Ignored by the left…
In memory of Alison Hunter, Carl Scott and Sophia Mirza | 07.05.2007 15:03 | Analysis | Health | Social Struggles | World
Why are extremely vulnerable sick and disabled people being ignored by progressive forces of all kinds?
The Government is introducing draconian welfare rights reforms that will make life unbearable for millions of sick and disabled people throughout the UK
Does anyone care?
There are ten million disabled people in Britain. As John Rogers asks; “where is the support from progressive forces of all kinds: from unions, charities, churches , unions etc to the far left, anarchists, anti-capitalists, etc?”
And as if to add insult to injury, millions of people are being slowly poisoned by harmful chemicals and then told their subsequent health problems are psychological in origin and their disability ‘all in the mind’, and all because this protects the chemical and insurance industries and the government who grant them licence.
If the continuing campaign to demean and denigrate serious life threatening conditions like myalgic encephalomyelitis (which accounts for the biggest cause of school absence in the UK) as well as several other related conditions including fibromyalgia, gulf war syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity is left unchecked, we may very soon find ourselves faced with the legitimisation of the concept of "the undeserving ill" and what that implies for the future - although it is already too late for those who, through neglect, abuse and inappropriate treatment, have been hastened to an early death or driven to suicide.
See:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/369555.html?c=on#c173035
Does anyone care?
There are ten million disabled people in Britain. As John Rogers asks; “where is the support from progressive forces of all kinds: from unions, charities, churches , unions etc to the far left, anarchists, anti-capitalists, etc?”
And as if to add insult to injury, millions of people are being slowly poisoned by harmful chemicals and then told their subsequent health problems are psychological in origin and their disability ‘all in the mind’, and all because this protects the chemical and insurance industries and the government who grant them licence.
If the continuing campaign to demean and denigrate serious life threatening conditions like myalgic encephalomyelitis (which accounts for the biggest cause of school absence in the UK) as well as several other related conditions including fibromyalgia, gulf war syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity is left unchecked, we may very soon find ourselves faced with the legitimisation of the concept of "the undeserving ill" and what that implies for the future - although it is already too late for those who, through neglect, abuse and inappropriate treatment, have been hastened to an early death or driven to suicide.
See:
![](/img/extlink.gif)
In memory of Alison Hunter, Carl Scott and Sophia Mirza
Comments
Hide the following 10 comments
WE DO Care
07.05.2007 16:49
WE DO CARE
What to do?
07.05.2007 17:49
I work in the social service sector within mental health and learning disabilities.
Over the last year we have seen evermore cuts to peoples services that i feel contravene the human rights act.
I have tried to talk to the Unison union rep about these issues but as most of the management team and union reps are new labour drones this has got me nowhere.
When talking with my fellow workers they do care about the service but feel totally powerless to do something. Most people i work with just see the union as a kind of social club with a few freebies thrown in and are totally alien to industrial action. I have recently joined the Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW ) i hope to seek there advice on these matters.
People do care it's just the spirit of solidarity and militant union action that has been destroyed.
As an anarchist i do feel that that the people in our care are having there freedoms taken away and this saddens me. I guess if you have a disability and can not join the ranks of wage slaves you are less than human and so always have a lower quality of life.
Things need to change.
Graham
they have let us down
07.05.2007 18:34
concernedz
A pissed-off aspie anarcho-syndicalist writes
07.05.2007 21:47
Add that to the impending cuts in welfare, and there's potential for a new disabled people's movement. If the Disabled People's Direct Action Network (DAN) are still active, then they could call for a demo and pickets of government buildings.
Anarchists care about us. It's just the Leninists that don't, as they probably see it as a 'bourgeois concern', just like all other movements concering minority groups.
hairmonster85
e-mail:
alternative_editor@hotmail.com
Homepage:
http://hairmonster85.blogspot.com
We are all disabled here
07.05.2007 23:38
For me personally, hell is LIS, 'locked in syndrome', the folk who can literally not move a muscle and are mistaken for 'vegetables'. I talked to some of these people. It took them a while to respond. I tried to develop ways to communicate with them. Smarter people got there first and 'patented' their inventions. It is a holistic world. The people who are active against patents are also helping the sick and needy. Anarchism does support the helpless even if it it is indirectly. Everything links up.
Danny
Hell
08.05.2007 14:38
In this “care”, the sick child was forcibly thrown into a hospital swimming pool with no floating aids because psychiatrists wanted to prove that he could use his limbs and that he would be forced to do so to save himself from drowning. He could not save himself and sank to the bottom of the pool. The terrified child was also dragged out of the hospital ward and taken on a ghost train because psychiatrists were determined to prove that he could speak and they believed he would cry out in fear and panic and this would prove them right. Another part of this “care” included keeping the boy alone in a side-ward and leaving him intentionally unattended for over seven hours at a time with no means of communication because the call bell had been deliberately disconnected. The side-ward was next to the lavatories and the staff believed he would take himself to the lavatory when he was desperate enough. He was unable to do so and wet himself but was left for many hours at a time sitting in urine-soaked clothes in a wet chair. Another part of the “care” involved the child being raced in his wheelchair up and down corridors by a male nurse who would stop abruptly without warning, supposedly to make the boy hold on to the chair sides to prevent himself from being tipped out; he was unable to do so and was projected out of the wheelchair onto the floor, which on one occasion resulted in injury to his back…
See: ‘The case of Ean Proctor’
Did you know that parents who do their utmost to protect their desperately sick children from being physically and psychologically abused get throw in prison.
See ‘The case of Child X”
Would you believe me if I said that people with complex and severe life threatening neuro-immunological disorders are getting their front doors smashed in by the Police and getting sectioned under the mental health act. And if their family object, they get threatened with being sectioned too.
It’s all true! See:
Indyreader
sick imagination
08.05.2007 15:51
Yeah, sort of, thanks to reading books like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and talking to people much off than I'll ever be. I am just imagining it though not having to live it.
>Would you believe me if I said that people with complex and severe life threatening neuro-immunological disorders are getting their front doors smashed in by the Police and getting sectioned under the mental health act.
Yeah. I knew some kids at school who were sectioned, though by their families. They were funny, smart and normal - when they went in, not when they came out. It was like a warning to the rest of us. That was back in the bad old days of Thatchers Britain, before things went downhill. Listen, I'm sympathetic but busy just now. I'll read your links in full tonight or tommorow and if I can think of anything to do in support then I'll suggest it. And if you suggest an action I'll support it.
One of my best friends has ME and doesn't leave her house much. She has a loving husband and a good life, a horse to ride on etc, chickens to tend, but now her husband is sick with something worse. So it is especially sad to read of Sophia Wilsons case. I do feel a key phrase in that moving testimony is 'She was also badly affected by electromagnetic fields.' I've been reading about EMF since Sophia was a child, I'm sure it is linked to numerous 20th century diseases including ME and childhood leukemia and this being covered up but I don't have time to write about that just now and it would deserve it's own thread. If you do a bit of searching there was a government report on this the government watered down just last week. It is a crying shame.
Danny
Danny and others
08.05.2007 18:40
Indyreader
Ignorance
08.05.2007 19:29
All I can suggest just now is keep on posting more about this. I'll post an article on the EMF thing eventually unless someone beats me to it. I have posted about the ethics of selective abortion before, about LIS, about EMF and food additives and pesticides, and about one or two other issues I do know about, but despite trying to educate myself and meeting a wide range of people, I am still unconfident on the major issues involved.
We aren't deliberately ignoring the disabled, we are just genuinely ignorant. Fuck, I don't even know if the word 'disabled' is appropriate anymore ?
Danny
Hopefully…
08.05.2007 23:09
For instance, the nemesis of the ME community is a guy called Prof. Simon Wessley He’s the same bloke how says there is no physical gulf war illness. He’s an apologist for industry and an advisor to the MoD, DoD and Nato. You may have saw him on TV the afternoon of September 11th 2001 being interviewed by (BBC?) news. Oh yeah, and his wife is a senior policy advisor at the DoH..
You may have even come across him or his weasel worded psychobabble when perusing your own investigations, especially the EMF, food additives and pesticides. You may even come across him when investigating “disabilities in Iraq”. And I seem to remember he is sceptical of the detrimental effects of DU and nuclear waste, and as the governments epidemiologist he will almost certainly be advising them on thing such as Bird Flu and Terrorism, etc.
This link
'NATO-Russia Advanced Research Workshop on Social and Psychological Consequences of Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Terrorism', Simon Wessely, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (March 25-27, 2002)
I once heard that Peter Power spoke highly of him and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. He’s that type of guy, he pops up in all sorts of curious places..
He used to be a regular nobody but then in 1987 he wrote a paper which I think was called ‘Mrs Thatcher and Dementia’, and he rose to prominence almost overnight. I have never been able to find a copy of that paper but I’m told it had something to do with Pinochet.
Indyreader