Mirror columnist Ros Wynne-Jones finds herself awe-struck by the determination of sick and disabled people to fight against cruel and unjust welfare reforms
The campaign by disabled people against the hated Bedroom Tax is like no other protest group.
Those of us without disabilities cannot comprehend what it feels like to sit day after day outside the Royal Courts of Justice in a powerchair in mid-winter.
We can’t understand the exhaustion of travelling to London with a severe disability or of campaigning while also looking after a severely disabled child.
Nor can we understand the anguish of fellow campaigners who fight on despite serious mental health conditions.
Members of groups like Disabled People Against Cuts, the Wow Petition, Spartacus, Inclusion London and the Mental Health Resistance Network have told me it can take days to recover afterwards.
Those hours standing with placards can lead to days in bed as well as aggravating existing medical conditions.
But they can’t stop fighting, when the war is on so many fronts. The Bedroom Tax, the welfare cap, sanctions, the ending of the Independent Living Fund.
Sick and disabled people have never been more assaulted by any government.
One exhausted lady told me outside the High Court: “If we don’t fight back, who else will fight for us?”
It would be wrong to single out particular campaigners. But their collective presence on the protest lines makes a laughing stock of the Prime Minister’s claims that sick and disabled people are exempt from the Bedroom Tax.
They wouldn’t be outside the High Court if they were.
Yesterday, the reaction from the Department of Work and Pensions to the Bedroom Tax ruling said it all.
“We are pleased…”
To have sat through the details of those five test cases and to feel pleased at the end of it must take an iron stomach.
Those five people represent 440,000 sick and disabled people who continue to face uncertainty, discrimination and poverty.
Yet the DWP is pleased that its hated policy lives on.
Mirror
Those of us without disabilities cannot comprehend what it feels like to sit day after day outside the Royal Courts of Justice in a powerchair in mid-winter.
We can’t understand the exhaustion of travelling to London with a severe disability or of campaigning while also looking after a severely disabled child.
Nor can we understand the anguish of fellow campaigners who fight on despite serious mental health conditions.
Members of groups like Disabled People Against Cuts, the Wow Petition, Spartacus, Inclusion London and the Mental Health Resistance Network have told me it can take days to recover afterwards.
Those hours standing with placards can lead to days in bed as well as aggravating existing medical conditions.
But they can’t stop fighting, when the war is on so many fronts. The Bedroom Tax, the welfare cap, sanctions, the ending of the Independent Living Fund.
Sick and disabled people have never been more assaulted by any government.
One exhausted lady told me outside the High Court: “If we don’t fight back, who else will fight for us?”
It would be wrong to single out particular campaigners. But their collective presence on the protest lines makes a laughing stock of the Prime Minister’s claims that sick and disabled people are exempt from the Bedroom Tax.
They wouldn’t be outside the High Court if they were.
Yesterday, the reaction from the Department of Work and Pensions to the Bedroom Tax ruling said it all.
“We are pleased…”
To have sat through the details of those five test cases and to feel pleased at the end of it must take an iron stomach.
Those five people represent 440,000 sick and disabled people who continue to face uncertainty, discrimination and poverty.
Yet the DWP is pleased that its hated policy lives on.
Mirror
