End the Tory Butchers’ Assault on the Disabled: For New Year, Please Sign the War on Welfare Petition

[image error] Please sign the “War on Welfare” petition now to call for an end the Tory-led government’s assault on the disabled!

Since the Tories came to power two years and seven months ago, with the assistance of the Liberal Democrats, they have reshaped the political landscape in the UK in the most horrific manner, launching a savage age of austerity aimed at the young, the working poor, the unemployed, the ill, the old and the disabled, in defiance of the Christian values they supposedly hold.

In response, a group of concerned citizens have launched an e-petition urging the government to change course, which already has over 9,000 signatures since its launch just three weeks ago, and needs 100,000 signatures by December 12, 2013 to be eligible for a Parliamentary debate. The “War on Welfare” petition, which has a website here, and is being promoted as the #wowpetition, calls for “a Cumulative Impact Assessment of Welfare Reform, and a New Deal for sick and disabled people based on their needs, abilities and ambitions.”

Driven by a Thatcherite and neo-conservative obsession with destroying the state (with a few exceptions, including their own salaries and expenses). the Tories have been taking advantage of the economic crisis created by bankers and politicians (themselves included) in the global crash of 2008 not to rein in the bankers, but to endorse the enthusiasm for austerity amongst so-called economists — those who have not learned that austerity measures in a recession lead only to economic collapse.

The results have been predictable. With unprecedented cuts to the welfare budget, including the butchering of the NHS, the start of an unprecedented assault on the school system, and an attempt to destroy access to universities for all but the rich, there is  widespread and ever-increasing misery, and the austerity programme has been a complete failure. The cuts to the welfare budget will continue to hit the working poor very hard in 2013, as well as those unfortunate enough not to have a job, because most benefits are paid to those in work, rather than those who are unemployed, and savage cuts across the board will come into effect at the start of the new financial year in April.

In 2012, however, for those paying attention, the worst effects of the government’s assault on the most vulnerable members of society fell on the disabled, as a result of the Work Capability Assessment, designed to find disabled people fit for work when they are not, in order to reduce costs. This vile system is administered by Atos Healthcare, which is employing medical personnel willing to betray their profession for their masters in Atos’s management, and in the government. For further information, see my articles, Where is the Shame and Anger as the UK Government’s Unbridled Assault on the Disabled Continues?, Call Time on This Wretched Government and Its Assault on the Disabled and The End of Decency: Tories to Make Disabled People Work Unpaid for Their Benefits. Also see my photos of a protest against Atos here, which includes the photo featured above.

Despite this, as evidence of the failure of the government’s austerity programme, George Osborne is on target to borrow £212 billion more than he promised by 2016 in his spending review in 2010, and council leaders in  Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield are warning of massive civil unrest unless the government halts cuts which they say “unfairly penalise the north relative to the south,” in the Guardian‘s words.

As the Guardian explained:

Reacting to the latest cuts announced to council budgets this month — under which a further 2% of spending reductions were unveiled by the chancellor, George Osborne, in addition to the 28% already in train — the council chiefs say ministers in Whitehall appear to be adopting a “Dickensian” view of the world, which is a betrayal of traditional one nation conservatism.

Calling for a change in the way funding is allocated, to make it fairer to the north, they say that while everyone agrees on the need for savings, the coalition austerity programme has gone too far and will soon backfire with chaos on the streets and further economic stagnation. “Rising crime, increasing community tension and more problems on our streets will contribute to the break-up of civil society if we do not turn back,” they write.

“The one nation Tory brand of conservatism recognised the duty of government to help the country’s most deprived in the belief that economic and social responsibility benefited us all. The unfairness of the government’s cuts is in danger of creating a deeply divided nation. We urge them to stop what they are doing now and listen to our warnings before the forces of social unrest start to smoulder.”

2013 needs to be the year that people in Britain — and England in particular — rise up against the unparalleled cruelty of the Tory-led government in numbers that cannot be ignored. I will be doing all I can to work towards an alternative future for the UK — one that doesn’t involve a return to horrendous poverty and an ever-increasing chasm between the rich and the poor — and encouraging those who claim to have faith to ask themselves if what they are doing in response to the government’s policies is appropriate, but in the meantime, as the New year unfolds, the least I can ask you to do is to sign the “War on Welfare” petition, and show the Tories that there are at least 100,000 people who very actively care about their hideous assault on the disabled.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.