Shedding the invisibility cloak

It’s a sign, says Andy Rickell, of the erosion of our rights that the recently elected Government needs to be reminded of who and what we are

In 1997, the new Labour Government had learnt that the power of the disability lobby in the mid-1990s had beaten the previous Conservative Government on the issue of disability rights, so they came into office with a manifesto commitment to comprehensive disability rights and a programme for taking it forwards. This led to a whole series of advances on the disability rights agenda.

In 2010, the world is very different and disabled people are in danger of becoming invisible and being the victims of the current political situation.

The politicians see the economic situation and reducing public expenditure as priorities. They are right, but the specific needs of disabled people are likely to get overlooked as part of the “bigger picture”. In any case, disabled people are the biggest users of state support so we are potentially in the firing line.

The visibility that disabled people got from the 1990s rights campaigns is lacking in 2010. And actually a false assumption is made that our silence shows our rights have been successfully tackled. I wish!

When our issues were raised in the election campaign we were the problems – the vulnerable and needy objects of social care funding, the scroungers who need to be in work, the reason why respite care was needed for our tired carers. It felt like the last 20 years had not happened. The only truly positive mention of our right to independent living was David Cameron’s two references in the debates about the value of direct payments.

What’s to be done? Well, we need to raise the profile of disabled people, politically, and we need to show how our issues, if properly addressed, can address politicians’ priorities too.

We need national disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) visibly back on the map.

Whilst the non-DPO disability lobby is not as bad as it once was, for the new Government to find themselves facing non-disabled people representing our issues just magnifies our invisibility other than as the objects of other people’s interests.

We need to be working with government to advise on how to make savings intelligently. Properly informed welfare reform could be brilliant for improving disabled people’s opportunities in employment – done badly it could increase our poverty disastrously. Properly re-engineered social care systems and other sources of support to disabled individuals could save significant public money on administration by single assessment processes, and substantially improve outcomes for disabled and older people if individual budgets are implemented radically. We should share our expertise in being aware of where public money is effectively spent on our behalf, and where it is not, and where it could be
better spent.

And sometimes we may need to campaign on the streets again – no bad thing!