Hardest Hit March In opposition to Cuts: On Wednesday eleventh March 2011 round 10,000 individuals, many in wheelchairs got here to march in London calling for an finish to harassment and profit cuts for the disabled.
The Hardest Hit march was supported by an enormous vary of charities and organisations representing and supporting the bodily and mentally disabled, together with main unions similar to PCS, UCU and Unite.
The protest got here a 12 months after the formation of the coalition authorities led by David Cameron with Lib-Dem chief Nick Clegg as his deputy, with actual energy staying with the Tory majority and is now broadly seen as a catastrophe for the Lib-Dems. Below Chancellor George Osborne the coalition plunged the nation into the beginning of ten years of austerity, with significantly swingeing cuts to native authorities providers in addition to a drastic assault on all these claiming advantages.
The cuts disproportionately affected the poor and the disabled whereas the wealthiest in our society had been hardly if in any respect affected. In 2018 the UN particular rapporter on excessive poverty concluded his go to to the UK by reminding us that ‘Poverty is a political alternative‘ and that ‘Austerity might simply have spared the poor, if the political will had existed to take action’.
For the disabled and people on advantages there have been cuts and freezes and the state of affairs 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 below Labour in October 2008 that Work Functionality Assessments had been launched however the numbers made earlier than 2010 had been comparatively small and so they had been used for brand new Employment and Assist Allowance (ESA) claimants and a small variety of ESA reassessments. It was solely in Spring 2011 below the coalition authorities {that a} programme started to maneuver these on current advantages onto ESA utilizing the WCA exams administered by Atos started.
Already by 2011 there had been critical criticisms each of the unsatisfactory nature of the exams and of the failures by Atos to manage them accurately, and this protest march known as each for an finish to the cuts in advantages for the disabled and “and particularly for an finish to the discredited and iniquitous testing regime administered by Atos Healthcare, which has changed correct medical exams by a computer-based system that always ignores the precise wants of these being assessed, and has as unacceptably excessive error price, with a majority of appeals towards its assessments succeeding.“
Regardless of the large physique of proof and the various deaths the system brought about, solely minor adjustments had been made and it was not till 2014 that the contract with Atos was ended, just for them to get replaced by Maximus who carried on the identical manner. Atos, now renamed IAS, stays now part of the evaluation system for ESA, Common Credit score and PIP together with Maximus and Capita.
Each New Labour and the Coalition made cuts in lots of constructive initiatives and organisations set as much as assist the disabled. Considered one of these was Remploy, whose final state-run sheltered manufacturing facility set as much as make use of disabled labour closed in 2013 with the lack of over 1700 jobs. It’s now part of Maximus.
This protest bought extra media consideration than most, largely due to the presence amongst these main the march of Sally Bercow, the spouse of the then Speaker of the Commons, and actress and activist Jane Asher, president of three of the organisations concerned, Arthritis Care, Nationwide Autistic Society and Parkinson’s UK. It was adopted by a mass foyer of MPs.
Since then there have been many extra protests towards the unfair remedy of the disabled as numerous advantages have been scrapped and Common Credit score has led to additional issues, however nothing on this scale. Disabled individuals haven’t solely suffered most they’ve additionally turn into among the extra energetic protesters, significantly led by teams that had been on this march together with Disable Folks In opposition to Cuts (DPAC), Psychological Well being Resistance Community (MHRN), Winvisible, Black Triangle and others.
This ‘Hardest Hit’ march got here throughout a ‘Nationwide Week of Motion In opposition to Atos Origin‘ organised by incapacity activists, claimant teams and anti-cuts campaigners and two days earlier that they had protested outdoors the workplaces of Atos Healthcare in London. You may see extra on My London Diary in Disabled Protest Calls Atos Killers.
Extra at Hardest Hit March In opposition to Cuts.
Tags: ATOS, Atos exams, austerity, profit cuts, braille, Cameron, claimants, Coalition, cuts, cuts in advantages, disabled, DPAC, ESA, match for work, Jane Asher, London, march, mass foyer, Maximus, MHRN, peter Marshall, PIP, protest, Remploy, Sally Bercow, shafted, Tories, common credit score, WCA, Winvisible
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