Coalescing and shared agendas

The notion of alliances between disabled people and supporters of disability is gaining ever more currency. One activist tells Ian Macrae why

The coalition at the centre of the Government has a fragile air about it. To David Cameron, perhaps even to Nick Clegg, it must feel as though they are sitting on top of a big barrel of Lib Dem dynamite that could blow at any time.

But coalition of a more active kind is in the air elsewhere. Witness the recent demonstration in London’s West End which saw Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) coming together with the tax lobby­ing group UK Uncut and the disabled people’s Direct Action Network (DAN) to bring Regent Street to a standstill on a busy Saturday afternoon.

For Linda Burnip, co-founder of DPAC, the aim of this civil disobedience was quite simple.

“We wanted partly to continue raising awareness of the impact of cuts on disabled people’s lives and also make a last ditch effort to shame politicians into not destroying disabled people’s lives in the way they’re planning to. We’ve got a choice. We can either let everything happen to us or we can try to stop it.”

It’s interesting that, while direct action like this harks back to an earlier period (and is all the more welcome for that in some areas), organised lobbying of a different, more modern sort was demonstrated recently both in the House of Lords and by the Spartacus social networking action. This aimed to show the true picture of discontent among disabled people over the Government’s proposal to replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA) with Personal Independence Payments (PIPs).

Burnip believes that we should take advantage of all forms of action to make our voices heard.

“Social networking is very important, especially for disabled people who can’t get out. I think one of the advantages of direct action like the one we mounted is that it’s empowering for disabled people who normally feel they can’t make a difference.”

It’s also significant that the collaboration with UK Uncut had its origins in an interaction in the opposite direction.

“Disabled people in Islington, North London, got involved with UK Uncut and with protesting against tax evasion. And the targeting of non-payment of tax has ties with the attacks against disabled people’s benefit levels, because if taxes were collected more effectively, there wouldn’t be any need for cuts.”

Burnip also believes that alliances are about more than just non-disabled people taking up the cudgels on behalf of what is often presented as the more vulnerable section of the community.

“It’s vital for disabled people’s campaigners to network and be involved with other campaigners. We need to educate non-disabled people about disabled people’s issues and how cuts are affecting us.

“Take the care system, for example. It’s so complex. If people have no experience of it, they don’t know how it works. They think you become disabled, and social services come out and give you some sort of generous care package, and give you the aids and adaptations needed, whereas, obvious­ly, disabled people know it doesn’t work that way.”

Another area of concern where DPAC is engaged is over the Government’s decision to close the Independent Living Fund (ILF), which provides financial support to around 20,000 people who otherwise would probably have to rely on residential care, thus enabling them to live independently.

“The two things we really want,” Burnip explains, “are a separate consultation on ILF so that it doesn’t disappear into a black hole on the overall consultation on social care, and a guarantee that, after 2015, there will be some sort of nationally portable ring-fenced scheme like ILF (we don’t actually care what it’s called) that can move around the country with people taking account of local factors such as the cost of personal assistants in different areas.”

Her argument is that the retention of a scheme like ILF will actually save money.

“We believe that if people end up in residential care (which is basically what will happen because local authorities have said they can’t cover extra costs if ILF goes), it’ll cost twice as much to keep people in care homes as against what they’ll save by closing ILF.

“There are only around 20,000 users now and it costs around £300,000 which is peanuts. And it’s money that’s quite well spent on supporting service users, because the admin costs are only around two per cent of the total budget, which is much more cost effective than local authority care funding.