Feb 152022
[Text by Paula Peters]
Saturday 12th February 2022 was a national day of action against the Cost of Living Crisis in the UK and the recent announcement of OFGEM to hike energy bills by 54% in April 2022.
The national day of action was called by the Peoples Assembly, but the London protest was organised by Fuel Poverty Action, DPAC, RSG21, People’s Assembly and Peace and Justice Project.
DPAC had speakers not only at the London Demo, but in Manchester and a message read out in Sheffield too
You can read Dennis Queen from Manchester DPAC
speech here;
also see Jen from Sheffield DPAC message of solidarity here
And part of Paula speech from London demo here: Video
there are really important messages in all 3 speeches, the cost of living crisis is not a recent event for disabled people.
After 12 years of brutal Tory Austerity disabled people have endured cuts to social care, cuts to social security support cuts to services and severely impacted by year on year cost of living costs that many simply cannot afford.
Disabled people have additional financial costs due to the needs of their disability,
There are many disabled people with high support needs requiring social care support, being charged up to £200 per week for basic social care. Having to go without eating, heating, living in freezing cold homes skipping meals to meet these horrendous costs.
This is outrageous. DPAC are campaigning for a universal fully funded social care system, paid for by general taxation, free at the point of need. Please support the campaign and get involved.
There are over 4 million disabled people living in abject poverty in the UK, hungry, cold and not able to purchase basic cleaning products to keep themselves clean. Unable to live in dignity. Basic foods and every day essentials are out of reach when your financial support has been stopped by the DWP after a disability assessment or been sanctioned at the job centre because a disabled claimant simply cannot meet the impossible demands a work coach had placed on them.
Disabled people’s dignity is being stripped away. Plunged further into poverty. It’s not a choice of heating or eating. It’s now a case of barely survive or die and many disabled people have not only of cuts to benefits and worn down by the constant battle to survive but by unable to heat their homes in winter and sadly some of the ever growing numbers of the winter fuel deaths.
Disabled people do not want pity. Or charity. We want fully inclusive rights and be able to live in an inclusive society with our access needs met, live in dignity with financial and social care support so we have enough to eat and heat our homes and not worry every day of our financial support taken away and living in fear of ever increasing financial costs we simply cannot pay.
We’ve been campaigning and fighting back against the government for 12 years and we will continue to resist the tories every way we can.
It’s why it’s important we support such protests as the #CostofLivingCrisis campaign, mobilse and join with other campaign groups and fight back and make sure disabled people are heard.
Further protests are planned across the country in the coming months.
It’s important that disabled people are at the heart of these planning meetings and future protests and our voices are heard at every opportunity.
The protests on Saturday were the launch of further activity They were the beginning. We must build on these, reach out to first time protestors and build our movement.
From Saturday protests here are some media links and pictures
Some pictures from the protests (3 photos taken by Paula Peters, Andy Ward took the Photo of Paula )
