[Text by Ellen Clifford from her speech at the People’s Assembly Health Before Wealth Event]
The single most important thing DPAC wants to get across tonight is the importance of not ending the lock-down too soon and until it is safe to do so.
The pandemic has starkly exposed the inequalities that exist in society – whether through the disproportionate impact on BAME communities or through disabled people being told we they won’t get admitted to hospital let alone receive treatment should they become ill because our lives are simply less valuable to society than those of non-disabled people. At a time that is enormously difficult for all of us, disabled activists and health workers have had to challenge NHS guidelines that sought to impose blanket rules about which groups of people are and aren’t a priority for life-saving treatment.
Over recent weeks we’ve rightly heard more about the scandalous situation where care home residents are being wiped out by Covid-19 and their workers put at serious risk through lack of PPE. An issue that’s still largely overlooked though is the situation facing disabled people living in the community with workers coming in and out every day to provide essential daily living support. Guidance for this group of people came out more than five weeks after official advice came out for the wider social care sector, more than a month-and-a-half after the department for health and social care published its first COVID-19 action plan and only after persistent campaigning by disabled people and our organisations. We weren’t even an after-thought.
Many disabled people in this situation are still without PPE and according to the guidance are expected to buy their own despite global shortages, spiralling costs and being on benefits.
Now I know I’m not alone in feeling beyond sick of my friends and loved ones dying, of waiting every day to hear who’s next and of what new hole is going to be punched into our hearts.
We’re losing some of our strongest campaigners. Last week it was Manjeet Kaur, a DPAC member heavily involved in anti-racist work, this week it was Sean McGovern, a staunch trade unionist with Unite and also a key member of DPAC who I fought alongside for the last ten years.
And there have been so many more.
Good people despite the barriers they’d personally experienced in life, human beings who cared about others and who were committed to building a better world.
If lockdown ends too soon, we will lose many, many more and the cost to our communities paid by the working class will be heavier.
And who will gain? – not disabled people – Covid-19 has made it sharply apparent how little worth society places on our lives – and not the frontline workers upon whom the running of society is dependent and yet who remain under-valued, under-paid and at the mercy of global pandemic.
There is no question that lockdown is placing a terrible strain on the mental well-being of our communities and putting victims of domestic violence at even greater risk – with the first few weeks of lockdown seeing double the usual number of domestic abuse killings. But the idea that some people’s lives – those of older and disabled people – are dispensible and can be sacrificed to uphold an economic system based on profit rather than people – or indeed that society is better off without the burden we represent is abhorrent ad reflective of the kind of eugenicist views those in power such as Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings clearly hold.
It’s the bosses who already have way more than their fair share who benefit from an early end to lockdown.
I saw a post on Facebook today that said:
“The fact that so many billionaires are pushing for lockdown to end and for people to go back to work shows it’s not them that makes their money. It’s you.”
The right-wing media are doing their best to help them with headlines comparing the end of lockdown to a return to freedom, to sunny walks in the park and day trips to the seaside.
In reality, a premature end to lockdown will mean a return to the daily slog surrounded by more death, trying to balance the pressures of work alongside fresh heapings of grief and of loss.
Instead of focusing on how to get back to work now, we need to continue to fight for PPE, for testing and to protect our communities. If we don’t survive, there will be no society for tomorrow and fewer of us left to fight for the building blocks we need for a fairer society such as a social security system fit for purpose, enough social care support for all who need it and a fully inclusive education system.
This is literally a fight for our lives.
It’s now more important than ever that we unite, that we resist and that we win.
Solidarity.
Every single day for and many many others is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow, next wee, next year. I am frightened to catch the covid 19 virus as everyone is. Yet we are the least protected. Those with the wealth want more and want people back towork regardless of the consequences. As long as they are safe in their Ivory Castles. They are not immune to the virus but they certainly survive it much easier than the working classes, disabled, elderly and minorities. We do live in an “Ill divided world”. Our rights, that disabled and able bodied people fought for have been eroded so much that breaking the human rights laws are done day and daily. Without any repercussion or regress.
I made a complaint to the Human rights Commission about 6 months ago. They sent me a link to a survey that is inaccessible for blind people. The human rights representative took note of my complaint but couldn’t assure me that I would get any responce. I haven’t and won’t. I wonder just how many other human rights abuses the Commission is guilty of?
That may seem a very insignificant issue but “Let one issue go unoticed and there will be many more injustices”
My blind and vi friends are noticing more and more inaccessible web sites or buy now buttons that our creen readers don’t reckognise. Despite making these web sites aware of the problems. Who say they will sort the problem. They don’t. This is an aspect for blind and vi people that has a severe impact on our well being. Others with verying disabilites face similar problems relating to their disabilities. We are being ignored and it has to stop. The excuse that the Covid virus is to blame should never, ever be accepted for these reductions in our rights as disabled people.