Public and Commercial Services Union

Disability History Month - Get involved, show your support

22 November 2010

The idea of DHM is to highlight the profile of disabled people’s rights and struggle for equality, with a particular emphasis on:

• Celebrating the struggles and achievements of disabled people
• Looking at the history of discrimination, negative attitudes, and oppression (disablism)
• Creating an understanding of the barriers faced by disabled people in the workplace and society
• Campaigning to change attitudes and practices to make rights a daily reality
• Understanding that disabled people often also struggle against sexism, racism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination
• Enabling people to challenge this – for example, 80% of disabled pupils report being bullied.

Hate crime, poverty and discrimination are a daily experience among the UK’s 12 million disabled people and the situation is set to worsen as the government’s cuts bite. 

A report by PCS about the effect of the cuts on disabled people – which will be available in mid-December – explains how the government has focused public outrage on benefit claimants and, in particular, disabled benefit claimants, instead of tackling the £120 billion lost to the exchequer through tax evasion, avoidance and uncollected monies.

From claimants on Disability Living Allowance (DLA) to those on Incapacity Benefit, all are being reassessed or re-categorised following government statements that infer mass numbers of fraudulent claims.

Such political rhetoric, apart from being grossly unfair, has the danger of leading to increased hate crime. The Treasury Spending Challenge website had to be suspended in July after it put up numerous posts inciting hatred against disabled people. The Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Metropolitan Police are investigating the Treasury’s failure to remove the posts promptly after complaints. 

Take action now

Please support UK Disability History Month by checking for information and activities on the site.

At PCS, we are supporting an Early Day Motion (EDM, a petition to the government that can only be signed by backbench MPs), that supports DHM and highlights the impact of cuts on disabled people.

As a PCS member, it would be helpful if you could contact your MP and ask them to sign up to EDM 986 ‘Disability History Month’.

If you don’t know who your MP is, put your postcode in on the parliament home page in the bottom left hand box. You can then click through to find contact details for their office. 

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