By The Protestor Poet
I think I had better start at the beginning. That dreadful time in the summer of 2010 when David Cameron and Nick Clegg formed the Condem government. A dreadful nightmare that quickly became the harsh reality. I listened to all David Cameron’s speeches. The “We will get disabled people off benefits and back into work, work will pay, why should the hard working people of this country pay for those languishing on benefits? They work hard, long hours, while others scrounge off the system and lie in bed behind their closed curtains”….Oh yes, I remember those speeches well, I can still see the hatred in his eyes every time he mentioned the word “Welfare” and the words “benefit claimants” We were not, and we are not human beings to him. To Mr David Cameron, we are not human beings we are described as stock, a number, valueless and useless, not people.
I remember that spending review, George Osbourne odious man that he is, reading out cut after cut after cut £18 billion to come off the welfare budget. All disabled people on Incapacity Benefits to be reassessed from October 2010 to spring 2014 and Disability Living Allowance to be scrapped and replaced by Personal Independent Payment, Independent Living Fund to be scrapped, the list went on, the feeling sick and pain got worse.
You know what still haunts me from that day? That evil smile as he sat down, and was clapped, and patted like he was the messiah. It glowed in his eyes that smug smile, I remember that I threw my glass of water at the screen, smashed the glass and so wish it was George Osborne’s head I was smashing. I wanted to smash him before he had a chance to smash us. But it was not to be.
I had heard horror stories of the Employment and Support Allowance since it’s introduction 2008, which Labour introduced under the Welfare Reform Act in 2007. All new claimants were assessed for Employment and Support Allowance and the rest, well, some time in the future.
My first taste of it, was a good friend of mine, who had terrible Anxiety, Agrophobia and Depression. He, needless to say, went along to Croydon; that is my nearest assessment centre (no disabled access by the way, completely wheelchair inaccessible and no where to park) and he scored a total of no points at his face to face assessment. I used to practice meditation with him. He loved motorbikes and rock music. Alex was his name. He went to the doctors to get a fit note to appeal the decision. The GP would not give him one because the DWP said he was fit for work and the GP agreed with them. He could not appeal. He called me in a panic from Eastbourne and said “I can’t go on. I don’t want to. What chance have I got of a job, I can’t cope with anything I can’t cope with the darkness in my head”. Those were the last words he ever said. The line went dead. The phone was switched off. My heart plunged into the floor and the feeling something bad had happened to him stayed with me. The following day it was confirmed he had taken his own life. I was devastated. That was in 2009.
In October 2010, the reassessments had started. I was hearing more stories, people losing their money, and facing a bleak future. I was scared. To be more blunt, I was petrified. I started obsessing over that brown envelope. Every day I was waiting for that postman to come, my heart in my mouth, obsessing over it. Could not sleep, could not eat, and was coming apart at a rate of knots.
In December 2010, a week before Christmas, my friend had a phone call from the DWP, and all her benefits were stopped. In fact, to add insult to injury they said she had been over paid and they wanted back £26,000. She was Bipolar and her name was Carol. She had three young children. I remember talking to her a few days before she died. We chatted at the Community Options Involvement Network Meeting and she expressed her worries about the DWP and what was going on. I begged her to see a doctor and get some help. She did, she told him she was going to die and how, and he ignored her. She got the letter from the DWP saying she owed all that money on a Tuesday. She left her family a note and went to my local train station and jumped from platform 3. There was a picture of her covered up body on the tracks in my local paper. The British Transport Police told her devastated husband is there any reason why she would have done this? He handed over the letter from the DWP and the note she left with it. Now words fail me sorry. Every Christmas I see her face. We lit a lantern of rememberance for her at a meeting into the sky one night a few days before Christmas. The last thing she said to me was this, “Promise me one thing. Promise me you will get justice for me against these scumbags. Promise me”
“I promise”. I should have done more than that. I should have been there to help her fightback. I didn’t because I wasn’t well enough and I feel I let her down. Every now and then I go to her grave and remember and make her that promise that I Will get justice for her somehow.
Christmas 2010, I was horrendously depressed. I could not get Carol’s face out of my head, and I was having terrible family problems. The fear of the benefits assessments were driving everyone around me crazy. I kept talking about them, I felt i was being spied upon. I felt that the DWP were spying on me watching my every move. I lived in one room with furniture piled against the door in case they tried to hurt me. Buried in my duvet I could not read any newspapers or watch TV all the news was horrendous It was scaring me to death.
In January 2011, the depression worsened and became so severe where I attempted to take my own life by a massive overdose. I thought i had been bugged by the DWP and tracked and tried to open my arm to find the bug. When I was found the only note that was found near me was this, “Please make the DWP go away and leave me alone I can’t take anymore, I don’t want to live with this constant fear”
I had to have my stomach pumped out and was in hospital for the next three months. I could not bear the words, DWP, ATOS, Brown Envelopes, Postman, Cameron. The staff were told not to talk to me about anything connected with benefits. I was not to watch TV and listen to the news. The were worried about my heart at one point, I was so stressed. I needed medication to help me sleep, and medication to control my heart rate. I needed medication to make “the men in grey go away” who lurked in my room as I tried to sleep. At one point the staff had to sit with me. That is what the fear of the benefits changes did to me.
I came out of hospital in the April to more devastating news. Not only was my father diagnosed with dementia on the day I was discharged, but, a very close personal friend of mine called Rob died on 6th April 2011. The worries of the benefit changes got too much for him, he had dreadful kidney problems and he was found in his kitchen collapsed on the floor. He was admitted to our local hospital where he relapsed into a coma and subsequently died.
He was so supportive to me in hospital. Not a day went past where he did not text me. Not one. I still can’t get rid of his messages or his mobile number from my phone. I still have the book he bought me to cheer me up in hospital “Hit a jellyfish with a spade” and within it I keep the funeral service sheet with his picture on it. Every day I think of him. I used to call him “Mr Motivator” because he was. He motivated everyone, so helpful, so cheerful and such a wonderful human being who would help anyone.
After his funeral, I battled my mental health, but I started having problems with my physical health. I was tired all the time, physically exhausted, and everyone said I looked washed out. In November 2011 my hands became painful, swollen, stiff and miss shappen. By Christmas I was unable to move them, and reliant on my husband to do everything for me. I had tests and in January 2012 I was diagnosed with the auto immune disease RA (Rheumatoid Arthritis.) I was given steroid injections and chemo medication to help me combat it. I have since found out that all the stress I was under could have been a contributory factor to my contracting the disease when I did. I will never know for sure.
So there I was in the early parts of 2012 battling physical and severe and enduring mental health issues. Then, on 4th May 2012 the dreaded brown envelope arrived. It was a Saturday the bank holiday weekend. Thanks for ruining my weekend DWP. I am positive that they do it on purpose, send it at a certain time so that it wrecks weekends and holidays. Another form of torture to hurt us with.
I could not bear that phone ringing. Every time it did, I thought it was them. We got a caller display phone and 18 days went by and nothing. I went to pieces. Eventually my mum called them, I had to answer a couple of questions, then I handed the phone to my mum and burst into tears. A few days later, a dreaded white envelope turned up. With the smallest envelope and a silly size ESA50 questionnaire with a letter the words “Medical Services” on it telling me I had to get it back by 18th June or “my benefits would be affected” that made me panic,and I freaked out, and I still have vivid memories of my throwing up and fainting. That is what that questionnaire and ATOS did to me that day.
The next three weeks were filling out the most horrendous questionniare I had ever seen and gathering what medical information I could. The stress was horrendous. I posted nearly every day on face book because I was worrying about it, scared, frightened not sleeping again.
Well I sent in a novel. 100 pages, photos of my joints, the lot. It went back on 8th June. It was one way a relief that the questionnaire had gone back. I had nothing else to give them. There was nothing else they could know. I told them everything. You know the hardest part of this process? It was the wait. That day by day not knowing if the phone would ring, or the post man would drop that brown envelope on that mat. Face book and the groups I had joined really helped me. Others were going through it too. I was not alone with it. We supported each other and shared information.
In July 2012 were the horrible programme from Channel 4 “Dispatches” and BBC1 “Panorama” about Britain on the sick etc. I remember that ATOS training doctor on the Dispatches programme calling the process “toxic” if you had one arm, one finger you were found fit for work.
My mood after that plummeted. I was so frightened. Eight weeks had gone by and nothing. On the Monday night after the programme I had the medication in front of me to kill myself again. I felt dreadful and I could not go on. The wait was pure torture. I could not take another day of it. Then, on 4th August, I got my decision letter. I was placed in the support group. The relief! It was huge. My legs would not hold me up that day and I collapsed on the floor and sobbed my heart out. I went on a roller coaster of emotions over the whole process. But do you want to know something? Within a few days the fear returned. Oh yes it’s back and it will not go away. I know that very soon, a envelope will turn up and the whole process will begin again, and all the fear, stress, anxiety will come flooding back and the torture of that phone ringing again.
My mental health has never stablised. No medication has worked for me. I have a progressive auto immune illness that has shortened my life and will worsen over time there is no cure for that. Sorry, ATOS, but, be realistic I know I am. I struggle to hold a pen, turn the pages of a book, pick up a penny and even hold a knife and fork. Most days I am in crippling pain, throwing up and sitting on that toilet wishing with everything I have inside of me I was not here.
I feel useless, and pointless. I really do, and most people who know me do not understand that, as they see someone who would help anyone, stand up for others and fight for them with everything I have, and yet, I cannot fight for myself. Explain that.
Is this what life has come to battling illnesses every day, unable for the most part to do the simplest of things for myself, and needing help all the time? I wondered what I could have been, I had a big career and was working my way up until mental illness took that from me at the age of 23 with a breakdown at my desk.
Now I am reduced to relying on people to help me out of bed, at times feed me, and at times keep me safe from danger. The future is uncertain and scary. I know I will go through this horrible cruel process again with the same scary thoughts and also with PIP when that is my turn to go through that.
I have lost 16 friends to this nightmare of a process. Oh yes they are all dead. I wish someone would explain these polices to me and why this is happening. To them they think we are stock. We are nothing. We are human beings. We want to live, be part of society, be thought of as an equal and paying our own way. We did not ask to be like this. We would give anything not to be like this, anything. We would give anything to be working, but so many of us are too unwell and we need the support, only it will not be there.
I have often wondered, through my campaigning and struggles with my disabilities how we stop this government, or for want of a better word fightback.
2 brave mental health claimants have challenged the government over the WCA process and are going to be challenging this in court. The mental health resistance network has campaigned for, and fought so hard for, a judicial review. I was outside the royal courts of justice on that rainy day in June when the application for the judicial review was read. I was in a lot of pain, but i had to support this. There is a picture of me somewhere standing with a placard outside that court hoping and praying for that review to be granted, and on 24th July 2012 it was.
This is one way we can hurt the government, legally. This will not be the first legal challenge to this government. It won’t be. On Tuesday, 15th January in courtroom 6 of the upper tribunial courts of the royal courts of justice in London the mental health resistance network begin their quest for justice. I wish them luck. I really do. I will be in that court room for two of those days. I promised my friend justice. I want to be there for them and for the tens thousand or so human beings who have died because the of the effects of the WCA process. The stress, the fear the dreadful anxiety played a contributory factor in so many of their deaths, each one has a family who grieves. Each one has a family whose life will never be the same again. They want justice too.
To all of you reading this, the only thing I hope for and I hope happens Is that this government gets what comes to them and justice is served, and I hope one day they will be held accountable.
Good luck mental health resistance network. We are all behind you. Let’s hope justice prevails.
To Carol and to Alex, Rob and my other friends I won’t name because it is so painful for me and I cried a bucket of tears writing this. I will never ever forget you. Ever. You will always be with me and you will be in that courtroom with me on 16th January as I sit with my friends listening to those legal debates. I promise you this. Your stories will be told and you will always always live on.
Protestor Poet. x
Source
