I’m a disability campaigner. I’m not sure I ever set out to be – indeed that anyone does – but that is what I became.
You may have read some of the reasons here. Perhaps you’ve skimmed a few articles on ESA – the Employment & Support Allowance – tutted a shocked tut at cancer patients on chemotherapy sent to the job centre to find work. Perhaps you’ve sat open mouthed at the idea of one of the richest nations on earth arguing over just how terminally ill you need to be to get the gracious sum of £96 per week to survive with at least some dignity.
Maybe you heard that this government believes that for almost all conditions, one year is now considered enough to find work. You may have heard Chris Grayling, the Work and Pensions minister, tell you that it doesn’t matter whether people are better, or if they have found work, we simply can’t afford them any more. Their benefits will be stopped if they have a partner who earns just £7,500 a year or more.
You may have heard of this blind, deaf, tube-fed, non verbal, disabled man deemed fit for work by the DWP, or Jan Morgan, unable to look after herself after a severe stroke yet also told she must seek work. You may have heard of very many others. You may even have found these stories hard to believe. I’m not sure that I would blame you. For if we believe these stories, where do they leave us? Where do they leave claims that we are “protecting the most vulnerable”?
But today, I want to tell you about Karen Sherlock, because she was my friend.
Karen was extremely unwell. Here, in Karen’s own words are her medical conditions:
DIABETIC AUTONOMIC NEUROPATHY (GASTRIC, CAUSING UNPREDICTABLE AND SEVERE DIARRHOEA)
Give a gift subscription to the New Statesman this Christmas from just £49GASTROPAERESIS (CAUSING UNPREDICTABLE AND SEVERE BOUTS OF VOMITING)
DIABETIC RETINOPATHY, PARTIALLY SIGHTED (LOSS OF PERIPHERAL VISION IN BOTH EYES AND SOME CENTRAL VISION IN LEFT EYE)
HEART CONDITION, CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE, VITAMIN B12 DEFICIENCY, ANAEMIA, HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE, HIGH CHOLESTEROL, UNDERACTIVE THYROID, CHRONIC TIREDNESS DUE TO COMBINATION OF MULTIPLE MEDICAL CONDITIONS, ASTHMA
I urge you all to read this post, written by Karen just two months ago. It details a process many of us who are sick or disabled know all too well. Apply for ESA, get “assessed” by Atos, the private company charged with making these life or death decisions, get turned down for ESA, found “fit for work” or put in the wrong group, appeal decision, win tribunal, get a new letter demanding you attend another assessment, repeat the entire process until you despair, ground down by the misery.
My ESA is being stopped……………
Now, I have turned over in my mind how they can do this to me.
Where it is going to leave us money-wise and what we can do about it? The answer is; I don’t know.
I am not entitled to a penny more due to having a husband that works too many hours and brings in too much money. I am worried and frightened, I do not see how they can just snatch this away from me. I am chronically ill and I am never going to get better, not even with the transplant will I feel better, all my conditions cannot be magically cured.
Karen faced all of this as she battled just to survive. Endless pressure, the judgement of society, the fear of destitution, the exhaustion of constant assessments and endless forms. She was one of those who’s ESA was time-limited – and what’s more, it was limited retrospectively, leaving her with just a few months to appeal for long term support.
What I want to tell you today is that she was frightened. Terrified in fact. She was terrified of the DWP, almost paralysed by a fear that if she spoke out, they would treat her even more harshly. But she spoke out regardless.
She was scared for her future, scared for her family. She had no idea how they would survive when she lost the little support they relied on. Her husband works, cares for a sick wife and they had “done the right thing”. Do you hear me Ian Duncan Smith? David Cameron? Nick Clegg? Ed Miliband? Her family had done the “right thing”, at least in your narrow world of workers and shirkers.
Despite her own terror, she tried to tell her country, her peers, her friends – even journalists – what was happening to her and thousands like her, but shocked tuts didn’t save her. Open mouths and disgust didn’t save Karen; they didn’t save my friend. Perhaps no one could have, but those who hold and abuse power could have eased her fear or reassured her that they would act.
Karen died on June 8 from a suspected heart attack. I’ll leave you with her own words, from the end of her final post on April 29:
“We need to be passionate about standing up for our rights, and if we can make enough noise, and get enough people to listen then we can overturn the inhumane changes this parasitic government have made. If nothing else, we do still have hope and our rights on our side.”
Will we listen? Will Karen’s story be the one to convince us that enough is enough? Or will we turn a blind eye, continue to look away?
I hope not. There are dangerous historical precedents.
Sue Marsh is a writer and disability campaigner. She blogs at DiaryOfABenefitScrounger.blogspot.co.uk
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