Last week David Cameron made a great point when he said that Britain was not Twitter. His point was that while Twitter is dominated by left wing activists crowing about owning the moral high ground, it is not reflective of the true feelings of the general public, which was shown by the general election result. This is absolutely true when it comes to disability activists, which appears to have very little to do with real sick and dysabled people.
Over the last 5 years I have witnessed people come out of the woodwork and proclaim themselves as ‘disabled activists’. But they seem very disinterested in the complexities of dysabled people’s lives and more interested in point scoring and eliciting pity for a section of the population they feel are naturally unable to be fully included into society. They take the complex lives of dysabled people and squeeze them into cheap and nasty headlines, simply to attack the government. They talk about cuts without ever offering new solutions, turning dysability into a welfare issue.
I have discovered these activists have a few things in common. Firstly, they are all believers of left-wing trade union politics, and they are certainly members of Jeremy Corbyn’s army of supporters. This socialist framework sees disability as a welfare issue, a burden a compassionate society must meet without ever tackling inclusion. Secondly, they all tend to be older and bitter, often with an undescriptive physical or emotional condition. One label is never enough for them and they have a list a catalogue of minor conditions to justify their ‘disability’ status. And finally, it is all black and white for them, they can not debate rationally, attacking anyone who challenges their endless myths, so much for an era of kinder politics.
Two activists stick out for me right now and these are Frances Ryan and John Pring. Frances writes the same disability themes anti-cuts article in either the Mirror or the Guardian each week. The words may change but the angle remains the same, how dare the government support dysabled people to make a meaningful contribution to society. She believes people who can not be ‘cured’, which would include myself, should automatically be parked on ESA. There is no depth is what she writes as she uses myth after myth to justify her self-righteous rhetoric, simply I believe to suit her politics rather than any compassion for the complex lives of sick and dysabled people.
John is in a league of his own and he is potentially becoming a very dangerous weapon in the left-wing attack against real sick and dysabled people. In the guise of journalism, he has become the publicity tool for too many left wing disabled activists as he deliberately ignores or attacks the voice of dysabled people that does not fit his world view, something he has directly told me himself. He is morbidly obsessed with trying to link the complexities of suicide to WCA, endlessly accusing the DWP of mass murder, without revealing what he wants from this. Rather then focusing on the failures of NHS mental health and other services, in pinpointing WCA as a stressful event to be avoided rather than supporting people to embrace, he is suggesting sick and dysabled people should be automatically written off as better off dead, based on the prejudices of others. If ‘stress’ is something to be avoided as opposed to being overcome, the final solution to this is genocide. This makes John and his agenda very dangerous.
As I keep saying, dysability is far more complex than to be simplified for cheap party politics. I fear most disabled activists have very little understanding of dysability issues, nor have any interest in learning. For them, disability is the new term for poverty and hardship because it creates pity amongst the general public. Their goal is a socialist government and the promise of a something for nothing welfare system.
History will look back with distain at how these activists have abused real sick and disabled people for their own agenda.
*You may have noticed I am now using the term dysability as opposed to disability. Where disability means a lack of ability, dysability means a difficulty in ability, that can be overcome with appropriate changes, assistance and support. This is more in line with an advanced understanding of the social model and represents a new era of understanding.
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