“We had no media covering the stories of sick and disabled people, especially regarding welfare.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sue Marsh gave a brilliant talk. Here is my version of what Sue said.

 

 

Charities had Government contracts which they did not want to use. Media journalists said, “It’s welfare – it’s not news”. Taxi drivers said, “True but there’s lots of people trying it on”.

We couldn’t necessarily march, go to radio shows, but we formed a community. There was a sense of palpable belief. Everytime a new blog started, you felt there was a network of like-minded people suffering. There was genuine ‘terror’, and we could see that big things were happening for sick and disabled people. We knew we had to make a choice as to whether put the heating on, or to buy food or not; but we could not tell anyone about it.

I had tears streaming down my eyes, as George Osborne introduced further cuts. Neither the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats had announced the actual abolition of the Disability Living Allowance. The message for disabled people was bad – disabled people are the most vulnerable people in society.

Two years ago, I didn’t even know about blogs. The Welfare Reform Bill was something we could campaign on. People have lobbied MPs before, but we lobbied using Twitter. People were frightened to put their name to it, but people were frightened. Anyone can become disabled. We campaigned on everything – we even took a picture of Kaliya Franklin’s bottom. We even managed to get a motion passed at the Liberal Democrat conference. We tried everything – using Twitter and Facebook – and it worked. The Guardian started reporting our reports at the end of 2011, on the basis of the evidence we had presented. We found that our ‘Adopt a Peer’ campaign was much more successful than the template e-mails which had been successfully used elsewhere (for example, by 38 degrees).

A MP once complained that he had received 600 emails in one morning, and we were told in fact to calm down! However, we needed to present evidence. Somebody had shown me the bare bones of #Spartacus. The Government totally misrepresented us – they had said there was ‘broad support’ for their changes, but in fact 92% opposed it. The increase in the amount of claims was false as well. Our first target, £2000, was raised within 24 hours. Suddenly help come from everywhere, including Alastair Campbell. Suddenly, people had something to rally about.

We were adamant that it had to be from sick and disabled citizens, or their carers. It was our voice – we were being misrepresented by our press and our politicians. Everyone wrote their bit, and magically produced a report within 4 weeks. Declan Gaffney gave up his Boxing Day and his New Year’s Day. It was just magic – you could feel from a group of people who had no hope with sparks coming from all over the place, finally changing the narrative. The name for the report (Spartacus) was a frenzied-affair.

The Employment Support Allowance debate then started. We won those votes in the House of Lords; the media, and we, had no idea we were going to win. We won eight amendments in the Lords. The Government used parliamentary privilege to overrule them all, and it was very disappointing. Suddenly I had an opportunity to argue against Chris Grayling on #BBCNewsnight. We didn’t win, but we only lost by 16 votes.

We now have a voice. We now have contacts at the BBC, The Guardian, The Times, and Sky. We didn’t have that before.

 

 

Sue’s blog: Diary of a Benefit Scrounger here