DWP slammed for weaponising disabled people’s lives to attack the working classes

A trade unionist and disability rights campaigner has told the Canary that union members are getting increasingly sick of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Labour Party government cynically ‘using disabled people as a cautionary tale’.

DWP ‘attacks on disabled people are an attack on the whole working class’

Alison Gaughan has been part of the People’s Alliance for Change and Equality (PACE) in Kirklees, West Yorkshire. PACE has been connecting campaigners, trade unionists, and politicians across the metropolitan borough in opposition to war, cuts, and racism. Jeremy Corbyn supported its official launch back in May, as an example of how “this whole cause is coming together” to challenge Labour’s embrace of war and cuts under prime minister Keir Starmer.

We spoke to Gaughan in Huddersfield – the biggest urban centre in Kirklees. And she told us that:

We need a fighting party for the working class – the diverse working class. Disabled people, LGBT people, any group, aren’t gonna win on their own against the system we’ve got at the moment.

And we need to remember that the attacks on disabled people are in fact an attack on the whole working class. Because that’s how disabled people are used – as a cautionary tale to people: ‘if you don’t work, if you don’t accept low wages, if you don’t accept poor conditions, this is what we’ll do to people who can’t work’.

So it affects everybody. It affects everybody who works. Unless you’re a millionaire, what’s happening to disabled people is to do with you. So yeah, we need a party of struggle and we need a party that brings together all grassroots struggles, and that’s what we’re doing here with PACE.

In light of government and DWP attacks on disabled people, she said:

You can see a lot of people in the trade union movement, through that, losing faith in the Labour Party. This new austerity. People who really were like, ‘ohh no, it’ll be OK. It’ll be OK. Labour will do OK’ are just completely disillusioned now… There’s a lot of anger around that.

Another struggle Gaughan and PACE have been supporting is the Alternative Pride movement locally. As she insisted, “corporate events” just don’t cut it right now:

when LGBT rights all over the world are being attacked… we need something more political

People are fighting back after severe government neglect

A report at the start of this year showed that Huddersfield has the second-lowest average salary of Britain’s “63 largest towns and cities” – almost £20,000 lower than London’s. Indeed, most of the above-average areas were “in the Greater South East” of the UK.

Gaughan highlighted the local combination of low wages, housing problems, a callous DWP, a reduction of local services, and education cuts as factors pushing people away from establishment politics:

There’s an openness to more radical ideas. People are getting fed up, so they’re losing any illusions they had in the new government very quickly.

She insisted that elitist austerity politics just don’t convince people any more:

People have had enough. Young people have grown up with nothing else now.

She’s also looking forward to the creation of a new party on the left, stressing:

We need a new fighting party – a party of struggle. By and for the working class. A party that’s against war and something that properly stands for social exchange, for the working class. Against Reform and as an alternative.

And she asserted:

We’ve got more in common with each other than the people who are trying to oppress us.

Featured image via the Canary