Disabled People, Carers and Green Party Core Values v The Neo-Liberal Tide

The guest post below is by Alan Wheatley, Green Party Spokesperson on Social Security and Care Services, and will be an article in Green World magazine shortly. Disabled people are on the front line for the savage cuts which this government are introducing and already I have heard talk of possible suicides. Someone I know who is a disability activist in Lambeth, and is now one of the disability reps on the General Council of the TUC, is calling for disabled people to be at the front of the TUC march against jobs and cuts on March 26th. I think that this is an excellent idea, especially in view of the heroic role played by people like Jody Mc Intyre during the student protests before Xmas. Disabled people are also increasingly playing a role in the Coalition of Resistance.

Disabled People, Carers and Green Party Core Values vs the Neo-Liberal Tide

by Alan Wheatley

The ConDem coalition's protests that it was the legacy of the previous government that made them inflict savage cuts on the most vulnerable members of society. Actually New Labour and the main national disability charities made it so easy for the ConDems to continue in a neo-liberal agenda. The cuts in Disability Living Allowance and more broadly-claimed housing benefit emphasise the legacy-dependent class's folly of regarding 'welfare dependency' as the problem.


The ConDem government inherited more from New Labour than the fallout from an investment banker-induced mushrooming of national debt. For the new Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord David Freud's attachment to government started when Tony Blair took him on as an investment banker-turned-welfare reform guru. The Welfare Reform Act 2009 reflects a neo-liberal consensus..[1] [2] [3] That neo-liberal consensus has made the project of taking the UK back to pre-Welfare State models and even the workhouse far simpler though no less misguided.[4]


The neo-liberal model of reality epitomised in the DWP consultation paper '21st Century Welfare' only values people as units of consumption or production in a for-commercial-profit oriented system. 'Decent hard working families' welfare-reformist rhetoric denies the validity of the contribution volunteers, disabled people and parents make to society while claiming benefits. A state-funded 'welfare reform industry' administers a new form of slavery as it colonises and makes commodities of disabled people's lives. The private companies and now even national 'for disabled people' charities are incentivised by huge bonuses on government contracts. Low paid 'blue chip' company workers' Working Tax Credits fund a welfare state for the rich . Meanwhile, an ununionised reserve army of forced labour suffers ever greater 'conditionality' or bullying.[5]

As an unpaid Green Party Spokesperson I half-joke that I wish the government would stop giving me so much work. In reality, all claimants are under attack. My spokesperson status and Green Party core values as the antithesis of neo-liberal 'conditionality' gave my life heritage as a disabled job seeker great kudos. I research Community Care archives. I liaise with other Green Party members affected, CarerWatch, Caroline Lucas MP, Prof. Peter Beresford, and more recently Brighton Benefits Campaign, Disability Cartoonist Dave Lupton and Social Work Action Network. With them, my accumulated total of just 17 months' waged employment since 1977 makes me treasured as an empathetic and treasured 'expert witness' and ally. I turn my experience from victim to survivor and vanguard member of a revolution.

Get involved, and follow the links for further info! (Some of the finest people I know are benefit claimants.)

Alan Wheatley

Green Party Spokesperson on Social Security and Care Services

NOTES

[1] http://preview.tinyurl.com/ykglou8

[2] http://preview.tinyurl.com/apqz7m

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioULVUQYF9E 'The effect of Welfare legislation in the UK 2010 part 1' and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsOd-O5hoVI '[ibid.] part 2'

[4] http://preview.tinyurl.com/3xdh4tg

[5] http://preview.tinyurl.com/2fbmzzr “Green Party evidence to '21st Century Welfare'”



Further info:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/383fvq9 'Writing off workfare: for a Green New Deal, not the flexible New Deal'

http://carerwatch.wordpress.com

http://www.communitycare.co.uk

http://preview.tinyurl.com/3ynadyc “Caroline Lucas” “welfare reform”

http://preview.tinyurl.com/3aapaw5 “Prof. Peter Beresford”

http://www.socialworkfuture.org/ Social Work Action Network

http://brightonbenefitscampaign.wordpress.com

http://www.disabilityartsonline.org/?filter_by_month_added=2011-01&unique_name=crippen-blog