disabled workers | >Re-PHOTO

Disabled Protest Remploy Closures and Atos Deaths: On a wet Wednesday 29th August 2012, the opening day of the London 2012 Paralympic Games, I photographed two protests by disabled people. At Stratford, close to the Olympic site, Remploy workers and supporters protested at the closure the previous week of 27 Remploy factories which had employed disabled workers, and in Central London DPAC and other disabled activists took a coffin to the offices of Paralympic sponsor Atos, responsible for carrying out fitness to work tests which have driven many disabled people to suicide.

Remploy Protest at Stratford Station

Disabled Protest Remploy Closures and Atos Deaths - 2012

Remploy, then the Disabled Person’s Employment Corporation, opened its first factory in 1946 to provide jobs for men and women who had been injured fighting for their country in the Second World War – just the kind of ex-servicemen who now make up a significant proportion of our Paralympic Team GB.

Remploy made it possible for disabled people to do useful and productive work including producing printed circuit boards and electrical assemblies, recycling used computers and much more. They gave disabled workers and those with special health conditions who would otherwise be unemployed useful jobs, a decent income and the satisfaction of working with others rather than being isolated in their homes.

The leaflets being handed out had an Olympic theme, with the message ‘We are NOT going for Gold, We are Condemned to Dole’ and the five Olympic rings were labelled ‘Unemployment, Discrimination, Poverty, Ill Health and Death.’

All Remploy factories were closed by the end of 2013, with Remploy continuing only to provide employment placement services for disabled people. In 2015 it was privatised and became owned by US service provider Maximus. They continue to use the Remploy name in Scotland.

Remploy Protest at Stratford

Disabled Pay Respect to Atos Victims – Triton Sq

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) were holding a national week of protests around the country against Paralympics sponsor Atos, whose computer based ‘fitness for work’ tests have led to stress, hardship deaths and suicides among the disabled.

I photographed their Opening Ceremony for the Atos Games on Monday and also the closing of the week on Friday when they again came to the Atos offices in Triton Square for a closing ceremony and then went on to occupy the foyer at the Work & Pensions ministry.

On the Wednesday 29th August I met the protesters in a café on Triton Square on Euston Road where they were meeting in preparation for a vigil to remember those who have died as a result of the deliberately unfair Work Capability Assessments carried out by Paralympic sponsor Atos, and to deliver a coffin on to them on the day the Paralympic Games was opening.

As we were told, Atos was delivering “a relentless health and disability assessment regime which has been used to slash vital benefits from hundred of thousands of sick and disabled people” with assessors told they have to reach strict targets in failing the great majority of claimants, which led them to often deliberately misinterpret the claimants responses and misrepresent their medical conditions.

“The was a solemn and moving reminder of the scandal of the work capability assessments and the terrible effect they are having on the disabled. Many are losing the allowances that enable them to travel to work, others housing benefits, and are being told they are fit to work when patently they are unable to do so.”

And as I commented in 2012: “It really is a cruel paradox that at a time when the nation is celebrating the great achievements of disabled people in the sporting world, our government is trying to reverse the moves toward equality of treatment of disabled people, and that the company that is trying to take the credit for sponsoring the Paralympics is profiting from contracts to dishonestly deny benefits to the disabled who need them.”

More at Disabled Pay Respect to Atos Victims.

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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.

More at DPAC Picket Ministries.

DPAC take Pants to IDS – Dept for Work & Pensions

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.

More pictures DPAC take Pants to IDS

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.)

I wrote more about this on My London Diary and there are a few more pictures at End UK Caste Discrimination Now.