5 hours ago
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There is a longstanding practice in UK politics and media to force disabled people to fight for their basic rights – a kind of gladiatorial scrap in which the Colosseum is replaced by the set of Good Morning Britain.
With the government’s welfare reform bill just passed by MPs, this has felt all the more stark. In the last week alone, the leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, has used a speech to declare she does not “believe” that one in four people are disabled, as if the Equality Act were based on vibes. “Twenty-eight million people in Britain are working to pay the wages and benefits of 28 million others,” she went on. “The rider is as big as the horse.”
Days earlier, GB News aired a discussion in which a comedian “joked” that the best way to reduce the disability benefits bill was to starve or shoot disabled people.
Faced with this level of discourse, campaigners have little choice but to argue the most obvious of truths: if the political and media class advocates policies that leave disabled people hungry and dirty, the disabled community must explain why we should be allowed to eat and be clean.
As the number of people with long-term health conditions has increased, the living standards that disabled people are expected to accept have only declined. That many of these cases are related to mental health – often incorrectly seen as mild, less real, or unaccompanied by physical conditions – has only encouraged this backlash. In the last fortnight, I have watched disabled activists go on breakfast news and argue that wheelchair users deserve help to leave the house. I’ve seen chronically ill people make reels on social media listing for strangers the intimate items they need disability benefits to pay for.
I realise I’ve done similar in my work over the last 15 years: whether it is arguing for disabled people’s right to sleep on unsoiled sheets or – as of last month – to receive enough care to change their bloodied sanitary towels.
Disabled people have to prove our humanity on repeat, sharing ever more intimate details of our lives and bodies to prove ourselves worthy, not least of taxpayer money. Each time it happens, I can feel myself shrink and shift a little more. It is ironic – or telling – that the degradation reminds me of a disability benefits assessment.
Such a political culture not only psychologically damages disabled people, it damages our ability to gain our full rights. Toni Morrison said the function of racism was distraction, and I think it is similar for ableism. The political cycle of the past decade – a government introduces a cut to disability support, much of the media argues it’s valid, a minority outlines why it isn’t – not only legitimises dismantling the safety net, it wastes disabled people’s time that we could be using elsewhere. If you are busy arguing that social care cuts shouldn’t force disabled people to go to bed at 6pm, there is little energy left to lobby for better access to pubs and restaurants, or simply to enjoy going to one.
Whenever a politician or pundit suggests benefit claimants are splurging taxpayer cash on booze and fags, I tweet that I’m off to spend my personal independence payments on Moët. I do that partly because I like to give people a chance to call a Guardian columnist a champagne socialist, but mainly because I am increasingly exhausted by the confines of the conversation. Years of austerity measures coupled with media scapegoating – on top of existing structural inequality and attitudes – has in many ways reduced disability in the public consciousness to the lowest common denominator. Forget ambitions to hire more disabled talent in senior roles or to improve access to social and sporting venues – Britain prefers to discuss whether disabled people should be allowed to eat and go to the toilet.
I recently published a book, Who Wants Normal?, in an attempt to carve out a nuanced look at disabled life: the joy, humour and talent alongside the pills and the prejudice. In promoting it, I chose to turn down any interview with a broadcaster who has a track record of ableism or go on a “pundit v pundit” format in which bigotry and equality are pitched as equal points of view. I have no interest at this point in debating whether disabled people deserve human rights, or in shying away from advocating for a rich and fulfilling life lest we appear ungrateful or angry.
It is time this country focused not just on disabled people’s right to survive, but on their right to live. Rather than talking about cutting benefit rates, let’s explore raising them to a level where they actually cover the growing extra costs of disability. Instead of calling disabled jobseekers lazy, let’s discuss the real causes of disability unemployment: biased employers and a lack of practical support and funding in the workplace. Rather than further isolating disabled people, we could make public spaces and infrastructure more accessible – because no one can be an equal member of society if they can’t get in their local shop or on the bus.
There is a popular adage that says non-disabled people should care about such things because they could one day become disabled or ill themselves. That’s true. The pundits and politicians belittling disability today could, with just the hand of bad luck, wake up tomorrow with Parkinson’s or ME. But real progress won’t come from non-disabled people caring about disability rights because it might one day affect them – it will come from caring that it already affects someone else.
Half the battle in all of this is challenging the unspoken belief that some of us – typically those with limited health, money or status – do not actually deserve the same quality of life as others who have more. Few people without disabilities in Britain would settle for an existence of food, heat and a wash. The question is: why should disabled people?
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Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist. She is the author of Who Wants Normal? The Disabled Girls’ Guide to Life
