Nominations have gone live for the National Diversity Awards 2025, and not to brag… Scratch that, we’re going to brag, because a certain incomparable disability rights journalist, activist, and all round legend – the one, the only, fiercely friggin’ fabulous Rachel Charlton-Dailey – is up for a Positive Role Model Award for Disability (we know her!).
Before anything else, go vote for her RIGHT NOW. And please, feel free to gush to your heart’s content in 2,000 characters or less (who are the awards kidding, that’s like trying to fit a list of that sleazy little shit Starmer’s U-turns into one X post).
Unlike the treacherous prime minister facing a no confidence motion any day now however, it’s all good vibes and votes for the wonderful Rachel Charlton-Dailey. So, we’re just going to leave this here…
Rachel Charlton-Dailey is up for a National Diversity Award!
Now, as Canary readers, you’ll probably know her best for her bold and blistering no-holds-barred The Week in Ableist Bullshit column. For nearly a year, Charlton-Dailey has sounded off with fire, finesse, and zero fucks about the feelings of a veritable cesspool of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) wankers.
Along the way, she gifted the final toxic Tory in a long line of turgid toxic Tories heading the DWP a fitting title. Who can forget Mel Stride the Wet Wipe? Well hopefully, everyone, as he sinks into eternal irrelevance alongside his callous shadow cabinet colleagues. We’re not saying Charlton-Dailey’s columns constantly shaming the former DWP sec single-handedly nearly delivered his General Election wipe-out, and his subsequent loss in the Tory leadership race, but we sure think it helped. Or more like, hurt the wet wipe’s election prospects so effectively, he got binned not once, but twice in the space of time it took his Labour successor Liz Kendall to metamorphose into the latest IDS clone – feat red tie and lurking McSweeney.
For Labour’s two cents – or should we say, thousands in dodgy donations – she sprung Labour health sec Wes Streeting a sassy new slander: ‘Ozemprick’, because that’s what he is.
However, apart from all the masterful monikers, what her column does best is what Charlton-Dailey has always done best as a disabled journalist most of all: speak up, speak out, and speak loud for the chronically ill and disabled community.
Standing up for all of us – and doing so with style
When she wasn’t sticking it to the shameless, slimy lot at Whitehall, she was giving chronically ill and disabled people a voice – and making sure they got heard. So much of her work platforms the Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations (DDPOs) that she fights alongside.
In her first article for the Canary, she wrote powerfully, poignantly, about the pain of witnessing the UK government try to paint themselves as something other than the architects of the “grave” and “systematic” violations of chronically ill and disabled people’s human rights. This was at the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). The piece played to what she also does best through her writing – take chronically ill and disabled people along with her.
And amid the constant drone of demonising and ableist drivel in the corporate media, all this could not be more vital. Speaking of, Rachel has been there every step of the way calling out the right-wing press’s scapegoating narratives. In particular, the cruel soulless clickbait merchants at Reach Plc have landed themselves her arch nemesis. She hasn’t pulled any punches in pointing out how BirminghamLive and its sister publications have exploited disabled people’s fear and the uncertainty Labour has also propagated with its deliberate lack of information on its plans, for ad revenue.
The irony isn’t lost on Rachel that she previously wrote for Reach publication the Mirror. However, there she was a force advocating for chronically ill and disabled people’s rights. In a classist, ableist corporate media landscape where disabled journalists and voices have always been rare, and are increasingly vanishingly so, the column she carved out there was a beacon in the abyss of the ableist abuse papers regularly pass off as journalism.
More accolades where those came from, naturally
Did we mention she has written a to-be bestseller? Well Rachel has – a few times (we checked the Canary’s back-catalogue – in at least three articles) – and damn rightly so! Get your pre-orders in, pencil the day out in your diary, on 3 July 2025 her new doubtlessly daring and unsparing book Ramping Up Rights: An Unfinished History of British Disability Activism will hit the shelves. Join her, as she takes readers right up the history of disability activism in the United Kingdom. Of course, this couldn’t be more needed as activists gear up to take on the latest assault to our rights.
We could go on with the accolades. So, we will.
For one, Ramping Up Rights isn’t even her first book. Her youth fiction book Ruby Hastings Writes Her Own Story tells dyspraxic and neurodivergent children to be unapologetically proud of who they are. And in fact, that’s another thing Rachel does without fear or favour. As a neurodivergent writer, she has fought against the growing tide of politician and media punch downs on neurodivergent communities. Right now, as Labour picks up where the Tories left off maligning neurodivergent benefit claimants, that could not be more important.
Of course, it’s not just her writing where she does all this either. Charlton-Dailey often takes on a dizzying array of the most insufferable bigots known to humankind, live on air. She – and all of us – shouldn’t have to keep debating our rights to even exist. And especially so with privileged and vested talking heads from dark money think tanks. But that’s where we’re at. And no one does it better than the brilliant Charlton-Dailey, audibly guffawing at the brass-neck of Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) goons who know nothing about chronically ill and disabled people’s lived realities.
A vote for Rachel Charlton-Dailey is a vote to recognise all that she does for us
In every case, she has been at the forefront advocating for chronically ill and disabled people. She does it with compassion, empathy, and courage – all from lived experience and love for her community.
The National Diversity Award category describes the positive role model as an individual:
within the community who shows selflessness, drives change and works tirelessly to inspire others.
That’s all stuff that Rachel Charlton-Dailey does in spades. In the Canary’s fine and humble opinion, there could be no better role model for chronically ill and disabled folks everywhere.
So now it’s everyone’s chance to tell the extraordinary Rachel Charlton-Dailey that we see her for all the crucial work that she does every day. Get voting and make sure that by September, not only does she have rave reviews for her chart-topping bestseller, but some much-earned recognition in a shiny new award as well. She deserves it.
Featured image via the Canary
