Who Wants to Evict a Millionaire? On Saturday 13th April UK Uncut led a protest against the benefit cuts and new taxes being brought in that will most severely impact many of the poorest and particularly the disabled in our society with a lively peaceful protest against Tory Peer Lord Freud, one of the millionaire architects of the bedroom tax.
Tories Against the (Bedroom) Tax protester on the Northern Line as UK Uncut travel to Archway
David Freud, a grandson of Sigmund, had made a fortune as a merchant banker before retiring in 2006 when he was asked by New Labour’s Prime Minister Tony Blair to review the UK’s welfare-to-work system. His 2008 report ‘Reducing dependency, increasing opportunity: options for the future of welfare‘ included making use of private companies to help lone parents and people on Incapacity Benefit back into work and for a single working-age benefit payment to replace the whole range of those currently being paid.
Green Party leader Natalie Bennett had come to take part in the protest
Many in the Labour Party found his ideas unpalatable, and Gordon Brown refused as prime minister to cut welfare spending. Freud then switched to supporting the Conservatives and in 2009 was made a life peer and became a Tory shadow minister. After the 2010 election Freud became Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Welfare Reform at the Department for Work and Pensions.
Iain Duncan Smith had become Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and took up Freud’s ideas, working on the introduction of Universal Credit, introducing a new Work Programme under which claimants could be sanctioned, losing benefits for up to three years if they were judged to be failing to cooperate and making real terms cuts in benefits.
The ‘UK Uncut Removals’ van – ‘Millionaire eviction specialists’ – arrived just as we turned off Hillway into Langbourne Ave
Damaging to many as these policies were in principle, they were made much harsher by the sheer incompetence Duncan Smith imposed on the Department of Work and Pensions and his failure to realise or empathise with the very different lives of poorer people. For him or Freud a delay of five weeks in receiving payments would be no problem – their resources would seem them over and they could easily borrow from family or friends – or even banks.
But those on benefits had no resources to fall back on. If payments were delayed or they were sanctioned they would have no money to buy food, heat their homes, pay rent.
Some facts about benefits and the problems caused by cuts
Famously in April 2103 after a claimant had told the BBC he had £53 per week after paying housing costs, Duncan Smith replied that he could live on £53 per week. And in 2015 he “was criticised after the DWP admitted publishing fake testimonies of claimants enjoying their benefits cuts. Later the same month, publication of statistics showed 2,380 people died in a 3-year period shortly after a work capability assessment declared them fit for work.”
The Removal men had come with boxes
It was the policies of Freud and Duncan Smith that led to the huge increase in the need for food banks. In 2010-11 the Trussell Trust distributed 61,000 food parcels. By 2022-3 that annual figure was “close to 3 million, almost a fiftyfold increase.“
But the police were not letting them get on with the job
The protest was particularly directed against the ‘Bedroom Tax’, which penalised tenants in public housing by reducing their Housing Benefit if they were judged to have more rooms than they needed. It was meant to reduce the costs to and encourage council tenants to move to smaller accommodation – but as this was seldom available its result was simply to impoverish them. And it hit some groups particularly the disabled hardest, as they might have to move away from properties that had been suitable and adapted to their needs.
But there were also other measures, including a benefits cap which was being brought in across the country in stages to put a strict limit on the amounts that people may receive. It seemed inevitable that this would lead to many thousands being evicted, particularly in high rent areas such as London, as well as a cut in legal aid and council tax benefits and an end to disability living allowances.
Those benefits which remain will rise by less than inflation – a cut in real terms. And these cuts were taking place at the same time as the 50p tax rate was being abolished, saving the UK’s 13,000 millionaires around £100,000 each.
I went with the largest group of the protesters, who met at King’s Cross to travel to an undisclosed location, which turned out to be the Highgate home of Tory Peer Lord Freud.
Owen Jones
Outside his home there were a number of performances and speeches which you can read more about at the link below to My London Diary. And the protesters gave a huge cheer when it was announced that disabled activists from DPAC (Disabled Persons Against Cuts) had visited the home of Ian Duncan Smith and also delivered an eviction notice there.
Atos Protest & Camden Town: – Monday 24 January 2011
Disability benefits are now under attack by our Labour government, who have insisted they will implement the Tory plans to cut the amount paid in incapacity benefits by £3 billion by 2028. And the House of Lords economic affairs committee a few days ago published a report calling for a fundamental review of the benefits system to tackle the rising social and fiscal costs of disability benefits.
Picket at the Archway Job Centre Plus Atos test centre
Also last week the High Court ruled that the previous government’s consultation on changing incapacity benefits was unlawful as “it presented the changes as a way of supporting disabled people into work but failed to make clear that 424,000 vulnerable claimants would see their benefits cut by £416 a month.”
When the Tory coalition government came into power in 2010 it picked on the disabled who it thought would be an easy target for the cuts it was making to support the bankers. Protests such as this on Monday January 24th 2001 showed how wrong they were, with determined opposition to the unfairness of their cost-cutting reforms from disabled groups including Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and the Black Triangle Campaign.
Protesters meet up in Triton Square
One part of the campaign by successive governments has been to give huge publicity and priority to benefit fraud, which according to the national Audit Office only amounts to 0.6% of the DWP budget and is a “drop in the ocean compared to the losses by tax evasion by the super-rich and the amounts lost by them and major corporations exploiting tax loopholes.“
Police try rather ineffectually to stop protesters heading for the Atos offices
In 2011 a major source of unfairness in the system was the attempts to cut costs by the use of computer-based ability to work assessments carried out for the DWP by European IT company Atos. The interviews were administered by ‘healthcare professionals’, often poorly trained and lacking the qualifications and experience to assess many types of disability, particularly mental illness. Almost 70% of those assessed were moved onto the lower benefit rates of the Job Seekers Allowance with some being refused any benefits at all.
An independent review for the DWP made fundamental criticisms of the assessments, and around 40% of those who appealed the decisions eventually had their benefits restored to previous levels – but only after months of hardship, and often just in time for their next review when their benefits would again be axed. Part of the problem was the pressure applied on the assessors to meet targets in cutting benefits by the company so they could justify their costs to the DWP.
And there were plenty of true horror stories. People assessed fit for work who died within days of the assessments, those who committed suicide and some who starved to death. Benefit cuts really do kill.
Atos went on to gain other contracts from the DWP until September 2024 when the contract for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and work capability assessment (WCA) were given to Serco. The DWP had acknowledged there were flaw in the Atos assessments but few believe that Serco will be any fairer.
Monday January 24th was a a National Day of Protest Against Benefit Cuts, with actions around the country, including protests in Leeds, Birmingham, Burnley, Hastings, Crawley, Chesterfield, Livingston, near Edinburgh (Atos’s Scotland HQ) and Glasgow. I began by photographing a local protest at Archway in North London before going on to a protest outside the London HQ of Atos Origin in Triton Square close to the Euston Road.
On My London Diary back in 2011 I wrote much more about the Atos tests and also about the details of the two protests. The protest in Triton Square was heavily policed but the organisers and those taking part, including Disabled People Against Cuts, WinVisible (Women with Visible and Invisible Disabilities) and London Coalition Against Poverty were intent on this being a peaceful protest.
Police have problems in dealing with disabled protesters. Many want to treat them carefully and their officers certainly realise that images of them being roughly handled would be terrible PR. But they were annoyed that the protesters decided to protest close to the actual Atos offices rather than in a pen they had set up a short distance away. And when one elderly man walked through the spread out police line he was roughly pushed to the ground and dragged away, though later he was allowed to rejoin the other hundred or so protesters.
The police then brought more barriers and erected them around the protesters, telling them they could only exit the fenced area when they were dispersing at the end of the protest. There seemed to be no real justification for this and they seemed simply to be a simply a matter of pique that the protesters had not followed their instructions.
I had plenty of time to get from Archway to Triton Square and got off the bus in Camden Town for a walk and to make use of one of London’s rapidly disappearing public toilets in the middle of the busy road junction there (but I think closed a few years ago.)
I’d photographed around Camden High Street and Chalk Farm Road quite often in the 1990s, often on my way home from taking pictures elsewhere in North London, and walking from Camden Town station to Chalk Farm. Then the lemon sorbets from Marine Ices were the best in London if not the world. But that’s gone too now, and in January 2011 it wasn’t the weather for it.
Back in the 1990s the streets would have been pretty empty except at weekends, but by 2011 there were plenty of tourists wandering around even on a cold Monday in January, though business was fairly slack. But mainly I pointed my camera up to the decorations above the shops
No More Benefit Deaths: On Wednesday 7th September 2016, the day of the opening ceremony for the Rio Paralympics, disablement campaigners demanded human rights for all disabled people and an end to the disastrous sanctions regime which has led to many deaths.
They called on Prime Minister Theresa May, newly appointed in July 2016 to make public the findings of the UN investigation into the UK for violations of Deaf and Disabled people’s rights, to scrap the Work Capability Assessment and commit to preventing future benefit-related deaths.
The UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities published its report in November 2016. It stated that the UK had committed “grave or systematic” violations of UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and in June 2017 the committee clarified the reasons behind their conclusions.
They stated that the breaches of the rights to independent living, work and employment and adequate standard of living under the convention were mainly caused by the policices introduced by Tory ministers at the DWP between 2010 and 2015. Some were grave violations, some systematic and others both grave and systematic.
The UN inquiry had been prompted by the research and lobbying of Disabled People Against Cuts, and the Disability News Service article included this quote from DPAC co-founder Linda Burnip who:
“pointed to actions such as cuts to social care, the impact of the work capability assessment – which has been linked by public health experts from the Universities of Liverpool and Oxford to hundreds of suicides between 2010 and 2013 – the hugely damaging introduction of personal independence payment and consequent cuts to support, the increased use of sanctions and the resulting deaths of benefit claimants, and the introduction of the bedroom tax.”
As Burnip stated, the government’s actions were “based on a deliberate intention to cause harm without any regard to the horrendous consequences for disabled people.”
The day on Wednesday 7th September 2016 began with a huge banner with the message ‘NO MORE BENEFITS DEATHS #DPAC” being displayed on the wall of the River Thames facing the riverside terrace of the Houses of Parliament.
After photographing this I hurried to Downing Street were there was a rally in on the opposite side of the street with speakers from DPAC, Winvisible, the Scottish Black Triangle Campaign and others including John Clark from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty who shared news of similar problems facing disabled people in Canada.
Gill Thompson spoke about her brother David Clapson, a diabetic ex-soldier died after his benefit was cut as he could not afford food or electricity to keep his insulin cool was there with a banner covered with the names and some photographs of around a hundred of the many who had died because of the DWP’s sanctions, cuts and scapegoating.
The protesters then lifted up the black coffin with white wreaths they had brought and began a march towards the Houses of Parliament.
As they came to Bridge Street the marchers took the police by surprise by turning towards the bridge. The giant banner which had earlier been displayed facing Parliament was now stretched across the road, blocking the bridge in both directions.
After several minutes police began trying to get people to move off the road warning them they are committing an offence and may be arrested. I was also threatened with arrest, despite showing my Press card. One carer who refused to move away from the wheelchair user he was looking after was arrested and taken to a police van.
Most of those in wheelchairs and mobility scooters refused to move or did so only after a long series of threats by police, who eventually managed to clear one carraigeway to allow traffic to move out of Westminster. But a group remained blocking traffic in the other direction until after almost two hours Paula Peters triumphantly announced the protest was ending and everyone left.
Brexit, Inclusion London & Fracking: Protests in Westminster I photographed on Monday 5th September 2016 were for and against Brexit, Disabled People Against Cuts who had been lobbying at Parliament over the Inclusion London report and a vigil by pagans against fracking.
Rival Brexit protests at Parliament
Parliament was debating a petition on the EU referendum signed by over 4 million people calling for a second referendum as there had only been a 52% vote in favour of leaving Europe, with 48% voting against. They argued that this was far too close for such a major constitutional change and at least a 60% vote should have been required for the referedum to be decisive.
Spiked magazine had organsed a protest by pro-Brexit campaigners in Old Palace Yard and they shouted loudly for Theresa May to ‘Invoke Article 50 Now!
A small group who wanted us to stay in Europe had come to Parliament Square where they held flags and banners.
Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) had come to Parliament to lobby MPs and to present the Inclusion London report which had highlighted the disastrous effects of cutting care and support funding for personal assistance by the closure of the Independent Living Fund in 2015.
After the lobby they posed on the pavement outside Parliament for photographs and then on the road opposite.
before marching to Downing St.
In front of Downing Street the march came to a halt on the roadway.
Police directed traffic around them as they held a ‘Pop-Up Street theatre‘ performance there.
There were short speeches, poetry and songs from some of the DPAC members, showcasing the creativity of disabled people and the contribution they can make to society with proper support.
Others talked about their physical and mental health problems and the difficulties that they had suffered because of the closure of the Independent Living Fund.
DPAC were supported by other groups and individuals including Winvisible.
The protest was part of a series of protests at the same time as the Rio Paralympics, and a large banner read ‘Rights Not Games’.
On the other side of Whitehall opposite Downing Street pagans were staging a 24 hour vigil against fracking.
Pagans believe that nature is sacred and find spiritual meanings in natural cycles of birth, growth and death and Druidic and other rituals are linked to the seasons. Humans, animals, trees, plants and all of the earth are part of nature, and fracking disrupts the natural order.
A banner with a tree had the message ‘Druids against Fracking – One (heart) for Mother Earth‘ while another had more esoteric symbols with the message ‘We are Nature protecting ourselves‘. One of the Druids was wearing a t-shirt with the sigil ‘The Warriors Call‘, a magic symbol widely adopted as an anti-fracking device.
DPAC v Theresa May in Maidenhead: In June 2017 we were also in a General Election campaign after Theresa May called a snap election. Labour would have won back then, but for the deliberate interference by the party right who sabotaged their efforts in some key seats to stop a Corbyn victory. Instead we got another 7 years of Tory blunders and incompetence. May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak…
Even now I wonder when Labour seems to be in a commanding position in the opinion polls whether Labour will somehow manage to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. They are certainly doing their best at the moment to alienate party workers in many constituencies by barring their choice of candidates and imposing often quite unsuitable (and sometimes unspeakable) people in their place.
Theresa May was standing in the safe Tory seat of Maidenhead and was re-elected with a majority of over 26,000 over Labour and in 2019 again with almost 19,000 more votes than the then second place Lib-Dem. This time May has retired but it may well be a close run thing with both Reform UK and the Lib-Dems taking votes from the Tories.
DPAC were not fielding a candidate or supporting one of the other twelve in the 2017 race but were there to protest against the Tory government, the first in the world to be found guilty of the grave and systematic violations of disabled people’s human rights by the UN.
They stated that Tory cuts since 2010 had 9 times the impact on disabled people as on any other group, 19 times more for those with the highest support needs. Tory polices are heartless, starving, isolating and finally killing the disabled who they view as unproductive members of society – and by ending the Independent Living Fund they have has actually stopped many from making a positive contribution.
The Tory Government rejected the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities findings in 2016, which had found failures in the right to live independently and be included in the community, to work and employment, and to an adequate standard of living and social protection across all parts of the UK. A further report by the committee in 2024 found that there had been “no significant progress” since 2016 in improving disabled people’s rights and that there were signs that things were getting worse in some areas.
The 2024 report concluded that the UK has “failed to take all appropriate measures to address grave and systematic violations of the human rights of persons with disabilities and has failed to eliminate the root causes of inequality and discrimination.” Labour has yet to announce anything likely to improve the situation.
A couple of buses took me slowly to Maidenhead where I met the group from DPAC who had come from Paddington in a quarter of the time. They marched to the High Street with a straw effigy of ‘Theresa May – Weak and Wobbly’ and the message ‘Cuts Kill’. After a hour of protest with speeches, chanting and handing out fliers calling on Maidenhead voters to vote for anyone but Theresa May they returned to the station.
Although it looked to the police who had followed them closely as well as to some of the photographers who had travelled down from London that the protest had come to an end I knew that DPAC would not leave without some further action.
They waited on the pavement close to the station until most of the police had left – and most photographers had caught a train – and then moved to occupy one of the busiest roads into the town. The police came running back and began to argue with the protesters to get them to return to the pavement.
Police find it hard to deal with disabled protesters, especially those in wheelchairs and mobility scooters, and they were rather confused (as I was) by the arguments of ‘General William Taggart of the NCA‘ who claimed a military right to block roads. DPAC told the police that they would leave the road after having made their point for a few more minutes, but the police wanted them to move at once.
Eventually having blocked the road for around 15 minutes the protesters were told they would be arrested unless they moved and slowly began to do so. I left rather more quickly as my bus to Windsor was coming and if I missed it I would have to wait two hours for the next one. I arrived at the stop as it was coming in.
My journey home was not an entirely happy one. There was the usual walk between stops and wait for another bus to take me close to home. I got off, walked a short distance down the road, felt in my pocket for my phone and found nothing – I had left it on the bus, which was by then disappearing around the corner. Fortunately the bus driver later found it and handed it in at the depot and two days later I was able to cycle to Slough and retrieve it.
DPAC – Stop & Scrap Universal Credit: A couple of days ago the media were carrying news of a report by the Resolution Foundation on the working of the Universal Credit benefit first introduced in 2013. This found that seven in 10 (71%) families on UC were worse off in real terms now than they would have been under the previous benefits, and that out of work people with disabilities were those likely to have lost most.
Six years ago, DPAC were already pointing this out and on Wednesday 18th April 2018 campaigners from DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts), MHRN (Mental Health Resistance Network), Black Triangle, Winvisible and others began a nationwide day of action against Universal Credit in London with a rally in Old Palace Yard and a protest inside Parliament.
Security meant I was unable to cover their protest inside the Houses of Parliament but I met those who had been protesting inside when they came out to join those protesting outside and held a rally in Old Palace Yard.
As that rally ended the campaigners marched into Parliament Square where they blocked the roadway for around half an hour before ending their protest.
DPAC and others say that Universal Credit has so many flaws it must be scrapped, calling it “an economic and political disaster bringing further distress and impoverishment to those forced to endure it“.
Back in 2018 they pointed out it has been particularly disastrous for disabled people. The removal of Severe and Enhanced Disability Premiums means single disabled people lose around £2,000 per year and a disabled couple over £4,000.
There have been some changes in Universal Credit since 2018, but these have mainly been administrative and have not affected the basic unfairness towards the disabled. The Resolution Foundation report suggests that a single person with a long-term disability which prevents them from working would now be £2,800 per year worse off than under the old benefits system.
Their report suggests overall cost of Universal Credit in 2028 will be about £86bn a year, while under the previous system it would have been £100bn, a saving of £14bn, which is being made to the cost of those disabled and others out of work – the poorest groups in our society. In contrast those working and also claiming UC will be a little better off than under to previous benefits system.
As always police found dealing with disabled protesters difficult. It doesn’t look good to be harassing them in the way they would normally act to protesters, and they have a great problem in making arrests of people in wheel chairs or on mobility vehicles. Apparently the Met have only one vehicle which can safely carry either – and only in limited numbers, perahps one at a time.
As well as this protest there was also a large protest in Parliament Square by Kashmiris and Indians from many sections of the community including Tamils, Sikhs, Ravidass, Dalits, Muslims and others against the visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and smaller groups supporting him and his ultra-right Hindu supremacist policies. Indians protest President Modi’s visit Hindus support Modi Save Girl, Educate Girl
And in late afternoon I went to join Environmental group Biofuelwatch holding their ‘Time to Twig’ Masked Ball Forest Flashmob outside the Marylebone hotel where the largest international biomass conference was taking place. ‘Time to Twig’ Masked Ball
DPAC take Pants to IDS: Wednesday 4th September 2013 was the last day of a week of action by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) against the attacks by the coalition Tory government on the poor and disabled. I photographed protests outside the Dept of Health, Dept of Energy and Climate Change and the Dept of Education in the morning, and then a combined ‘Pants to IDS’ demonstration at the Dept for Work & Pensions in the afternoon. Between the these I also covered a rally in Parliament Square by UK Dalits protesting the failure of the government to outlaw caste discrimination in the UK; government policies on this issue seem to be dictated by their high-caste Hindu donors.
DPAC Picket Ministries
DPAC was formed by disabled to give a voice to disabled people who are so often patronised and marginalised, despite many being highly intelligent and articulate and obviously being able to speak from experience. As users of services they know better than the highly paid consultants and cronies that governments seem to prefer to rely on to give the answers they want.
At the Ministry of Health in Whitehall around 50 disablement activists held a protest “to defend our NHS and demand our right to levels of social care support enabling choice, control, dignity and independence.” There were banners, posters, placards, speeches and songs, including ‘Citizen Smart’ (Alan Smart) and Adeola Johnson, who sang her ‘General Strike’
The protest there was continuing when I went on to the Department of Energy and Climate Change and joined those “angry about the numbers of disabled people living in fuel poverty while the energy companies rake in ever growing profits” to hear more speeches and songs.
There were people holding a banner across the door which appeared to be blocked. Again I left before the end, catching a bus to the next of the four initial venues.
The mood at the Dept of Education was angrier, with a group crowding around the single doorway shouting and arguing with a man refusing them entry. They kept asking for either someone from the department to come out and discuss their protest against government attacks on inclusive education and a return to segregation or for a delegation to be allowed in to deliver their manifesto.
After I left three people were allowed to take the manifesto in, and were told that they might be allowed back to discuss it later in the week. There was so a protest at the Dept of Transport but I was too late by the time I arrived there.
The pavement outside the Dept of Work and Pensions was rather crowded with roughly a hundred protesters along with reporters and around 35 assorted wheelchairs and mobility vehicles.
They listened intently to speeches by Sean McGovern, co-chair of the TUC’s disabled workers’ committee, John McArdle of the Black Triangle Campaign (named after the symbol the Nazi’s forced those they considered “asocial” or “workshy” to wear) and Richard Reiser, co ordinator for UK Disability History Month, along with several from DPAC members.
There were performances by Heydon Prowse as a man in a white suit and with a three piece gospel choir performing a piece about Atos miracles which certify the dead and dying as ‘fit for work’.
A deputation let to deliver a copy of the UK Disabled People’s Manifesto: Reclaiming Our Futures which was to be launched at a meeting in the House of Commons later in the day to Downing St. Research shows that “disabled people are being disproportionately impacted by the cuts with those with the most complex levels of support need being hit by austerity nineteen times harder than the average person.”
The manifesto was produced by disabled people and their organisations and sets out the key principles, demands and commitments that are important to deaf and disabled people. MPs were reminded that “With around 1 in 5 of the population being disabled and many more affected by disability as family, friends and carers or simply as citizens who care about social justice, policy and pledges on disability will be a key concern of many voters as we approach the next election.”
As the deputation left, Andy Greene of DPAC opened the large bag he had been carrying around all day. He reminded us that Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) had his problems too (earlier McArdle had described him less sympathetically as “the psychopath that is the minister in this office“.)
One of IDS’s problems had been over housing, but had been solved when his daddy-in-law had given him the mansion where DPAC activists had visited him for a protest on his very nice lawn, and another was apparently with some very personal items.
Back in 2003, one of his senior aides gave evidence to a House of Commons Committee that he had claimed expenses from the taxpayer for – among other items – his underwear. So here in the bag were lots of pants for IDS, and we were invited to personalise them with a message saying what we thought of his policies, after which they could be pegged up on a washing line between the lamp posts outside the ministry. None of the comments were positive but there were just a few that were fit to photograph and print.
End UK Caste Discrimination Now – Parliament Square
Between the DPAC protests I also photographed a protest by some of the estimated 200-400,000 lower caste Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) living in the UK. Although the House of Lords had twice voted for caste discrimination to be included in equalities law, and section 9 of the Equality Act 2010 requires the Government to introduce secondary legislation to include it under race, the government continues to cave in to high-cast Hindu objections to doing so. Although illegal in India, it is still widespread there, and many in the UK have also suffer abuse because of their caste. But wealthy Hindus are large donors to the Conservative Party (and probably now to Starmer’s Labour.)
BP Greenwashing & Benefits Cuts – Thursday 19th May 2016 – Seven years ago today.
Greenpeace ‘Sinking Cities’ banners at BM/BP show – British Museum
There are some protests which are advertised well in advance and other actions which are kept highly secret with only a small group taking part being in the know. And the action on the opening day of the BP sposored exhibition Sinking Cities at the British Museum was definitely one of the latter.
I heard about it only as I was on my way up to London for another event close by, and detoured slightly to cover it. I live on the edge of London, just inside the M25 and can’t usually respond to ‘breaking news’ as it takes me too long to get there.
Clearly the BP sponsorship of ‘Sinking Cities’ was going to be controversial as there has been a long campaign, particularly by ‘BP or Not BP’ to get the British Museum to end the deal which has allowed BP to ‘greenwash’ their polluting and climate destroying activities, which have significantly contributed to global warming and so to recent floods in cities across the globe.
Greenpeace had come with very professionally produced large banners for ‘Sinking Cities’, naming some of the places which have been flooded recently by global warming induced climate change and had managed to come inside and hang this down the columns across the front of the museum’s Main entrance. At first glance they really looked as if they were a part of the Museum’s own publicity.
It really was impressive, and the Museum had been caught on the hop, reacting in panic they closed the whole museum for the day, dissapointing many who had come. This seemed unnecessary as the museum could simply have closed this front entrance to deal with the climbers and remove the banners. The climbers on the columns were obviously experienced and operating safely and apparently without damage to the museum structure.
It served as rather a good advertising stunt for the show, but of course was rather embarrassing for the sponsors BP which is why the Museum felt it necessary to remove them. Most other major arts organisations in London including the Tate Museums, the Royal Opera House and the National Portrait Gallery had dropped BP as a sponsor following pressure by protests such as these and pressure from artists, musicians and staff who work in them.
No More Deaths from Benefit Cuts – Tottenham Court Rd
I had come to London that morning as delegates at the TUC disabled workers conference led by activists from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN) and Winvisible (Women with visible and invisible disabilities) were to hold a lunchtime protest which I had been invited to photograph.
They came out and marched, led by people in wheelchairs from Congress House to Tottenham Court Road calling for an end to government benefit cuts which have led to the deaths of many disabled people – including 2 DPAC members the previous day.
Two long banners gave the message ‘NO MORE DEATHS FROM BENEFIT CUTS’ and on arriving at Tottenham Court Road they held these across the road stopping traffic in both directions.
Another banner was full of the names of some of those known to have died because of sanctions and cuts in benefits, among them David Clapson, a diabetic ex-soldier who died penniless, alone and starving after being sanctioned. He didn’t even have enough money to keep the refrigerator to store his insulin running.
Another banner asked the question ‘IS THIS HOW 2 TREAT Disabled People?’. The protesters held a short and noisy rally, getting considerably support from many around including many workers also on their lunch breaks. There were a few short speeches before it was time for the protesters to march back for the afternoon session at Congress House, with a police officer arriving just as they were about to leave. As usual he is confused to find that no-one is in charge.
When the Tories got into power, at first in coalition in 2010, they determined they would save money by cutting benefits thinking the disabled would be an easy target. Groups such as DPAC and the others at this event have shown them how wrong they were. These people rely on benefits to live and to have a decent life and have organised and reacted to try to retain them against the government’s attacks.
Hardest Hit March Against Cuts: On Wednesday 11th March 2011 around 10,000 people, many in wheelchairs came to march in London calling for an end to harassment and benefit cuts for the disabled.
The Hardest Hit march was supported by a huge range of charities and organisations representing and supporting the physically and mentally disabled, including major unions such as PCS, UCU and Unite.
The protest came a year after the formation of the coalition government led by David Cameron with Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg as his deputy, with real power staying with the Tory majority and is now widely seen as a disaster for the Lib-Dems. Under Chancellor George Osborne the coalition plunged the country into the start of ten years of austerity, with particularly swingeing cuts to local government services as well as a drastic attack on all those claiming benefits.
The cuts disproportionately affected the poor and the disabled while the wealthiest in our society were hardly if at all affected. In 2018 the UN special rapporter on extreme poverty concluded his visit to the UK by reminding us that ‘Poverty is a political choice‘ and that ‘Austerity could easily have spared the poor, if the political will had existed to do so’.
For the disabled and those on benefits there were cuts and freezes and the situation was made worse by the ignorance and incompetence of Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2010 to 2016.
It was under Labour in October 2008 that Work Capability Assessments were introduced but the numbers made before 2010 were relatively small and they were used for new Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claimants and a small number of ESA reassessments. It was only in Spring 2011 under the coalition government that a programme began to move those on existing benefits onto ESA using the WCA tests administered by Atos began.
Already by 2011 there had been serious criticisms both of the unsatisfactory nature of the tests and of the failures by Atos to administer them correctly, and this protest march called both for an end to the cuts in benefits for the disabled and “and in particular for an end to the discredited and iniquitous testing regime administered by Atos Healthcare, which has replaced proper medical tests by a computer-based system that often ignores the actual needs of those being assessed, and has as unacceptably high error rate, with a majority of appeals against its assessments succeeding.“
The Braille spells out SHAFTED
Despite the huge body of evidence and the many deaths the system caused, only minor changes were made and it was not until 2014 that the contract with Atos was ended, only for them to be replaced by Maximus who carried on the same way. Atos, now renamed IAS, remains now a part of the assessment system for ESA, Universal Credit and PIP along with Maximus and Capita.
Both New Labour and the Coalition made cuts in many positive projects and organisations set up to help the disabled. One of these was Remploy, whose last state-run sheltered factory set up to employ disabled labour closed in 2013 with the loss of over 1700 jobs. It is now a part of Maximus.
This protest got more media attention than most, largely because of the presence among those leading the march of Sally Bercow, the wife of the then Speaker of the Commons, and actress and activist Jane Asher, president of three of the organisations involved, Arthritis Care, National Autistic Society and Parkinson’s UK. It was followed by a mass lobby of MPs.
Since then there have been many more protests against the unfair treatment of the disabled as various benefits have been scrapped and Universal Credit has led to further problems, but nothing on this scale. Disabled people have not only suffered most they have also become some of the more active protesters, particularly led by groups that were on this march including Disable People Against Cuts (DPAC), Mental Health Resistance Network (MHRN), Winvisible, Black Triangle and others.
This ‘Hardest Hit’ march came during a ‘National Week of Action Against Atos Origin‘ organised by disability activists, claimant groups and anti-cuts campaigners and two days earlier they had protested outside the offices of Atos Healthcare in London. You can see more on My London Diary in Disabled Protest Calls Atos Killers.
The Climate Revolution is an organisation set up by the late fashion designer Vivienne Westwood (1941-2022) at the London Paralympics closing ceremony in 2012 and she spent the last years of her life campaigning to halt climate change, stop war and defend human rights and protesting against capitalism. Her work is now continued by the not-for-profit organisation she set up, the Vivienne Foundation.
I’m not a follower of fashion, as those who know me will have noticed. But Westwood’s activism reached a rather different and wider audience than the more usual campaigning groups, gaining publicity across the whole world of fashion and at times attracting the kind of mass media attention that follows celebrities, rather than issues, now attract.
Protests taking place in the UK seldom seem to be news – last Wednesday striking workers brought much of London to a standstill and possibly 100,000 people marched through the streets and protested in various places but when I came home and searched on the BBC news site in the early evening there was not a mention of it, though there may have been a little coverage later.
Others did rather better, but it needs something else for a protest to be news for our media. It can be that it happens abroad and particularly if it is against some regime unpopular with our (and the US) government. But it can also be if it is violent or particularly quirky or involves a major celebrity such as Dame Vivienne Westwood – and those protests she organised and her designs were always rather quirky too.
Although Westwood very much did her own thing, she was also great at cooperating with other groups working in the same area – such as the anti-fracking ‘Nanas from Nanashire’ who came down to London for this protest.
The protest was arranged to take place outside the Shale Gas Forum, where the CEOs of IGas, Cuadrilla and various government officials were plotting new ways to bring fracking to the UK, and to change our to allow this to happen. In particular they want to stop people being able to prevent dangerous mining beneath their properties which could cause dangerous and damaging subsidence. Their proposals would allowed companies to proceed without proper concern for safety and environmental consequences and give them some indemnity against damages and government would promise to pay a high price for the gas.
The Forum had been scheduled to take place at an expensive hotel in Belgravia, but after arrangements had been made for protest carnival to take place outside, it was moved to a ‘secret’ location elsewhere in London. Climate Revolution obviously had friends in high places who leaked the details to them.
It was Budget Day, but rather than going to take pictures around Westminster I decided it was more important to cover the protest against fracking. I met Westwood and her supporters, mainly fashion students, outside the Royal College of Arts Battersea location just south of Battersea Bridge and marched with them to the Jumeirah Carlton Tower hotel in Cadogan Place which had been the original venue for the frackers.
We knew the event had been relocated and their was some confusion at the end of the march as to whether it should entrain immediately at Knightsbridge station or go to the hotel. Eventually this was resolved and there was a rally outside the hotel with speakers including Vivienne Westwood and Vanessa Vine of BIFF (Britain & Ireland Frack Free).
The new location was still a secret as we followed the Rhythms of Resistance samba band to Knightsbridge station, where more protesters were waiting and took the underground to Old Street.
People were slow to arrive at Old Street, with some stopping off to buy coffee or sandwiches and others getting lost on the way, but eventually we were on the march again, on our way to the rear gates of the Territorial Army Centre on Bunhill Row, guarded by a few police.
Outside the event, people danced to Rhythms of Resistance, and there were speeches by Vivienne Westwood, Tina Louise from Residents Action on Fylde Fracking, Vanessa Vine, Frack Free Bristol, and others, some of whom had also spoken at Knightsbridge.
Some of us then walked through Bunhill Fields cemetery to City Road to protest on the other side of the military centre, and later most of the other protesters followed for a further rally at the main gates.
The protest was beginning to wind down and people were leaving and I left too, going to cover a protest by The African LGBTI Out & Proud Diamond Group and Peter Tatchell Foundation held a noisy protest at Uganda House calling for the repeal of Uganda’s draconian anti-gay laws.
And from there I went on to Downing St, where the People’s Assembly were holding their Budget Day Protest before finally I could go home.
