If we look at the politics surrounding disability in the UK
The Bedroom Tax stands as one of the most openly unpopular
measures adopted by the Coalition, people can understand that demanding
families move to smaller accommodation when that smaller accommodation simply
doesn’t exist is not simply unfair but outright wrongheaded. And the
unpopularity of the Bedroom Tax is not simply a theoretical consideration, the
Poll Tax caused rioting in the streets and destroyed a previous Tory
government. In that situation, and with growing media focus on the Bedroom Tax,
it was politically important to dress up
it up in as much goodwill as possible, yet the Department of Work and Pensions
went all the way to the Supreme Court, refusing only at the last hurdle of
letting the case go to trial, to try and force two children with very different
disabilities to share a bedroom; and while they may finally have backed away
from being seen to bully disabled children over a bedroom, they did not back
away from insisting that if an adult couple could not share a bedroom due to
disability, then they would be considered to be under-occupying.
Equally the last few weeks have seen Iain Duncan Smith, his
junior ministers, and the Tory Party Chairman Grant Shapps all laying into
disabled people in the tabloids, the broadsheets and on TV with claims that ‘a
million of them could work’ (IDS), that ‘they get better’ (Esther McVey,
Minister Against Disabled People), and that the Work Capability Assessment has
scared hundreds of thousands of scroungers away from claiming Employment and
Support Allowance (Shapps). The political need to demonise disabled benefit
claimants has passed, the Welfare Reform Act is law, the slashing of disability
benefits is a fait accompli, there is no more ground to be gained in Parliament,
but the demonization continues on. The only conclusion that can be drawn is
that Tory Central Office thinks there is something to be gained for the local
council by-elections happening tomorrow, and that they make that gain not by
any specific political aim, but simply by demonising us.
And isn’t that an unpleasant fact to face, that as disabled
people we are now so unpopular that simply attacking us may incline people to
vote in a specific way.
[Photo: Computer generated image of a small child in a wheelchair under the legend 'Mr Duncan Smith says I Caused the Financial Meltdown']
(One of my two posts for #BADD2013, the other is here)
You sum it up very well in the last line, "attacking us may incline people to vote in a specific way". As long as there is the possibility of creating a common enemy, like watching a soap opera, people will continue to feel good about themselves.
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