For IDS disability is an aberration that needs to be, and can be, fixed
Iain Duncan Smith’s latest gaffe shows clearly the direction he is taking the country in. It is a return to an age of prejudice.
Speaking in the House of Commons, yesterday, the work and pensions secretary talked about getting disabled people in work up to the levels of ‘normal, non-disabled people’.
A slip of the tongue? Maybe, but one that reveals the dangerous ideology which lies behind IDS’s welfare reforms, which is reversing decades of struggle for disabled rights.
For IDS it is now clear that disability is not something to be embraced, let alone celebrated as part of the diversity which makes us all stronger. Disability is an aberration. It is a problem which needs to be fixed.
And if those who are different get the right therapy, or where necessary they are sanctioned, they can be pushed into the workplace to become like ‘normal’ people.
This is one-size-fits-all welfare. It is how over four thousand people can die after being certified ‘fit for work’. It is why he is moving therapists into job centres, and why and the Conservative manifesto suggested sanctioning those who refuse medical treatment. It may well be why some people on benefits are taking their own lives.
When my own disabled son started in a mainstream primary school, he lined up to take part in the 100 metres with the rest of his classmates. What the teachers didn’t know was that his small powered wheelchair would only travel around half the speed that a child of his age could run.
The starting gun was fired. The children set off, and as the penultimate child crossed the finish line there was my son half way down the track, pushing the joystick on his chair as far as it would go. Suddenly, someone in the crowd started to chant his name: “Samuel, Samuel…”. Soon everyone else joined in, and cheered him across the finish line.
As a parent of three children, I know that we always tell our kids ‘it’s not the winning that matters, but the taking part’. Deep down we all love it when our children win. But at that point, in that school, I can honestly say that every child, every teacher, and every parent really knew that it was the taking part that was important.
Over the next few years, that school changed because it had included a disabled child. And it changed for the better. The monochrome culture of testing, competition and league tables was challenged. There was first hand exposure to the reality of a world of diversity and difference. Prejudices were overcome. Everyone’s experience was richer as a result.
‘Nothing about us without us’ was a slogan at the heart of the campaign for civil rights and the anti-discrimination movement. It led to important victories for equal opportunities, empowerment, the removal of social barriers and changes in attitudes.
The position of disabled people in the UK improved with more accessible transport, access to work, independent living, employment and housing, culminating in the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act.
Campaigners also recognised that equality required real social inclusion, not forced integration. Integration is about coercing the disabled to fit into a non-disabled world. But inclusion acknowledges the barriers that a non-disabled world creates. It then seeks to address them by changing the way it works, and empowering everyone to play a full part so they can help bring about further change. And when it does, everyone benefits together.
This was what lay behind the establishment of the Independent Living Fund and Disability Living Allowance. The former has now been abolished. The latter is in the process of being phased out. And along with them progressive social attitudes are going too. A huge rise in disability hate crime should come as no surprise, when the disabled are told they must take on non-disabled notions of ‘normality’.
Iain Duncan Smith is returning us to dark times of inequality, social exclusion and discrimination.
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113 Responses to “Comment: Iain Duncan Smith is undoing years of struggle for disabled rights”
Nick
At the end of the day only the likes of Jeremy corbyn can stop IDS no one else can stop him
Faerieson
Most political parties have a buffoon or two, someone who can be ‘relied upon’ to undertake the more unspeakable policies, so that others might by comparison appear ‘more reasonable,’ And, within a party whose ‘reasonableness’ is already highly questionable this buffoon is likely to assume an evermore destructive role!
Gove did similar damage to education, before Cameron chose to cut his losses, whilst Hunt is mishandling the NHS so that it might never quite recover. IDS is a most foul and disgusting apology of a human being, wreaking suffering and pain upon society’s most vulnerable, because he knows that his cosy future is secured regardless of the damage he does.
Short of a Godly and welcome intervention I suspect that IDS will continue in much the same vein- human life considered collateral damage- continuing to draw attention away from the widening neoliberal assult upon almost everything!
ecto-1
In the modern economy, how much value do you really think you create as a worker?
stevep
Ian Duncan Smith is already yesterday`s man.
In less than a couple of years he`ll be completely out of touch with the public mood. The Tories will be flailing around like fools trying to play catch up.
Decency, honesty and political integrity are the way forward. The public want the NHS, the welfare state, public services and a say in how they are run.
The Tories won`t deliver this, it is anathema to them.
A Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party will.
Faerieson
If the media even hints at what is really happening, Corbyn has to win! This is the only sane option! But did you see the God-awful hatchet-job that Panorama (BBC) recently excreted?
Readers of the likes of The Express, The Mail and The Sun do not always present as ‘sane.’