end their lives to be used against us.
As I said on X a couple of weeks ago, disability has been so reduced to the worst thing that can happen to a person that disabled people are regularly told “I’d kill myself if that happened to me”. But instead we were told we were being too emotive whilst all the media allowed Esther Rantzen and her family to cry about how the opposed side wanted to leave dying people in excruciating pain.
And of course, the path to getting here doesn’t start with Lilley and end with assisted suicide.
A long road to this point
Lilley was but a stop off on a journey which started decades before – with institutionalisation, only supporting disabled war veterans and workers, breezing past that Tory cunt to Tony Blair’s government responding to disabled people protesting proposed cuts by working with the media to grow public distrust, the austerity years and WCA, DNRs during Covid and the renewed benefits scroungers narrative.
When governments and the media have been working for so many years to erode the public’s support for disabled people, of course our fears of being forced to die were ignored – because nobody sees us worthy of saving. And that’s exactly what the government want – including this one.
Many of the Labour faithful on social media have been trying to brush disabled people’s concerns over Keir Starmer’s government being no different to the Tories under the carpet since July.
We’re constantly told “give them a chance, wait until March”.
However, it’s quite obvious to those of us who have been here many times before that they’re singing from the exact same hymn sheet as all the others who came before them.
IDPD2024 is meaningless
You may’ve noticed a sharp uptick in “cracking down on benefit fakers” style articles lately, and the timing is absolutely no coincidence, trust me. We’ve seen it every time there’s been big disability benefits shake-ups coming. The fact the ‘reforms’ aren’t coming until March as opposed to the Autumn Budget means we’re in for much worse than simply the awful Dispatches documentary.
While it may seem absolutely dire for disabled people at the minute, my research has taught me one other thing.
No matter how much the government and media want to destroy disabled people, disabled activists have always fought back and refused to go quietly.
Whilst the government might be doing their level best to destroy all public trust in disabled people yet again, we will be there to oppose them every step of the way – just like every time before.
Featured image via the Canary
