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I can’t believe I’m asking this question again. Who the hell are the disabled?
In light of recent announcements by the Government, and darker responses from some non-disabled people, it plainly needs answering once more.
When it comes to our threatened benefits and faltering freedoms – even our right to exist – how do we respond to this increasingly bleak narrative that asks questions such as ‘it’s nothing to do with me, why should I pay for them?’ and ‘why should I be bothered about these others?’
Others.
There are more than 16 million disabled people – 24% of the population. One in four. That’s a considerable amount of others. A family unit. A group of close friends. Immediate work colleagues.
Considering we are a huge minority group, how is it that we attract such negative perceptions, right up to the cruel ‘blame-game’ rhetoric of this Government?
Why is it that we continue to be othered, oppressed, and marginalised to an extent that other minority groups may experience less, even while sharing many of the same grassroot issues?
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The social model of disability is relevant again when considering the Government’s inability to confront the daily barriers disabled people face.
Regarding its latest attacks on the Access to Work (ATW) scheme, here is an example: a wheelchair user needs to eliminate the barrier of inappropriate, inaccessible public transport to get to work – it is not her fault that she is a wheelchair user, is it? She’s not ‘workshy’ and has skills, but it seems the Government believes that she can manage with less ATW funding – in this case, less money for a taxi, which would circumvent transport barriers.
Another example relates to the specialist technology the ATW scheme has funded in the past. I was once supplied with voice dictation software, Dragon Professional, at a time when there were no equivalent apps to do this. Even now, not one is as sophisticated as the latest version of Dragon. Without it, I cannot write, and these days, I work in a combination of old software and support which includes actual human beings who are worth every penny I am able to pay them. Yet, the direction of ATW is to fob us off with useless free AI apps (more here). This simultaneous ‘cost-cutting drive’ to ATW is occurring as attacks to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) are also proposed.
It leaves me speechless at the inane and illogical approach the Government is taking – it wants us to work but won’t support the removing of barriers that disabled people did not create in the first place that prevent us from doing so.
Calling, as always, on my networks within the disability community to answer the question ‘what’s it got to do with me?’ brought up grave responses.
The first retort is obvious: disability occurs randomly, to anyone, at any time. And disability could easily happen to someone you know, however much people don’t want to think about it. As one person said, “don’t we all hate what we fear until we understand it?”
The Government’s policies are compounded by the lack of our presence in any balanced sense across culture, media, politics.
Non-disabled people may shrug away the statistics because there is very little out there that reflects the disability experience in all its variety. It’s easier to cancel out disability when we are hidden – and worse: pilloried, targeted, and hated.
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We are the other who is to blame, when we are not pawns used in the worst aspects of right-wing politics. Some disabled people’s long oppression is triggered further through being used in the worst divide-and-conquer rhetoric. Immigrants blamed unfairly for ‘poor pensioners and disableds’ not having benefits and housing, rather than focusing on the uber rich and the endless company tax dodgers.
The encouragement of self-interest and the increasing loss of basic humanity highlights the anxiety disabled people, their allies, and their loved ones face.
Western society is largely driven by the pursuit of profit, and it’s worth remembering this when considering what disabled people are up against. We are not considered ‘productive’ in this model, so what use are we?
Another unpalatable truth is that to have money can remove our barriers, thereby, to some ironic extent, proving the concept of the social model. Yet, this highlights that community responsibility (i.e. proper funding), would provide equality at a societal, not individual, level.
Other feedback I have had from the disabled community is anxiety about “how they will cope when they go out and what people will be like”. Another observation was that disabled people “are trapped in their homes for many reasons including the sheer anxiety of going out… access issues… hate… and abuse in the street or shops”. It is also felt that certain sectors of the non-disabled population express jealousy – that “there is a sense that disabled people get more or better or extra”.
Ultimately, there’s an overarching despondency from many disabled people that “there is a sad lack of compassion at the moment”.
I’m an old campaigner; an activist since the days of Thatcher. Not that far from being an OAP myself, and despite more than 50 years of an evolving rights and arts movement, disability is still not integrated into society at large.
Some disabled people find a way into the mainstream media, but are often lauded as different and special and, of course, inspirational. This is hardly equality.
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Some magnificent talents make it through, and maintain positions of influence and integrity, but despite glimmers of hope, I’ve rarely seen any genuine, considered attempt for a disability narrative – for our authentic presence to make a significant and lasting breakthrough within the current cultural and media zeitgeist.
At the hideous end of these realities, we are confronting why non-disabled people feel that it’s better to be dead than disabled. Whether some argue for or against it, this view underpins the dangerous arguments to make assisted suicide legal.
I’ve encountered this stance for most of my adult life. And here’s the conundrum: I’m sure some non-disabled people often believe that they would rather be dead, because there’s no true representation of the numbers and the reality of disabled people’s lives to counteract the old trope of the tragedy model.
This isn’t to deny challenges – all human beings face a whole range of variable obstacles. Yet, surely, we must resist going down a line that is almost one of self-destructive nihilism, in which human beings clutch at self-hatreds that speak of death-wish dystopias. Science opens up ways for us to live longer, while suicide is shoved closer as the answer to over-stretched social services. Who are the next expendables?
Disabled people know that “the loss of decency, humanity, and rhetoric being spouted in Parliament is disturbing”. And that “we need to keep telling our MPs and the media that we are not other, pointing out not just the inhumanity, but also the economic stupidity, in actions that reduce our capacity to be independent contributors to society” – beyond being forced into any standard yoke of ‘productive’ capitalist-driven work.
Where do these narratives end?
Disability is an embedded reality of human experience as much now as it always has been and it is likely to continue, if not increase, no matter how much some self-serving non-disabled commentators and politicians believe that it’s nothing to do with them.
I’m telling you, it is. Get ready, and appreciate that disabled people – and our many genuine, often unsung, non-disabled allies – are already fighting for you.
Penny Pepper is an award-winning author, poet, and disabled activist