Anger grows

Most observers agree that disabled people are being hit hard by cuts but members of WinVisible, writing here, argue that women are being hit even harder

Disabled women are facing the worst impoverish­ment since 1945, through an avalanche of cuts to benefits, housing, and care services, as well as the hike in VAT, privatisation, and the cost of living.

Like other women, we find ourselves serving as unwaged carers for child­ren, partners and relatives, while coping with our own disabilities, all of which is tantamount to work.

Income Support and Carer’s Allowance recognise that mothers and other carers are not unemployed, but like incapacity benefits based on need, they are being phased out.

Welfare “reform,” led first by Yvette Cooper for Labour and now by Iain Duncan Smith for the ConDems, is forcing almost every claimant of working age to seek work or lose benefit, undermining women’s and children’s protection against total dependence and abuse.

Asylum seekers, including survivors of rape and other tortures, were the first to be made destitute; now others are too.

Most single mothers do waged work. Of those who don’t, most have a disabled child, or health problem themselves. Work-focussed interviews are compulsory even for full-time carers. Homeless vic­tims of domestic violence, women undergoing chemo­therapy, and traumatised refugee women are pressured into job-seeking or “pathways to work” interviews, without any recognition of what they go through just to survive.

Attacks on the welfare state and multiculturalism encourage some staff to vent their racism and other prejudices. Most people on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) face compulsory “preparation for work”. Aggressive back-to-work schemes are prioritised over the finding of suitable jobs. Those rejected by employers are made to “work for their benefits” – around £1.64 per hour. What an attack on the minimum wage!

But protests are growing. In January, angry disabled people picketed the London headquarters of Atos Healthcare, paid £80 million per year to carry out benefit examinations. Atos finds 39 per cent of ESA claimants fit for work. June Mitchell was one who was scored zero points while suffering from terminal lung cancer.

In March, 244 MPs voted that the Welfare Reform Bill should not go ahead while replacements are unclear. Though the Government’s majority prevailed, the dispute continues.

After a lifetime of work, most of those who use care services are women pensioners. In January, scores of pensioners protested in Camden, north London, against day centre closures that would leave them isolated at home. Lily Chitty, aged 99, was among them. She has since died.

In February, London’s Euston Road was peacefully blockaded while the Council voted in cuts and increased charges. Some protesters held placards remembering Jennyfer Spencer’s death at her inaccessible flat a year ago, after Camden stopped her care payments. A much-loved former teacher who became a wheelchair-user following a stroke, she spent seven years trying to be rehoused.

Disabled women were part of the Mothers March on 12 March, called by the Global Women’s Strike, and the TUC march on 26 March. Chants of: “We’ve had enough!”, “Welfare not Warfare” and “Homecare cuts are killing us!” showed the determin­ation to call off the cuts: our survival depends upon it.

•Contact winvisible.org