"Never about us, without us": A slogan British liberals need to learn

A Labour MP is protesting her own party's obtuseness about disability rights.

The British Labour Party, like the American Democratic Party, likes to claim that it supports the working class.

Gimme a break. Based on their recent support for a two-tiered health care system — one that would relegate disabled people to a status of second-class citizenship — it is obvious that they are neglecting one of the key tenets of any effective pro-working class movement:

Never about us, without us.

This mantra is especially important for the disability rights community, as I’ve often learned the hard way. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently threw his weight behind what a Labour MP rightly calls an “unethical two-tier system.” Starmer supports significantly tightening eligibility requirements under the personal independence payments (Pip) system, as well as cutting out of work sickness benefits. Although Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, is now promising to exempt current disability claimants from these changes and adjust benefits for inflation, Olivia Blake — one of only nine MPs to be openly disabled and neurodivergent — says that this is nowhere near enough.

“The first thing I thought when I heard the concessions was, wait, we’ve not taken the step back that’s needed here, we’re working to improve a bill which is really harmful,” Blake told The Guardian. “This could form an unethical two-tier system that treats two people with the exact same injury or illness differently.”

Blake, who along with pain and genetic metabolic disorders is also neurodivergent, described the process of informing ministers and other policymakers about the flaws in their plan as being like “shouting at a brick wall.” She added that these same people “will meet you and chat with you but not respond. They need to learn lessons from that.”

Blake added, “I’m disappointed that something has been plucked from the air without engaging disabled people.”

I’m also disappointed, but not surprised. Just look at American history. The greatest president ever for disability rights, Jimmy Carter, needed to be pushed, poked, prodded and ultimately pulled over the finish line.

Like Starmer’s Labour Party, Carter’s Democratic Party was theoretically committed to disability rights. Unlike his Republican predecessors, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, as president Carter advocated for disability rights and promised to support Section 504. That clause existed in a 1970s bill intended to expand states’ abilities to provide comprehensive vocational rehabilitation services, but was worded to apply the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s protections for racial and religious minorities to disabled people. and merely extended that bill’s logic and language to another marginalized group. It stated that any entity that received federal funding could not discriminate against disabled people, at risk of losing that funding.

When Carter endorsed Section 504 during his 1976 presidential campaign, the disability rights community was overjoyed. Unfortunately, during his first months in office, Carter wavered as businesses and other special interest groups convinced him the economy would suffer if they were forced to provide disability accommodations. Even worse, Carter passed the buck on Section 504 to his new HEW head, Joseph Califano, who formed a task force on the issue that included no people with disabilities.

That was the bad news. The good news is that the disability rights community fought back.

“I think this was brilliant, because rather than waiting until watered-down regulations were issued publicly and then responding, issue by issue, this meant the government would have to respond to the demonstrators,” Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund activist Kitty Cone, who participated in the protests, later wrote. “Additionally, it was not that easy to organize people, particularly people with physical disabilities, in those days, due to lack of transit, support services and so on. A sit-in meant people would go and stay, until the issue was resolved definitively.”

The result was the Section 504 sit-ins, in which activists either occupied or picketed HEW offices in Washington, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Seattle. The most notable protest, in San Francisco, was a sit-in that lasted more than three weeks. The Black Panthers even pitched in, providing food to protesters at different locations so they wouldn’t starve.

It worked. On April 28, 1977, the Section 504 regulations were signed into law intact.

This is not to say that disability rights activists in Britain aren’t doing enough. Indeed, as I perused social media, I saw many examples of liberals standing up to the Labour Party and siding with Blake. In the age of the Internet, I am (perhaps foolishly) optimistic that the light can pierce the darkness through less drastic means.

First, though, we must make it clear to so-called liberals like those in the Starmer administration that they cannot help us unless they first listen.

As the old saying goes: Never about us, without us.

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Back Seat Socialism

Column by Matthew Rozsa who is a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently he is writing a book for Beacon Press, "Neurosocialism," which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.