We’re digging through dumpsters just to stay alive, disabled demonstrators said this weekend in a dramatic blockade of London traffic.

Dozens of activists with Disabled People Against Cuts shut down mid-afternoon traffic in Marble Arch on Saturday, handcuffing themselves and their wheelchairs together to protest “deadly” attacks on state benefits.

Demonstrator Liza van Zyl told Indymedia she was one of 15 protesters from Cardiff, brought down to Saturday’s TUC march with the teaching union NASUWT.

They could not have made it on their own, she said: most were destitute, and those who had lost part or all of their allowances had even begun swapping tips for dumpster-diving in order to have enough to eat.

Ms van Zyl lectured in astrophysics at Cardiff University before chronic stress “destroyed” her life, forcing her out of work.

But poverty and the battle to keep her allowance had only increased her anxiety, she said.

“It’s fucking outrageous.”

As the protesters held fast against honking traffic and pleas from police, more than 100,000 people gathered across the road in Hyde Park for the TUC's 'A Future That Works' rally.

But Ms van Zyl said it was small, constant acts of civil disobedience that got things done.

“We’ve got people who have become homeless, we’ve got nothing to lose.

“If we get arrested, at least that’s a hot meal and a bed for the night,” she said.

Fellow protester ‘Rob’ said he was destitute after being ruled fit for work — despite spreading arthritis in his spine and legs which had left him reliant on a wheelchair.

“People say, if you can protest like this you can get out and work — what people don’t realise is that for the next three or four days I’ll be laid up in agony.”

ENDS