Labour conference to face mass protest from disabled people

As the summer holidays draw to a close, many kids and parents have got the next school year on their minds, and for the overgrown children running our country, it’s no different. Soon, the PM and all his cronies will be trudging back to Westminster to spend another year playing government. Fortunately for them, though, they’ve got something to look forward to at the start of term, as the end of September is party conference season – with the Labour Party conference being a focal point.

Yes, Labour will be off to Liverpool, where I’m sure they’ll get a very warm welcome after the PM has not only regularly written for the Sun this past year but also completely backtracked on Hillsborough Law and hired a former Sun editor as communication chief. But not only that, disabled people will be ready for them too.

After a horrific year of treatment by the new Labour government, disabled people are fed up. Nobody in the disabled community had especially high hopes for Labour, but we at least hoped that they couldn’t be as bad as the Tories. How wrong we were.

Labour even worse for disabled people than the Tories

In Labour’s first year in power, they’ve attempted to enact some of the cruellest policies around DWP disability benefits ever.

Their PIP plans would’ve seen hundreds of thousands of people lose the support they vitally need to survive. Of course, these plans had to be massively rolled back after mass action by disabled people, both in person and online, meant Starmer faced a rebellion in his ranks. What came instead was a cobbled-together, rushed plan to cut support for those who the government know can’t work, which the majority of Labour MPs voted through.

All the new plans are supposed to encourage disabled people into work, despite the government knowing that they’re targeting those who can’t work. Not only that, but at the same time they’re claiming to be “getting Britain working again” they’re also quietly cutting Access to Work, which many disabled people rely on to be able to work.

All of these horrendous plans have only been possible because the government has used the media to turn the public against disabled benefits claimants.

Almost every week, a politician has given a soundbite or a department has leaked something about how nobody wants to work, how we’re all scroungers, or how it’s easier to live a life on benefits to the press, which they’ve run with because they know it’ll get them precious clicks. All of this has been a coordinated attack since last autumn to ensure that the public allows the benefit cuts. Whether or not any of this is raised at the Labour conference remains to be seen.

Disabled people are fighting back, again, at Labour conference

So disabled people are standing up against the Labour government again and taking the fight to them at their conference.

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and other disability rights groups will be protesting against the various genocides the government are funding abroad, as well as the democide of disabled people they are directly causing here. The protest will take place on Monday 29 September, between 12-2pm at the wheel of Liverpool (L3 4FN).

DPAC is encouraging all those who can mask to please do so in order to protect immunocompromised members of the community; some masks will also be available. They also ask that any political parties do not bring branded placards.

Details of an online protest which will happen at the same time as the DPAC Labour conference one are expected to be announced soon. The Canary will share more information when we have it.

Featured image via the Canary