Chronically ill and disabled activists and allies took to the streets on Saturday 22 March against the Labour Party’s planned brutal cuts to their benefits. Protesters mobilised across the country in 14 locations to call out the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) disgraceful move to slash social security for sick and disabled people to meet chancellor Rachel Reeves’ arbitrary self-imposed fiscal savings.
The demonstrations kicked off the start of chronically ill and disabled resistance to the government’s dangerous austerity-driven punch downs on the community. However, the protests weren’t without issue or incident.
Most alarmingly, protesters were met with violent physical hate crimes at one protest – showing the unsafe and hostile climate Labour’s plans and rhetoric has stoked.
Crips Against Cuts: protests against the Labour-led DWP’s plans
As the Canary previously reported, local disabled activists from the new decentralised grassroots group Crips Against Cuts coordinated the protests across the country. They held these in:
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- London
- Birmingham
- Sheffield
- Leeds
- Bournemouth
- Exeter
- Brighton
- Bristol
- Portsmouth
- Edinburgh
Crips against cuts protests planned for this weekend. Please follow the QR for details and please please please repost on your accounts 💜
@crips-against-cuts.bsky.social
— Just Em x (@agirlcalleddave.bsky.social) March 20, 2025 at 9:57 AM
In London, a small group of protesters gathered at Southbank along the River Thames holding placards and giving powerful speeches against the cuts:
View this post on Instagram
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One disabled protester called the corporate media’s recent attacks on Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claimants’ access to the Motability scheme out for what it is:
Hands off my PIP, you traitorous arseholes. Great @crips-against-cuts.bsky.social rally. You’ve riled the disableds @teamlabouruk.bsky.social, we will fight your abominable cuts till we win, we will not vote for you again 🧑🦼👩🏽🦼➡️🤬🤬🤬 #pip #disabilityrights #wheelchair
— elbelbumble.bsky.social (@elbelbumble.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 9:28 PM
Exeter activists held a die-in to represent the deaths of chronically ill and disabled people that Labour’s cuts will foment:
I joined residents to protest against the cuts to disability benefits.
The ‘die-in’ In Bedford Square sends a clear message. Cuts to universal credit & PIP will have a massive impact on people’s lives. Quite simply we need to tax the richest not harm pple with disabilities. pic.twitter.com/TxvqObW2UV— Diana Moore (@DianaFMoore) March 22, 2025
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#DisabledPeopleAgainstCuts #Exeter protest against cuts to disability benefit and personal independence payments today.
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the crowd’s reaction. I’ve been to a fair number of protests which are usually met with […]
[Original post on social.coop]
— Jules (@afewbugs.social.coop.ap.brid.gy) March 22, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Sheffield drew a sizeable crowd with some poignant and on-point placards:
This is what community looks like ✊🏻 Thanks for showing up Sheffield! Don’t forget to take action – write to your MP, and follow @crips-against-cuts.bsky.social on insta or bsky!
— Miranda Debenham (@mdebenham1.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 9:15 PM
Labour MPs didn’t have the balls to face protesters
Protesters in Cambridge pitched up outside a local Jobcentre with a big banner. They followed this up by draping the banner over a local bridge in defiance against Labour’s plans:
#WelfareNotWarfare + #CripsAgainstCuts banner drop today in Cambridge, ahead of our day of action on Weds 26th March
Austerity + further cuts are a political choice. We reject them – join us
Find your local @Dis_PPL_Protest action:https://t.co/LUZUWHbXKr
📸Kashif Darr pic.twitter.com/hsNXOxX8AY— Rensa Gaunt (@rensa_gaunt) March 22, 2025
In Edinburgh, campaigners took their protest right to the constituency office front door of Labour Secretary of State for Scotland Ian Murray MP:
#WelfareNotWarfare
Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty Kicked Off DPAC local actions across the UK in Edinburgh, Scotland, with a lively protest outside Ian Murray MP Sec of State for Scotland
Write up Edinburgh Reporter theedinburghreporter.co.uk/2025/03/prot…
Photos with Alt text 📢⬇️— Disabled People Against Cuts (@dis-ppl-protest.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 6:36 AM
Local media site the Edinburgh Reporter was on the ground interviewing protesters who spelled out what the cuts would mean for them and their loved ones:
Protesters outside the constituency office of @ianmurraymp.bsky.social were keen to tell him what they think of the UK Government’s plans to wipe £5billion off the benefits bill. He wasn’t there but we had asked him about the proposed cuts earlier…
— The Edinburgh Reporter (@edinreporter.bsky.social) March 21, 2025 at 5:02 PM
However, as the outlet noted, while Murray was in Edinburgh, he clearly didn’t have the balls to look his constituents in the face outside his office.
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer on the ground, but…
Meanwhile, activists gathered together on College Green in Bristol to host speeches:
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As the Canary highlighted ahead of the protests, Bristol Central MP and Green Party leader Carla Denyer came out in support of chronically ill and disabled people fighting the cuts:
Choosing to cut support for disabled people, knowing that many already live in poverty, and that being disabled means that life almost always COSTS MORE – that’s a political choice
Pleased to join @crips-against-cuts.bsky.social in Bristol today, angry that it had to happen
(📸 by Clare Reddington)
— Carla Denyer (@carladenyer.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Though, a word of caution might be warranted here. This is the same Denyer who also voted for Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill at second reading, alongside her Green Party colleagues.
All 350 Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations (DDPOs) are against it due to the enormous risks it poses to chronically ill and disabled folks.
So, while she may be an ally in opposing these cuts, protesters should be wary of thinking that she’s genuinely listening to the valid concerns and fears of our communities.
Hate crimes: protesters attacked in Exeter
The widespread protests show the depth of opposition to Labour’s callous plans from chronically ill and disabled people across the country.
However, while these protests brought out the best of our communities, it also sadly drew in some of the worst. These were some of the very first protests chronically ill and disabled people have mounted against these cuts, but immediately they’ve exposed the disgusting ableist bigotry at the beating heart of Labour right Britain.
In Exeter, this came to a head with some local residents committing violent hate crimes against the protesters. In one disturbing scene, a bigot threw a chair into the crowd:
Here’s the footage of a man throwing a chair at the protestors during yesterday’s Exeter DPAC benefit protest. One brave lady chased after him but gave up after a load of abuse. #TriggerWarning #WelfareNotWarfare pic.twitter.com/lFgmKf8jHh
— Ben Claimant 💚 Join a Union (@BenClaimant) March 23, 2025
Another incident involved local people lobbing cap bombs at protesters:
It is totally unacceptable that disabled people many new to activism had a chair and cap bombs thrown at them at an otherwise brilliant event. This is the kind of rhetoric disabled people deal with on a daily basis in their every day life https://t.co/xX4aoBrpnO
— DPAC (@Dis_PPL_Protest) March 22, 2025
It’s clear who’s to blame for this despicable display of rancid ableist abuse: Labour and its client media cronies.
That is, the vile rhetoric Labour ministers and the right-wing corporate media have been spouting, painting claimants as ‘scroungers’, ‘skivers’ and ‘fraudsters’ has already culminated in disgusting real-world consequences for chronically ill and disabled people.
In short, it’s a shameful indictment that chronically ill and disabled people can’t go out and exercise their right to protest without threats to their person. Of course, this is one very visible,
However, it’s characteristic of the types of discrimination and abuse chronically ill and disabled people experience every day. From outright verbal and physical bigotry, right through to ableist micro-aggressions, these all add up to a dangerous climate for chronically ill and disabled communities.
Moreover, it’s the thin edge of the wedge of the state-sanctioned violence perpetrated against them through the systemically ableist DWP. Now, Labour is only amping up its war on chronically ill and disabled people with this fresh round of cuts. It will mean only more of this hostile environment.
Where are our ‘allies’ on the Left?
One thing that’s also immediately striking from the sparse photos and videos currently available is the scale of the protests.
Unfortunately, this isn’t in an off-the-charts turnout kind of way. Instead, apart from the odd exception, the protests largely seem to have garnered modest crowds. Compare the numbers in these locations to nationwide demos in recent years – ongoing Palestine protests, workers’ strikes, climate emergency mobilisations, and for a nationwide call out, the protests on Saturday were pretty small.
Of course, many chronically ill and disabled people couldn’t be there too (myself included thanks to a flare), so that’s another reason the turn out wasn’t huge. But that again begs the question – where were allies when we needed them?
Non-disabled people, I’m looking at you. Come to the protests, de-centre yourself, and just listen, support, make noise alongside us.
And chances are, many have a chronically ill or disabled family member or friend too – so where were they?
Now, that’s not to take away from the brilliant people who did turn up, and the folks who poured their hearts into organising these demos in the short space of less than a week.
However, what it is a reminder is how disability rights is still seen. That is, it’s the non-glamorous social justice sibling, way down the priority list. This isn’t anything new of course. And Crips Against Cuts managed to motivate more people at a local level than perhaps has been seen in some time over DWP welfare reforms.
Historically, people just don’t turn up to support chronically ill and disabled protests. That should be a stain on the conscience of the left. Partly, this is a product of left-wing movements focusing on working people, as the Canary’s Steve Topple recently highlighted:
When you centre working people as the priority (and let’s be real, based on the weighting of the line up, white people) and leave chronically ill, disabled, homeless, and non-working people – as well as minoritised women – as an after thought, you expose yourselves for the political games you are actually playing.
People on the left regularly signal their intersectionality, but somehow chronic illness and disability are forgotten when it counts. Or worse still, tokenised as part of other campaigns, and deployed at and for their convenience.
PCS union: handwringing DWP staff won’t strike for us
And there is perhaps no clearer example of this than the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union.
PCS national president Martin Cavanagh gave a speech at the Bristol demo:
Martin Cavanagh from @pcs_union gives a powerful speech to two hundred benefit cuts protestors on College Green in Bristol yesterday. #WarfareNotWelfare pic.twitter.com/UuwRhMIIxn
— Ben Claimant 💚 Join a Union (@BenClaimant) March 23, 2025
Throughout, he appealed to ‘class solidarity’ and argued that:
Those who need support are somehow the problem. Those who need support are somehow the cause of all our ills in the UK. Well we all know that is a damn right lie. And every single one of us has a duty and responsibility to call it out.
However, as always with the corporatist union handmaidens at the top, it has long been a case of “strike for me, but not for thee”. This was, after all, Cavanagh – the PCS’s DWP Group president – who despite all the platitudes over the years of solidarity with chronically ill and disabled benefit claimants, has mustered only hand-wringing defiance of his employer’s unconscionable welfare reforms and punitive sanction policies.
Where was Cavanagh and his colleagues when DWP grim-reaper Iain Duncan Smith unleashed his devastating wave of welfare cuts?
Where were they every IDS-reprising DWP boss since who’ve slashed benefits, and overseen the “systematic” and “grave” violation of disabled people’s human rights?
Where were they when the Tory-led DWP presided over the deaths of tens of thousands of chronically ill and disabled claimants?
The short answer is, the snivelling sell-out lot of them sure as hell weren’t striking. That’s reserved solely for their own work conditions. But then, it’s hard to imagine snobby middle class managers that populate the DWP and look down their noses all day at claimants sacrificing their job security. God forbid they’d be finding themselves signing onto the dole alongside us!
Tokenised class solidarity
Moreover, Cavanagh seemed to skip over the part where it’s DWP staff that he and his union represent who have enacted years of the department’s violence against chronically ill, disabled, and poor claimants. Instead, he sung the praises of the ‘good’ folks at the DWP, working day in, day out in public service:
And comrades, what I find particularly disturbing, is that my background is DWP – clearly I’ve been evil in a previous life. But absolutely we understood and we knew back in the 1980s when I first started, that you absolutely on day one learned that anyone who came through that door, whether they were sick, had a disability, or just couldn’t find work, your job was to support them. Give them the financial leg up that they needed, when they needed it.
And you were absolutely told that they shouldn’t leave that building until you’ve done everything you could to help them. And how quickly times changed.
It’s almost chilling to see him convinced that the DWP is, or was ever anything other than the brutal arm of the state punching down on chronically ill, disabled, and poor people. His speech should be seen for what it is: a shallow effort to rehabilitate a department rife in ableism, classism, and rampant negligence.
In short, Cavanagh and his union are the very epitome of tokenised class solidarity. Over a decade ago, his union abandoned claimants forced into ‘workfare’. This was the government’s policy forcing claimants into unpaid labour in order to claim benefits. Of course, little has changed today – Labour’s latest work requirements conditionality regime will usher in only more of the same.
Now, does anyone really believe beyond Cavanagh’s warm words, that the PCS union isn’t going to throw chronically ill and disabled people under the bus once more?
Working class solidarity is conditional when it comes to disability rights. And Cavanagh laundering the PCS union’s image at these protests should be ample evidence of that.
Chronically ill people: an afterthought
Moreover, the protests were also somewhat marred as much by who wasn’t included, as by who they did.
Crucially, the precious few posts from these protests illustrated something important. This is how the lack of online live-stream, videos, and action left out a whole contingent of people the cuts will undoubtedly impact: chronically ill people.
Many are bed-bound/house-bound or immuno-compromised and so unable to make it to in-person demos. So, making it so they can participate online – or view back speeches not in real-time is a key matter of accessibility.
The Canary was informed that there had been plans to livestream the London demonstration, but that the person who had offered to do so was unable to attend.
Ultimately, it speaks to a problematic persisting feature of the left’s protest spaces more generally. And notably, it unfortunately often extends to protests held by disabled groups. This is, the lack of inclusivity and accessibility for their chronically ill siblings-on-the sharp end of state violence.
A movement that’s sorely needed all the same
On the whole, the Crips Against Cuts protests were a welcome and vital show of chronically ill and disabled people’s collective resistance against the DWP. Its quick organisation and power to pull in activists nationwide is needed now more than ever. Credit where it’s due.
However, the left more broadly need to take a good look in the mirror and reflect why so many failed to turn out to these protests. Moreover, the movement should be careful who it gets into bed with – because when push comes to shove, not everyone who proclaims to stand up for us really have our backs.
Nonetheless, Crips is just getting started, and they’re sure to continue being a force for chronically ill and disabled people going forward.
Featured image via screengrab
