Crippen Cartoons cartoons at the cutting edge of disability

Disabled activists and allies defied bureaucrats to ensure that the delivery of 650 copies of John Pring’s ‘DWP violence’ book was delivered to MPs.

Although they had been assured weeks in advance – both by the House of Commons Post Office and Commons security – that they would be allowed to bring in the copies through the security scanners at Portcullis House, managers refused to allow them to bring in the sealed envelopes, each addressed to an individual MP.

Using negotiation and peaceful direct action, activists – led by Disabled People Against Cuts and Black Triangle – used the books to block the public entrance to the building for more than an hour. Their action ensured that every MP received a copy of The Department, which details how DWP’s actions eventually led to the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of disabled people in the post-2010 austerity years.

After meeting outside DWP’s Caxton House offices last week, activists – including relatives of two of the disabled benefit claimants who died – carried all 650 copies across Westminster to Portcullis House, where many MPs and the House of Commons Post Office are based.

Among those who supported the event were Gill Thompson – whose brother David Clapson died in July 2013, three weeks after having his jobseeker’s allowance sanctioned – and her husband Mike. She said that the crowdfunding and action had been “quite an achievement … We have had our obstacles, but we got there in the end. That book has given me David back, it’s put him in a human light and given him back his dignity that [DWP] took away from him.”

Another supporting the action was Joy Dove, whose daughter Jodey Whiting took her own life in February 2017, 15 days after she had her out-of-work disability benefits wrongly stopped for missing a work capability assessment.

She said: “These MPs need to see the stories in the book, how each and every family has suffered the life-changing loss of a loved one. There needs to be change now there’s a new Labour government.”

She said she was encouraged that her new Labour MP, Chris McDonald, asked to meet her outside Portcullis House, and supported her campaign for justice.

The project has been led by disabled activists, including Black Triangle Campaign, DPAC and the UK Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations’ Coalition, and supported by disabled people’s organisations, allies and families of those who have lost their lives, as well as Pluto Press, which has published The Department.

Among the organisations supporting the campaign are Disabled People Against Cuts, Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, Inclusion London, Disability Rights UK, Recovery in the Bin and the radical working-class media organisation The Canary.

John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle Campaign, whose idea it was to launch a crowdfunder that paid for the purchase of the books, said: “The Department provides a casebook of how not to run a social security system. The current disability benefit assessment system is making people even sicker. Pushing disabled people into work that medical experts say we cannot do won’t address labour shortages and more disability benefit cuts, as the government has planned, are not a common-sense strategy for ‘fixing the foundations’.

“Instead, Deaf and disabled people and our organisations call upon the government to sit down with us to co-produce a safe and efficient disability benefit system that provides a genuine safety net to those who need it.”

Author and activist Ellen Clifford, from the UK Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations’ Coalition, who has helped lead the project, said: “The success of the crowdfunder shows how important it is to people outside the Westminster bubble that our elected politicians finally address the grave injustice of DWP attacks on Deaf and disabled people. Across the UK, there is growing concern about the impact of yet more cuts. It is apparent that lessons from the past are being deliberately ignored.”

Read the full story in Disability News Service.

Note: I urge you to purchase a copy of John’s book. It contains a blow by blow account of how the DWP has affected the lives of thousands of disabled people by their use of “bureaucratic violence”.

The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, by DNS editor John Pring, was published by Pluto Press last month.

Description of cartoon for those using screen reading software.

The entrance to Caxton House is blocked by a giant copy of John Pring’s book ‘The Department’. A crowd of disabled people complete the blockade along with placards that read ‘No more DWP deaths’, ‘MP’s must stop the killing’ and ‘Peaceful Direct Action – no throughway until you agree to our demands’. One protester is saying: “Let’s see the MPs ignore this evidence!”.