David Maples, convenor of the Socialist Party Disability Group, introduced a discussion on disability at Socialism 2024, 9-10 November. This feature is based on his speech, and is published during UK Disability History Month 2024.
Employment and benefits
42.6% of disabled people of working age in Britain are ‘economically inactive’, compared to 14.9% for those who are not disabled. Many face discrimination from employers. The Trades Union Congress reports a Disability Pay Gap of 17.2% – disabled workers earn £2.35 an hour less on average, equivalent to £4,300 a year for someone working a 35-hour week. Disabled workers are also a third more likely to be on a zero-hour contract.
The pandemic, and the failure of the Tory government to have a recovery plan for the health service, has created a significant increase in people unable to work. What is needed are reasonable adjustments, adequate health and social care services, work flexibility and more. None of this is going to be offered by the new Labour government. However, its October Budget did include a tightening of ‘Work Capability Assessments’, the consequence likely to be tens of thousands of disabled people having their benefits cut.
Meanwhile, Isabel Oakeshott, a journalist and partner of Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice, commented: “How many young people are supposedly too sick to work and are being supported by the state? Rachel Reeves basically turned this into a budget for those who prefer to just sit on the sofa and order their Deliveroo and drive their Motability free vehicle. Basically, these people are, frankly, parasites.”
This is a reminder of how capitalist politicians will use disabled people as scapegoats, attempting to divide the working class and justify further austerity.
In Autumn 2010, the then Chancellor, Tory George Osborne, announced £4 billion in benefit cuts. “A welfare cheat,” he said, “was no different to a mugger who robs you in the street”. It was not surprising that when he presented medals at the London Olympics in 2012, the 80,000 people in the stadium booed him.
Understanding of conditions such as long Covid, ME and neurodiversity is still very limited. These issues have had a particular impact on young people. The insecurity of living in a rigged society arranged for the benefit of the super-rich and with inadequately funded mental health services has taken a particular toll.
The idea that the UK has generous public social spending is a myth. In 2009 it was 24.1 percent of GDP, compared with an OECD average of 22.1%.
Investment is needed to fully fund existing services, as well as research to develop new services. Almost all trade unions have policies which recognise the need to support a diverse membership and diversity in society. Disabled workers and the trade unions should have a central role in democratically planning service provision.
How can disabled people fight back?
Trade unions can play a significant role in the fight for disability rights, for their members and wider society. The RMT transport union led the fight back against the cost-of-living crisis with repeated strike action on the railways. An important part of their campaign was opposition to the closure of railway station ticket offices. The campaign gained significant public support and was enormously beneficial to disabled travellers in helping to provide a safe travelling environment.
A UK government study in 2008 found 79% of disabled people in the UK aged over 65 reported that they acquired their impairment after the age of 50. Many trade union reps find that disability cases are a significant part of their caseload.
A major reason for the disability employment gap is disabled people not being adequately supported in the workplace, although it is not limited to this.
The 1995 Disability Discrimination Act introduced the concept of ‘reasonable adjustments’. We support reasonable adjustments, but who decides what is reasonable? Union reps will be wearily familiar with employers delaying responding to reasonable adjustment requests, and disabled members consequently leaving the workplace.
We believe that there should be a statutory requirement for employers to respond to reasonable adjustment requests within two weeks. Trade unions should also negotiate for outsourced occupational health services to be brought in-house.
However, the concept of reasonable adjustments leaves discretion with the employer. They can refuse to implement reasonable adjustments on the basis of cost. The key issue for disabled workers is who controls the workplace.
Disabled job applicants would be more confident to disclose disabilities if trade unions had control, or even adequate monitoring, of the recruitment process. Workers‘ control of the workplace, with decisions about the organisation of work taken democratically, would benefit all workers. On this basis, the employer-biased concept of reasonable adjustments could be replaced by a trade union-centred concept of necessary adjustments.
In the last 30 years, significant progress has been made with accessibility. There is now a general expectation that buildings should be accessible and that disabled toilets should be provided. However, in the 20 years to 2020 the number of public toilets dropped by 39%.
Whilst there has been progress regarding physical disabilities, there has been very limited progress regarding neurodiversity. Amongst the very few public buildings which provide a supportive environment for neurodiverse people are public libraries. Since 2010, one-fifth of all libraries have been closed. A further 950 have had their hours reduced. Poorer areas are four times more likely to have lost their library than richer areas.
Rather than promising a crackdown on benefit fraud, which encourages hate crime against disabled people, the new Labour government should be working to help disabled people.
The Department for Work and Pensions should be resourced so that Access to Work applications, a scheme to help disabled people access and maintain employment, are dealt with promptly.
Trade unions, which are the largest democratic organisations of disabled people, should work with other disabled people’s organisations for reform of the social security system. This should include:
- A significant increase in statutory sick pay (SSP)
- Flexible benefits set at reasonable levels that take account of fluctuating conditions
- Qualification conditions for the state pension not to penalise disabled people
Trade unions should press these demands. They should expect members of their parliamentary groups to champion them. They should organise a lobby of parliament and a national demonstration for a new deal for disabled people.
The Socialist Party disability group is newly formed. We are working on a short pamphlet, a model trade union resolution, encouraging disabled members to join trade unions, and developing accessibility guidelines for events. We would welcome invitations to speak at trade union and community organisations.
A history of oppression and struggle
Capitalism is a system based on profit. The capitalists exploit workers, squeezing as much out of each worker for the smallest possible wage they can get away with. Those whose ability to perform tasks generating profits for the bosses is impaired face discrimination. Backing this up, throughout its history, capitalism has fuelled negative stereotypes and continues to scapegoat disabled people.
Separate institutions for disabled people developed in the late mediaeval period but developed further under capitalism with workhouses and madhouses, including the notorious ‘Bedlam’.
In 1913, the British Parliament passed the Mental Deficiency Act, which invented the term the ‘moral imbecile’, covering people with mild learning disabilities, prostitutes, unmarried mothers, and criminals, linking this to ‘genetic inheritance’. In 1927, the term was replaced by ‘moral defective’, which included people who did not conform to the moral values of mainstream society.
The world’s first national organisation run and controlled by disabled people was the All-Russian Cooperative of Disabled People (VIKO) which was launched in December 1921 after a vote of the Council of People’s Commisars. This was followed by the formation of the All Union Society of the Blind in 1925 and the All Union Society of the Deaf the following year.
Although the world’s first socialist revolution in Russia 1917 had taken place in an economically backward country, ravaged by the effects of war and then surrounded by the allied armies of intervention, the new Soviet state was an enormous step forward for disabled people.
Within VIKO, all decisions were made democratically and only disabled people could vote. This contrasted with organisations helping the disabled in capitalist countries which were almost all run paternalistically and without democratic structures.
VIKO provided work opportunities for disabled people, established kindergartens, resorts and health centres, vocational schools and sports centres.
These organisations did not survive the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy, which carried out a political counter-revolution, unpicking social reforms and removing any element of working-class democracy.
In Britain, the National League of the Blind, a registered trade union, marched in 1920 to demand better working conditions. The 1944 Disability Employment Act promised sheltered employment, reserved occupations, and employment quotas for disabled people. Reserved occupations included lift and car park attendants, which was not very aspirational.
In 1951, 800 members of the British Limbless Ex-Serviceman’s Association took part in a ‘silent reproach’ March to Downing Street.
The modern disability rights movement in the United States can be traced back to the admission of Ed Roberts to the University of California in Berkeley in 1962. Ed was paralysed from the neck down due to childhood polio.
He was initially housed in the campus hospital. When he was joined by other students with disabilities, they got a grant from the US Office of Education and created the Physically Disabled Students Programme which was the first of its kind. This was the beginning of the Independent Living Movement.
The development of the social model of disability, which explains that people with impairments are disabled by the way society is organised, came from disabled people’s struggle. The new activists were inspired by the Black civil rights struggle. Atlanta activist Mark Johnson later remarked: “Black people fought for the right to ride at the front of the bus. We’re fighting for the right to get on the bus”.
In 1979, a student at Newcastle University, Caron Walker, who subsequently joined Militant, the Socialist Party’s predecessor, had the same experience as Ed Roberts. Initially she was accommodated in the university sick bay. Inspiring a group of students, she asked to move to a group flat. I can still remember the patronising university doctor opposing this and then claiming the credit for the success of the arrangement. Caron is remarkable, but it didn’t stop her from being outrageously banned from numerous pubs and nightclubs as a fire hazard.
When Caron, a wheelchair user, was elected as a Newcastle City Councillor in the 1980s, the right-wing members of the council Labour group described her as the “mouth on wheels”!
In 1975, the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation declared in its fundamental principles that disability was a social creation, a distinct form of oppression, that could be challenged and eliminated. This insight was hugely empowering.
In July 1988, the British Council of Organisations of Disabled People (BCODP) organised its first national protest at the Department of Health and Social Security. Nicholas Scott, the Tory Minister for Disabled People, refused to meet the march, so the marchers organised a sit-down protest which blocked the Elephant and Castle roundabout, on one of the major traffic routes in central London.
BCODP exposed and discredited establishment disability organisations, wealthy disability charities such as Radar, Mind and Cheshire Homes. Instead it promoted organisations run and controlled by disabled people. In 1990 and 1992, it targeted ITV’s annual telethon event leading ultimately to its cancellation. Significantly, in 1992 the television technicians, members of BECTU trade union, rather than organising a collection for the telethon as previously, collected for BCODP.
The Direct Action Network and the Campaign for Accessible Transport began smaller-scale direct action. In July 1993, there was a by-election in Christchurch, a small town in Dorset. The Tory candidate, Robert Hayward, whilst previously an MP had, in January 1992, talked out the second reading of the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill. Activists dogged his campaign, including on one day 35 activists in wheelchairs followed him canvassing. He lost the by-election with a swing of 35%.
Although race and sex discrimination legislation had been in place for twenty years, in May 1994 Scott talked out another disabled rights bill. In 1995, the Tory government, in the face of a mass movement involving 100,000 people, caved in. The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) was the nineteenth attempt to introduce legislation. The DDA was narrow in scope, lacked any enforcement agency and was known to disabled activists as ‘doesn’t do anything’.
It did however, introduce into law the concept of ‘reasonable adjustments’, something that disabled activists still fight to strengthen and enforce.
