Agency and responsibility (2026)

From the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Controversy surrounded the 2026 BAFTA Film Awards, in which John Davidson, whose life with Tourette’s inspired the film I Swear, involuntarily vocalised a racial slur during the ceremony, thus generating predictable outrage. Social media rapidly framed the incident as an ‘outburst’, implying intent. The assumption of agency was immediate.

Yet Tourette’s syndrome involves involuntary vocalisations, particularly in cases involving coprolalia. Uttering socially taboo words is not a sign of personal belief but a neurological compulsion. Coprolalia occurs in approximately 10-15 percent of people with Tourette’s and involves the brain’s failure to suppress socially inappropriate utterances. The individual has no control over the content; the words that emerge are often those with the most shock value, precisely because the brain’s suppression mechanism has misfired.

Agency under capitalism

The episode offers a useful case study in how capitalist society understands, and misunderstands, responsibility. Capitalism rests heavily on the idea of individual responsibility. Workers are treated as autonomous units of labour power, assumed to be rational, self-regulating, and fully in control of their conduct. Discipline in speech and behaviour is expected as part of employability and public legitimacy.

Where agency is compromised, through illness, disability or neurological variation, this framework strains. Instead of adjusting its assumptions, society often reasserts them more harshly. The presumption of intent remains, even where medical explanation is well documented.

This reveals a contradiction. When an individual is able to conform, their conformity is praised as personal virtue. When they cannot, their difference is interpreted as moral failure.

The policing of speech

Modern capitalism places significant emphasis on regulated language. Public speech is increasingly scrutinised, not only in workplaces but in cultural life. While there are good reasons to challenge genuinely racist or abusive expressions, the framework often operates without regard to material context.

This is not an argument against challenging racist language. When someone with full agency chooses to use slurs, that reveals values and deserves opposition. The point is that agency itself must be established before moral judgment is applied. Treating involuntary and deliberate speech identically serves neither anti-racism nor disability justice.

The Davidson incident illustrates this tension. A word can be socially harmful in its historical weight and impact. But responsibility cannot be abstracted from agency. To treat involuntary neurological discharge as deliberate prejudice collapses an important distinction.

Capitalist society frequently commodifies ‘inspirational’ narratives of disability. Films, awards ceremonies and media profiles celebrate individuals overcoming adversity. Yet this celebration is conditional. It assumes that disability can be packaged into palatable form. When the unfiltered reality appears, tolerance evaporates. The disabled individual is accepted only so long as they remain manageable.

Outrage as commodity

The rapid reaction online was not incidental. Social media platforms reward immediacy and emotional intensity. Speed outruns verification. The platforms profit from engagement regardless of accuracy. A nuanced explanation of Tourette’s generates less interaction than moral outrage. The economic incentive is towards simplification and condemnation, not towards understanding the material reality of neurological conditions.

Under these conditions, moral judgement becomes performative. Expressing indignation is easier than examining neurological evidence. The result is a form of ‘gotcha’ politics that prioritises signalling over understanding.

The paradox of inspiration

Davidson’s presence at the BAFTAs was itself a product of an inspiration narrative, his life ‘overcoming’ Tourette’s packaged as cultural uplift. But inspiration requires disability to be sanitised, controlled, presented as triumph over adversity.

The moment Tourette’s manifested as it actually does, involuntarily, inconveniently, in a way that cannot be neatly celebrated, the sympathy fractured. This reveals what capitalism often means by ‘acceptance’: the disabled must perform their difference in ways that affirm rather than challenge existing norms.

Responsibility reconsidered

A socialist analysis does not abandon the concept of harm. Words carry histories; their impact is real. But an equitable response requires proportionality and context. If an action is involuntary, then moral condemnation is misdirected.

The deeper issue is the rigidity of a society that demands uniform neurological performance in public life. When responsibility is defined without regard to material capacity, it ceases to be rational and becomes punitive.

The BAFTA incident reveals a system that confuses control with virtue and compliance with morality. It treats neurological difference as character defect and involuntary behaviour as moral choice. A materialist analysis rejects this confusion and demands that responsibility be matched to actual agency, not to capitalist fantasies of the self-regulating individual.

Pablo

Some publications. (1908)

Book Review from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

“A Book for the deaf. Surdus in Search of His Hearing.” By Evans Yellon. (The Celtic Press. 2s. 6d. Nett.)

While THE SOCIALIST STANDARD is an instrument designed to open the eyes of the intellectually blind, having no message that will unstop the ears of the physically deaf, it can still afford to offer a welcome to a book that fearlessly and trenchantly exposes the fraudulent methods of the aural quacks and perepatetic purveyors of “patent” potions or absurd appliances, who foist themselves upon the credulity of the deaf, to the deaf’s financial undoing—when it goes no further than that. There is not much left of “the gentleman who cured himself after 14 years,” or “Professor” Keith Harvey, or the Drouet Institute, or “Dr.” Moore, by the time Mr. Yellon is through with them.

The author, himself completely deaf, clearly understands his subject, and the limitations of the remedial measures that may be adopted. He writes with strength and sanity and much humour, and may be commended as a thoroughly reliable guide to any of our readers who seek information upon the matter.

Goodbye to the Welfare State . . . as we know it (1998)

From the March 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

As members of the working class living on state benefits are well aware, it is quite impossible to put a little by for a rainy day, for every day is forecast as a downpour, and trying to keep your head out of the deluge is a constant problem. And for those who are wholly dependent on benefits as their only source of income, their whole lifestyle is dictated by their resourcefulness in eking out their pittance from one day to the next. Yet the Labour government is planning to make things worse.

One of the major problems for the Labour government is the ongoing increase in the benefits bill—which this year is approaching £100 billion—accounting for the largest slice of government expenditure. The changes in the NHS and education system, brought about by the Tory administration, were plainly underfunded and have resulted in Labour putting Tory Plan B into effect by instigating a deliberate purge in social security payments to enable them to fund the NHS and education changes set in motion by the previous government. In order to meet these financial targets Blair needs to make savings of around £8 billion on the social security budget.

Scraping the barrel

Alongside this Labour are also faced with the problem of attracting skilled workers back into the workforce should the economy show signs of improving. Why put workers through costly training programmes when there are ample skilled workers already available, albeit suffering ill-health or disability to varying degrees? Far better to meet the demands for a low paid, short-term casual and part-time workforce by scraping the barrel and getting the skilled disabled—specifically those who are suffering less than 65 percent disability—back into the labour market. With 2.8 million people of working age claiming benefits due to ill-health or disability, Harriet Harman, the Secretary of State for Social Security, intends to ensure their amount of benefits does not act a disincentive to them returning to employment.

This explains the emphasis Tony Blair places on “offering the opportunity” to those who are sick and disabled to provide for themselves with “appropriate support”. But such explanations also provide the means for the Blair government to distance itself from the present obligation of “provision of universal benefits for life” to a scenario of capping universal entitlement to incapacity and disability benefits to one, or two years, so that after that period means tested benefits come into operation.

The present Social Security Review is the third since the Beveridge proposals for a two-tier National insurance/national assistance social security system were implemented in 1948, with each review making major changes in “the application of universal entitlement” by a mixture of increased bureaucracy and deterrence through lack of appropriate information, or any help from qualified staff at point of access to enable benefit claimants to actually receive their full entitlement. This is a major reason why one million pensioners fail to apply for the full range of various benefits that are available.

The whole purpose of the two previous reviews was to make substantial cuts in the social security budget. So we should not expect this one to be any different. But another lesson of history, which Labour have failed to learn (and as the present cost of social security amply illustrates), is that the previous reviews proved to be damp squibs when confronted by workers more resolute in keeping their heads above water than meddling politicians or inept bureaucrats.

Blair is bowing to the need to impose austerity measures in response to the global crisis of capitalism and the Maastricht criteria in order to ensure British capitalists are well-placed if and when the upturn in the global economy occurs and for possible entry into the single European currency. Such measures also offer the opportunity of projecting the image of a “reforming government” when plainly they are no such thing, but merely a reorganising (and cutting-back) on past reforms.

It is also hoped to curtail fraud and abuse by developing an integrated computer system for the Employment Service, the DSS, local authorities and the Inland Revenue. Initially this reorganisation will put increased pressure on DSS staff and hinder them in achieving their cost and efficiency targets set at 25 percent savings, and also undoubtedly lead to inevitable delays in claimants’ payments whilst claims are being processed. As for claimants, with delayed payment notorious for the creation of a “crisis period” any further adverse moves will only exacerbate the problems of those caught up in the poverty trap.

Various leaks have suggested which benefits could come under the hammer. For instance, Child Benefit is likely to be limited to under 16-year-olds and also capped for those who earn over £20,000-£30,000 a year. Likewise Statutory Sick Pay and Statutory Maternity Pay face the possibility of being capped at the level of £20,000 yearly earnings—resulting in 8.8 percent of claimants of SMP who are currently over that bracket having their disposable income accordingly reduced. Incapacity Benefit could be limited to one or two years, after which those claimants found to be only 65 percent disabled will be encouraged back into the work force by linking them to the means-tested Disability Working Allowance, or something similar. Should this “opportunity” to return to wage slavery found to be wanting no doubt more compelling measures will be used in conjunction with the Job Seekers Allowance. For those in receipt of Severe Disablement Allowance and Industrial Injuries Benefit there is the possibility of both these benefits being amalgamated under a new disability heading and either taxed accordingly, or made an overlapping benefit against other disability benefits.

Since the introduction of policies such as Care in the Community, and with the creation of unitary authorities, many Social Services departments are being hard pressed to meet many of their statutory obligations within their present budgets. This state of affairs has resulted in them considering charging for some of the services they dispense to the mentally and physically disabled. This raises the possibility of claimants currently receiving either the care component for Disability Living Allowance, or if aged over 65, Attendance Allowance, finding they will have to forfeit these particular benefits for receiving local authority care or support. It is also highly likely that both these benefits will, be capped for those earning over £20,000 a year, or taxed as income—and therefore in a roundabout way means-tested—or even for that matter directly means-tested.

The introduction of disablement benefits undoubtedly enabled many recipients to partake in activities which previously had been denied them, especially those who experienced difficulties with mobility. The prospect of this continuing looks bleak for those claiming the mobility component of Disability Living Allowance for it is highly possible that on reaching the age of 65 they can look forward to a life sentence of being housebound with the mobility component being cut from that age.

If such measures are actually put into practice the limited autonomy the disabled presently enjoy will face even further erosion, leading no doubt to an explosion of discontent from the numerous charities and agencies involved with disablement issues, and also from those who were instrumental in obtaining reforms of this nature—in recognition that the needs of the disabled outweigh those of the able-bodied. But with Blair clearly stating that “the welfare state had been left behind by social and economic change”, it is pretty obvious their pleas are going to be met with cynical platitudes from the politicians.

Deterring take-up

Whatever austerity measures are actually imposed on those benefits which presently come under the criteria of “universal entitlement”, the general trend will be towards linking them with some form of means-testing in order to deter the recent high growth in the take-up rate for benefits—especially from the sick and disabled. The high take-up rate for disability benefits in particular proved to be a stumbling block for the Tories, who sought to curb it by installing a stricter medical criteria, and by introducing the Benefit Integrity project which randomly selects 12 percent of claimants for review (this alone is expected to cover 500,000 disability claims) and resulted in 10 percent of those reviewed having their payments cut. Yet despite these and other measures workers have managed to counter them by adopting the realistic attitude of “getting what they can from the system”, and responding in kind with 345,859 new claims for DLA and a further 55,605 new claims for Industrial Injuries Benefit since April.

With a full-blown means test unlikely to become the norm for claiming benefits—for the extra cost of administration would be self-defeating—and with Blair making a point of emphasising that the means-tested safety nets of Income Support, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit also face scrutiny, it can be expected that cuts will be implemented on these already meagre handouts. For instance, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit could be made applicable to only one person per household—irrespective of whether other members of the household claim Income Support. Alternatively, claimants could be made to pay 20 percent of their rent before Housing Benefit comes into operation. If such measures are adopted it will inevitably mean that means-tested claimants will feel the pinch by being expected to pay a portion of their benefit towards rent.

Socialists argue that all reformist activity is subject to the changing nature of capitalism. To fight the same old welfare reform battles over several decades is demoralising enough, but when previous reforms are put into reverse the case against the system which puts profits before needs is stronger than ever.

Even before Labour won the May election, the Child Poverty Action Group in their Rights Guide to non-means-tested benefits, made a point of forecasting that “Is it naïve of us to hope that our successors(s) as authors of this Guide will have a comprehensive range of non-means-tested benefits to describe here in six years time?” (March 1997.) Frankly with Blair and his ilk locked into the profit system, the Socialist Party can confidently assure the CPAG that their guide for 2003 will be a decidedly slimmer version.

G. Digger

Proper Gander: Another Problematic ‘Class System’ (2021)

The Proper Gander Column from the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Paralympics. 

A prestigious opportunity for people to challenge themselves and, through hard work and determination, prove what they are capable of, smash records and win tournaments. But in reality? A cynical opportunity to make money by exploiting the way athletes are ‘classified’, which is ‘flawed, easily manipulated and lacking credibility’. This is the claim made by a recent edition of BBC1’s Panorama: Paralympics: The Unfair Games? Presenter Richie Powell competed as a wheelchair racer in the 1992 Paralympics, only three years after being paralysed from the chest down in a road accident. He speaks with athletes who, like him, have found sport to be a way to empower themselves and not be held back by the conditions they are living with. One of them is para-swimmer Levana Hanson, who explains how her confidence grew after joining a swimming club whose other members ‘didn’t see the disability, they saw me as a person’. Unfortunately, her enthusiasm was later dented by her experience, echoed by the other interviewees, of being a victim of the Paralympics’ system of classifying its competitors.

Taking place soon after the Olympics, the next Paralympic Games are due to start in Tokyo in August, having been postponed from 2020. The event began as the International Wheelchair Games held at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, timed to coincide with the 1948 London Olympics. Its founders aimed to use sport as therapy for ex-armed forces personnel with spinal injuries inflicted during the Second World War, and to integrate people with disabilities into wider society. The games as we know them today began in 1960, becoming larger and grander with each event. As more athletes with a wider range of medical issues participated in more tournaments, the process of deciding who should compete against who became more complicated. The current system of ‘functional classification’ was introduced in the 1980s, regulated by the International Paralympic Committee. Robert Shepherd, the former British Head Classifier explains that this system is based on testing and categorising ability, so athletes with similar capabilities compete against each other. Richie Powell was classified as a ‘T53’ for track athletes unable to use their core muscles. The lower the number, the greater the level of impairment. Some athletes and coaches manoeuvre their way round the system to get classified as a lower number than they should qualify for, so that they have the advantage of competing against people with more severe impairments.

One tactic is to get assessed by classifiers with a reputation for basing their decisions on negotiation rather than by medical tests. Another technique, apparently widespread among Australian Paralympic wannabes is to have cold showers or over-exercise before a classification assessment in order to emphasise their disability. The ex-Paralympians interviewed on the programme describe how they noticed that they were increasingly competing against, and losing to, athletes with less serious conditions. Hand cyclist Liz McTernan says that her sport is now ‘for the least disabled people that can get in the lowest category possible and win as many medals as possible’. In a bland response, the International Paralympic Committee said it found no instances which ‘could reasonably allege intentional misrepresentation’.

Of course, the motivation for those who manipulate the classification system to increase their chances of winning is money. Athletes and their associated staff rely on funding from lottery and government grants, and the more medals they win, the more funding they get. Their incomes are boosted by sponsorship and endorsement deals, which again hinge on how successful a sold-out athlete is. Ex-Paralympian Bethany Woodward argues that the drive to make athletes more marketable leads to more able-bodied people participating and winning in the Paralympics, ‘cleansing the sport of those very people that it was built for’. She adds that when she and others complained, the authorities told them not to speak out about classification and repeatedly threatened them with legal action. In a bland response, the International Paralympic Committee said it recognised that some athletes have concerns about classifications but ‘sports classes can feature athletes with different impairments’ where there is a ‘similar impact on … ability to practice’.

The ‘greatest scandal ever to hit the Paralympics’, as Richie Powell tells us, was what the Spanish basketball team did in the 2000 games. Shortly after the team won the tournament for people with intellectual disabilities, one of its members revealed himself as an undercover journalist. And his scoop was that most of the team had not undergone medical tests to ensure they had a disability (which in this category meant having an IQ of 75 or less) and were therefore faking their conditions. Following investigations, the team was stripped of their medals and all Paralympic competitions for people with intellectual disabilities were temporarily suspended.

However many bland responses the International Paralympic Committee dishes out, and however the classification process is regulated, the Paralympics, like any institution, can’t escape being moulded by the money system, and nor can the athletes taking part. The classification system itself involves reducing people to numbers, appropriately. The lure of financial gain is bound to push some people to find underhand ways to win. Methods such as exaggerating or inventing a disability are particularly dismissive of athletes genuinely striving to prove themselves, a reminder of how capitalism’s priorities alienate us from each other.

Mike Foster

Between the Lines: To Hell with Charity (1993)

A Tory B’Stard

The Between the Lines column from the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

To Hell with Charity

Socialists want a society without charity. The function of charity is to throw crumbs at the poor and pity at the disadvantaged. People First (C4, 8pm. 8 June) showed how a growing number of workers classified as disabled are sick of being the recipients of crumbs and pity. Their particular target, which has long been attacked in this column, are the patronising TV charity telethons in which company directors give cheques for a few thousand pounds (in return for a positive mention of their companies) and workers engage in stupid and humiliating stunts in order to raise in pennies what the average capitalist would spend without thinking twice on a good lunch.

Under capitalism disabled workers are usually poor because the bosses can milk less profits out of them than fitter, more agile wage slaves. They are disadvantaged because the social environment is built for the requirements of the physically fit and the cost of adding lifts and ramps to public places is not profitable enough. So, to ease the social conscience there are these annual displays of money-collecting and expressions of concern for those whom capitalist logic would really prefer not to be alive at all.

It was inspiring to see disabled workers refusing to behave as grateful victims and demanding the dignity of being equals. But equality in wage slavery is not the answer. It will only be when humans are recognised for what they are and not what they have that all of us, regardless of shape, form or infirmity, will be free to share the world as a family of equals.

What Community?

The same night as the encouraging documentary about militant disabled workers, Newsnight (BBC2, 10.30pm) had a report, set in Oxford, about what has happened to people who have been released from psychiatric wards into so-called community care. It is like releasing goldfish into the desert waters. The fact is that there is no community. For there to be a community there would need to be a common human interest in society rather than the class division which currently exists. In an increasing number of cases it is the very absence of a sense of community life, and the consequent depression, which leads people to become mentally unstable. The state’s response is to throw these unfortunate people out into a cold and alienating world where they will exist in poverty and loneliness, with medication to keep them quiet (if they remember to give it to themselves). The Newsnight report showed how miserable and uncared for were those who have been sentenced to the scrapheap of bogus care in the bogus community.

Will the Real Alan B’Stard Please Stand Up?

Tory politicians come in all sorts, from wimpy Major, slobbish Clarke to Mad Maggie. One of the latter's closest friends was Alan Clark, the subject of a BBC2 documentary called Love Tory (7 June. 9pm). Clark is a vile old aristocratic character with the callousness of a Ridley, the smugness of an Owen and the muddled thinking of a Lamont. He is the man, should you have forgotten, who referred to blacks in Britain as having come from Bongo-bongo Land.

In the documentary he readily admitted to being a liar and openly stated that when he was a Minister of Employment in the Thatcher government none of his policies made any difference and that he did not believe the speeches written for him to read out in the House of Commons. His candidness comes from the fact that he is extremely rich (he lives off what he called "the income from my income”) and an arrogant belief that the proles are too stupid to do anything about it even if their rulers admit in public to conning them.

Earlier this year, in a Guardian interview, Clark stated that "the arguments for socialism are powerful. But it has never been put into practice properly . . . the social argument for socialism is not easy to refute” (9 January). The reality is that two hours in the debating ring with a socialist speaker and the complacent grin would soon be knocked off Alan Clark's face. He would discover that socialism is impossible to refute and that capitalism can only be sustained while rather more publicity-conscious crooks than him persuade the working class to continue donating to the biggest charity in the world which keeps useless idlers in privileged luxury while the rest of us have to produce the wealth.

Steve Coleman

Disability: Models of Meaning (2020)

From the January 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much has been made in the media in recent years about the growing costs associated with meeting the needs of elderly and disabled people under the current social system known as capitalism.

Politicians are never shy when it comes to declaring that ‘we need to do something about the growing problem of an ageing and disabled population’

Disabled people, up until around the mid 1990s and the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) tended to be the poor relation of various other minority groups when it came to legal protection and making it unlawful to discriminate against someone on the grounds of their perceived ‘identity’.

Up until the 1970s it was all too common for children born with disabilities to be either ‘given-up’ by their parents voluntarily, or worse still, have them forcibly removed by the authorities and placed into asylums for the ‘insane’ and given the title ‘mental defectives.’

Lennox Castle ‘Hospital’ in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, was one such place where many of those went on to spend a lifetime ‘employed’ in the workhouse doing menial jobs, or alternatively spending their days doing nothing.

Lennox Castle was typical of large institutions built by local authorities in the 1930s and was the largest in the UK. Built to accommodate around 1300 people, it frequently exceeded those numbers by many more hundreds. Lennox Castle has become well known as an example of a particular type of provision characterised by its isolation and by a certain notoriety among members of the public and nursing professionals.

Lennox Castle represented a ‘large investment’ by the Corporation of Glasgow at the time, which bought the land and built the hospital. However 60 years after it opened, it was closed down.

It has been documented that some of the patients (perhaps more accurately described as inmates) went on to form relationships from which babies were produced, only for these to spend the rest of their lives within the walls of Lennox Castle too. Thankfully the social stigma and misunderstandings that surrounded people with disabilities at that moment in time is now pretty much a thing of that distant past.

Legislation

Prior to the DDA (1995), there was in place legislation that outlawed – for example – employers discriminating against someone on the grounds of their sex (Sex Discrimination Act 1975) and also the Race Relations Act of 1976,which made it unlawful to discriminate against someone on grounds of the colour of their skin, nationality or ethnic origin. Of course, that’s not to say it stopped it from happening altogether.

In more recent times, any kind of discrimination against these minority groups have been outlawed together under the umbrella of The Equality Act (2010) and to facilitate same sex marriage, The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013.

All well and good you might think.

But are we really any closer to achieving anything like true equality under this grossly and inherently unequal social system known as capitalism?

As someone who is Registered Blind and depends on a Guide Dog to help me get around, this subject is of particular interest to me.

Medical Model v Social Model of Disability

Many people – mainly those who might find themselves in otherwise ‘good health’ – might be inclined to err towards the medical model of disability thesis. In broad terms this effectively says that people are disabled because of their impairments (legally defined as the limitation of a person’s physical, mental or sensory function on a long-term basis) or differences.

Under the medical model, these impairments or differences should be somehow changed by medical interventions and other treatments, even when the impairment or difference does not cause pain or illness. The medical model looks at what is ‘wrong’ with the person and not what the person needs. It creates low expectations and leads to people losing independence, choice and control in their own lives.

The social model of disability, on the other hand, says that disability is caused by the way society is organised. In particular the built environment, rather than by a person’s impairment or ‘difference’. It looks at ways of removing barriers that restrict life choices for disabled people. When barriers are removed, disabled people can be independent and relatively equal in society, with some choice and control over their own lives.

Disabled people developed the social model of disability because the traditional medical model did not explain their personal experience of disability or help to develop more inclusive ways of living. Some examples might include a wheelchair user wants to get into a building with a step at the entrance. Within a social model solution, a ramp would be added to the entrance so that the wheelchair user is free to go into the building immediately. Under the medical model, there are very few solutions to help wheelchair users to climb stairs, which all too often excludes them from many essential and leisure activities.

A teenager with a learning difficulty wants to work towards living independently in their own home but needs help with cooking, cleaning and quite probably money matters. Within the social model, the person would be supported by a carer (formal or informal) so that they are enabled to pay bills and live in their own home in the community. Under the medical model, the young person would be expected to live in a hospital or institution – most probably because it would have been the cheapest option.

A child with a visual impairment wants to read the latest best-selling book to chat about with their sighted friends. Under the medical model there are very few solutions, but a social model solution ensures full text audio-recordings are available when the book is first published. This means children with visual impairments can join in with such activities on an equal basis with everyone else.

Conflicting legislation

Of course, barriers are not just physical. Attitudes found in present day society, based on prejudice or stereotype, also disable people from having equal opportunities to be part of society.

I personally and frequently encounter access refusals when accompanied by my guide dog to private hire taxis, as well as in both Indian and Chinese restaurants, where culturally dogs are deemed to be ‘unclean’ and their saliva ‘toxic’, particularly within the Muslim faith. It is believed that should a Muslim person come into contact with dog saliva, it will ‘void them of their state of purity.’

This can be a particularly challenging situation when two competing pieces of legislation collide and compromise is hard to reach.

There was a difficult case that ended up in the courts several years ago, whereby a young Muslim man lost his sight and had to depend on a guide dog to help him get around. Not only did it take much persuasion for his parents to agree and allow their son to have the guide dog in the first instance; that it seemed was only the beginning of his problems. Unfortunately, the Iman of his local mosque refused him access on religious grounds. There was a stand-off and eventually the case had to be heard and decided by a judge, who eventually ruled that Disability Laws should trump Religious Beliefs and Laws, and so it was found that the boy had been discriminated against and must be allowed entry to the mosque along with his guide dog, as well as receiving substantial compensation.

Employment problems

It would be wrong to suggest that the rights and quality of life of the disabled have not improved considerably compared to the dark days of an institutional existence, with some now living relatively independent lives in supported accommodation.

But is there scope for all of our lives to be improved further? As a socialist and proud member of the disabled working class, the plain and simple answer is yes.

It is common knowledge that there exists a high proportion of disabled people both in the UK and elsewhere in the world who are denied fulfilling work opportunities because they are deemed to be a high liability by potential employers and likely to cost more in terms of days off and lost production and consequently lost profits, should their situation worsen.

For those who develop conditions while in employment, days off for treatment are frowned upon, and any production time lost invariably has to be ‘made-up’ by the employee in their ‘own time’. There are very few employers out there who take a sympathetic view of a worker’s health condition if it has a detrimental impact upon their profit margins. And more often than not, a ruthless capitalist will think nothing of ditching an unproductive worker.

Within a socialist society, on the other hand, where people will be the priority as there is no pursuit of profits, there will be no need to fear losing one’s job and subsequent income, because wage earning and the selling of one’s labour in order to survive will be destined to the annals of history, along with the irrational and insane relationship between the buying and selling of goods and services to one another.

Instead, we the working class will take control over our own destiny, with each and every one of us living a full and dignified life in accordance with our own unselfish needs, contributing to the welfare and common good of the whole of our communities in accordance with our own unique and individual abilities and skills.

Those who are fit, able and desire to work, will avail themselves of the tools necessary and free in order to enable them to do so. Those who cannot, can be assured of a decent quality of life without the insecurity of having to depend on government handouts that barely cover what is needed in order to sustain basic human needs and life itself.

Paul Edwards

Pathfinders: The New Untouchables (2012)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists will greet with mixed feelings the news that a milestone in genome sequencing has been reached, enabling anyone to have their entire genome sequenced in one day for just £650 (Independent, 11 January). This task, until recently a hundred-million dollar enterprise involving tens of years and hundreds of scientists, can now be knocked off on a wet Wednesday by a single bored boffin using a machine the size of a microwave oven. In a year or two perhaps, the same feat will be achieved in ten minutes by licking the end of your smart phone.

That this is a testament to the awesome acceleration of science is undeniable. The benefits for the future management or prevention of diseases through individual designer treatments are also undeniable. Humanity’s drive to know itself, to know its essential nature is irresistible, the stuff of legends. There ought to be no down side. But this is capitalism we’re talking about. Information about your body and health prospects can be used against you as well as for you, and the fact that this information will be of interest to insurers and employers is not merely a probability but a racing certainty. As in the film Gattaca (1997), your life and career choices could well be determined and circumscribed by what’s in your genes.

Genome-profiling could be written into contracts everywhere from pre-school to pre-nuptial agreements. It could become the hot new style accessory, the ‘new black’, better than the sports car or the Rolex, better than the implants or the permatan.  Eyes won’t meet anymore across crowded bars, or pheromones traverse the stilly air, nor will courage have to be summoned for the first hesitant approach. Instead, iPhones will poll each other automatically, protocols will synchronise, alerting you to genetically suitable breeding partners according to matched genomic probabilities. Before you’ve even exchanged glances, your hardware will have exchanged financial histories, bought the first round of drinks and booked the dinner table. While nature remains red in claw, human nature will become blue in tooth.

Disability groups, accustomed anyway to being ‘second-class citizens’, have every right to worry about all this. From being chronically under-employed, they may soon become regarded as unemployable, a highly disquieting condition in a social system that only values ‘productive’ workers and which in the past has thought nothing of liquidating ‘unproductive’ ones. But this technology will have the effect of ‘disabling’ many more people than those currently bearing the label. The definition of ‘disability’ will also be extended forward in time to include anyone who is likely to develop a disabling disease in the future, creating a large subset of sell-by-date workers whom employers will not want to bother investing in, whom state institutions like health and education will neglect, whom mating partners will avoid, and whom insurers won’t touch with a barge pole.

Would this subset, driven by lack of opportunity and perhaps a cold sense of fatalism, turn in desperation to insurrection or to crime? Would they be categorised as a social problem at birth? Could two such individuals, the new genetic ‘untouchables’, be charged with criminal negligence if one got the other pregnant? Hard upon the arrival of the genomic ID card would follow the inevitable question of controlled breeding, forced sterilisation, and euthanasia. Capitalism’s quest for maximum return for minimum outlay could give rise to a new fascism in which only the genetically ‘perfect’ have any chance to succeed, or even survive. Eugenics, the dirty word of the Nazi era, could make a comeback.

Given what happened in Nazi Germany, people forget that the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century was not initially seen as some right-wing state-backed war on the underdog, but a forward-thinking, progressive and humane project based on good science. The Fabians supported it, as did Bernard Shaw, the Webbs, Darwin’s own son, in fact virtually all of the ‘right-thinking’ intellectuals. Who would not want a purer gene pool, they thought? What justification could there be for allowing pain and disease to proliferate? Wasn’t eugenics in the best interests of the whole human race?

The theory wasn’t entirely watertight even in its own terms. It had already been shown by 1915 that genetic mutation could jump heritability lines and that heritability was not a closed system but was subject to outside interference. Nowadays a lot more is known about horizontal gene transfer through viral drift. This won’t stop the modern eugenicists, however, since engineering can build by design what crude artificial selection cannot sculpt by elimination. Even if a mutation crops up in a previously ‘pure’ strain it can be engineered back out again. In theory, anyway. In practice, the codebook is open, but nobody knows what the letters mean, and we can only guess by inference when a letter changes. Even if they could read the code, geneticists may never untangle the complex webs of phenotypic effects influenced by one genetic ‘word’, nor identify all the genetic elements necessary to create one – and only one – effect. This unfathomable complexity – pleiotropy – yawns like an abyss between the engineers and their brave new world, but the bridges are being constructed.

There will of course be cries of moral outrage, appeals to civil liberties, and demands for ethical oversight. Capitalism will pay lip-service to these insofar as it has to, but its logic compels it to find out whatever can be found out about the ‘worth’ of each worker, each human tool, and stock its toolbox accordingly.

The argument that it won’t put in its toolbox is the one about putting all your eggs in one basket. Evolution is even more blind and capricious than capitalism. The last thing any thinking species ought to do, if it wants to survive, is confine itself to one tight genetic niche and thereby maximise its vulnerability. That’s the way to become beautiful – and extinct. Genetic diversity doesn’t lead to a shallow and polluted gene pool, as our elitist, narrow-minded and anally-retentive forebears conceived of it. It leads to the best possible defence against extinction in the event of future diseases. Even if one leaves aside every possible moral argument about the ‘right to life’ of all humans, the simple threat of evolutionary extinction alone ought to be enough to annihilate this silly notion of eugenics once and for all. Let all humanity prosper, and bugger the chromosomes.

It’s something of an indictment of capitalism that one even has to make this utilitarian argument in the first place. Moral outrage ought to be enough. But it isn’t, because capitalism has no brain, no heart, and no foresight. As long as the money rolls in, let the heads roll as they may.

Paddy Shannon

Greasy Pole: All in what together? (2012)

The Greasy Pole column from the April 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Such is the glut of material it is not necessary to drill too deeply into political history to excavate an impressive sample of pledges, slogans, phrases deposited by our leaders which they came to regret. For example during the devastating slump of the 1930s a few million unemployed who had returned from the war bitterly questioned the meaning of Lloyd George and his “Land Fit For Heroes”. In the 1960s there was Harold Macmillan dreamily talking of a time when a customarily struggling people “never had it so good”. Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan never lived down “Crisis? What Crisis?” when he was asked, as he returned from an economic summit in the West Indies in 1979, about his plans to deal with British capitalism’s turmoil. The fact that he did not say this (it was no more than a reporters’ version of what he had said) did not lessen the impression of a flippant dismissal of a serious problem and led to the loss of Labour votes. And recently, as the present recession (of a kind widely assumed by the economic experts to be a thing of the past) rumbled into its stride, David Cameron attempted to rally us with the assurance that: “We are all in this together”.

Ancestry

What right has Cameron to speak to us in this way? Well, in this social system with its historically characteristic class structure there is all he needs to give him that right. His background is rich in antecedent; through his paternal grandmother he is a direct, if illegitimate, descendant of King William IV and, through tortuous lineage, a fifth cousin of the present queen Elizabeth. Apart from being blue-blooded, he is (possibly to his own relief) a son of a family with a long and lucrative history of high standing in banking and trade. His late father benefited from a family tradition of being a senior partner in one of London’s richest, most powerful stockbrokers. If this is not enough to secure his superior place in the social hierarchy, Cameron is married to a step-daughter of Viscountess Astor who, apart from being a descendant of Charles II was the owner and designer of an exclusive jewellery business and is now the CEO of a home furnishing design company. In other words, Cameron has all he needs to assert his place in the class structure of capitalism, which encourages him to lay down the laws governing our lives in the interests of his class. And which includes swamping us with repression and manipulation, at times denying the reality of it all with specious claims to have common interests with us. This is, put simply, another aspect of the class struggle.

Divided

David Cameron can be relied on to tell us every now and again that he is “passionate” about all sorts of plans, chances and prospects. So we might ask how he judges his government’s response to his widely publicised call for national unity to deal with the recession – as we are all in the mess together. There are many examples in opposition to this, of an emphasis on people being officially divided between hard workers and dole-scroungers, between genuine invalids and fraudulent incapacity benefit claimants. Some time ago we had to endure government spokespeople relating how “decent, hard-working” people can be seen at five o’clock in the morning trekking to work through dark and silent streets where, behind curtains, benefit fraudsters slept blissfully on. We heard about Boris Johnson complaining that in a sandwich bar he is often served by someone from abroad – because the English are too lazy to compete with diligent foreign workers for such jobs. And a particular victim of this kind of demonising has been, and is increasingly, the disabled.

Disabled

In this cause, the gutter media have joyfully joined the campaign to support the government propaganda that the benefits system is being bankrupted, publishing photographs of incapacity benefit claimants refereeing football games or running in races. This has stimulated an upsurge in discrimination – sometimes abuse or violence – against disabled people commonly assumed to be cheating for their benefits. Charities like Scope, Mencap, Leonard Cheshire, Royal National Institute for the Blind, report regularly receiving calls about this and believe it to be officially encouraged. The head of campaigns at the National Autistic Society has stated that The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) where Iain Duncan Smith is secretary “is certainly guilty of helping to drive this media narrative around benefits, portraying those who receive benefits as work-shy scroungers or abusing the system that’s really easy to cheat”. The Head of Policy at the Disability Alliance said his organisation is hearing of higher levels of verbal abuse: “It seems to be growing as a result of a misperception of much more widespread abuse of benefits than actually exists. That’s being fed by the DWP in their attempts to justify massive reductions in welfare expenditure.” (The intention is to reduce total Disabled Living Allowance payments by 20 per cent by 2015/6.)

So what does Cameron think about his call for unity being used to divide people? That catchphrase of his has passed with the others into a disreputable history, leaving us with two questions. What is the “it” which we are urged to be “in”? And do we want to be there with him? Do we want a society typified by people existing, in this country apart from elsewhere, in such peril that a cut in state benefit reduces them to desperation, needing to choose between buying food and heating their home? Are we impressed by politicians’ transparent efforts to justify this? There is a simple answer: we can do better and as a start we can expose the likes of Cameron and their insidious defence of the indefensible.

Ivan

Letter: Charity and Disability (1985)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

What is the view of socialists towards working for charity? I assume that charity and religion should be placed in the same category, that they both serve to relieve the plight of the underprivileged just sufficiently to avoid revolt against the capitalist system.

Unfortunately, because of my own physical disability, I am living on charity and also working for a charity. My tasks involve collecting money and sending rehabilitation equipment to disabled people in the "third world". Surrounded as I am by apathy and uninterest, my work is providing me with my only social life. Am I a hypocrite to describe myself as a socialist?

Peter H Reynolds 

Banbury

Reply

To answer your last question first; no. we would not condemn you as a hypocrite providing of course that you already accept the object and principles of socialism as well as recognising, as your assumption implies, the nature and function of charities. Socialists are not given to castigating the victims of capitalism, of nature's cruel quirks and of accidents when they are compelled to accept as dependants the aid and support which is, more often than not, only available from charities. And we understand the position you are in, which requires you and many in similar straits to endure what can be a demeaning reliance on handouts. You have little choice of course since you would otherwise be in an intolerable situation; a forgotten victim of capitalism's inhumane, selective priorities, dependent on central and local government both loath to accept responsibility, both trying to balance the books by avoiding such expenditure.

The first-aid, relief from suffering and longterm care provided by charities certainly helps to take the pressure off the system and off profits, some of which would otherwise have to be diverted into this area. Some idea of how much would be so diverted can be got from the present horrendous suffering world wide. A system geared to maximising profitability, even on "famine crisis relief", rather than ministering to and trying to eliminate pain, disfigurement, handicap. deprivation and hopeless despair, is not able i to change its spots or its ethics.

There is, however, an encouraging aspect to all this. Even though the vast majority in need around the world don't have even the limited charity-funded help which is available in most industrially advanced countries, the fact that the accumulation of individual care and concern does often result in organised, dedicated, unstinting service to relieve suffering, is a positive vindication of our contention regarding "human nature". The favourable social circumstances of socialism will be conducive to such care and concern, and prove false the deliberately peddled distortion that we are all totally selfish and cruel by nature. And of course in such a society of free access not only would there be access to all the most advanced technologies, equipment and skills, but the world would be free of capitalism's conditions, imperatives and dangerous attributes which directly cause most of the suffering, the deprivation and the handicaps and which call into existence the very need for charity.

Editors

Brief Reports (2012)

From the December 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The next Archbishop of Canterbury has vowed that the ordination of women bishops will go ahead despite a minority of the General Synod returning a No vote blocking the move. Justin Welby announced that he had received a vision in which God showed him how to fix the Synod voting system to get a Yes result next time: ‘It was rather silly of us to have a consensus voting system, when God clearly would have preferred a simple majority. We just need one small change and then hopefully we can drag the Anglican Church kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.” Opponents were unrepentant, however, saying that Christian faith must sometimes take a brave stand against the world, public opinion, common sense and universal ridicule. A spokesman for the House of Laity said last week: ‘We don’t think our views are unreasonable. Has anyone proved scientifically that women have got souls, after all? And if you put them in water, don’t they float? I mean, doesn’t that suggest they are spiritually empty?” The progressives have powerful friends, however. David Cameron has stated he supports women bishops: ‘The Anglican Church has clearly got a serious credibility deficit, and that’s a subject I feel very concerned about, as do all my colleagues in the Coalition.’

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The firm carrying out fitness-for-work assessments for the government lacks disabled access at a quarter of its premises, MPs have heard. Employment minister Mark Hoban said 31 of 123 centres used by Atos lacked ground-floor access for wheelchairs. He added that there was ‘no truth whatsoever’ in the rumour that these were all government-approved buildings and that Atos had been put there expressly to fail all applicants: “I object very strongly to the story being put about that these centres are actually tree-houses in municipal parks. They are in fact open-plan elevations in greenscaped locations.” A disabled user who wished to remain anonymous, on the grounds that she would be passed fit for work if she could remember her name, stated: ‘These centres have only got one form, for non-attendance. If you actually manage to climb up the tree they close the office and swing away on creepers. I don’t think it’s fair at all.”

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A Norwich City player has been fined for carrying a police-style baton in his car. Defender Sebastien Bassong, 26, was stopped by police near King’s Cross in London in September. In mitigation his lawyer explained that Bassong is a French Cameroonian: “When he was first signed to play for an English club he enquired into racist violence against black people in this country, and was told that the police were heavily on the case. That’s why he got the baton, in case they arrested him.” A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police declined to comment.

Voice From The Back: A Grim Forecast (2013)

The  Voice From The Back column from the June 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Grim Forecast                     

Politicians and media ‘experts’ are always telling us that although times may prove economically fraught at the moment the future will prove much better. Occasionally however the truth leaks out. 'Recession in the eurozone will be deeper than expected this year, the European Commission said yesterday in spring forecasts that predicted continuing record unemployment and a sluggish economic rebound next year' (Times, 4 May). Capitalism by its very nature is based on booms and slumps and no ‘expert’ has ever managed to solve that basic flaw of the system.

Colonial Hypocrisy                    

The British ruling class have always pretended that they behave in a moral fashion. This fallacy has now been exposed as nonsense. The British government is negotiating payments to thousands of Kenyans who were detained and severely mistreated during the 1950s Mau Mau insurgency. 'In a development that could pave the way for many other claims from around the world, government lawyers embarked upon the historic talks after suffering a series of defeats in their attempts to prevent elderly survivors of the prison camps from seeking redress through the British courts. Those defeats followed the discovery of a vast archive of colonial-era documents which the Foreign Office (FCO) had kept hidden for decades, and which shed new and stark light on the dying days of British rule, not only in Kenya but around the empire' (Guardian, 5 May). In the case of the Mau Mau conflict, the secret papers showed that senior colonial officials authorised appalling abuses of inmates held at the prison camps established during the bloody conflict, and that ministers and officials in London were aware of a brutal detention regime in which men and women were tortured and killed.

Another Promise Bites The Dust            

When the government closed Remploy factories that employed disabled workers their boast was that the closures would lead to more of them getting jobs in mainstream employment. Like most government promises this turned out to be untrue. 'Up to two thirds of the disabled workers who lost their jobs when the nationwide network of Remploy factories began to be shut down last autumn are still out of work' (Sunday Express, 5 May). Being unemployed is tough but being unemployed and disabled must be hellish.

Lots To Smile About               

Accompanying a photograph of the two billionaires smiling broadly at a Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders meeting in the USA was the following piece of information. 'Super-rich Bill Gates and Warren Buffett obviously know how to take it easy. It can't be too hard when Microsoft chairman Gates, 57, is worth $67 billion and Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Buffett, 82, has been valued at $53.5 billion' (Sunday Express, 5 May).

Growing Old Disgracefully                 

Readers of the popular press are aware of world hunger as a pressing problem, but they are probably unaware that this is not just a problem that affects people abroad. 'Most people think of the condition as a ‘third world problem’, but one in ten older people in the UK are malnourished, the British Dietetic Association and the Malnutrition Task Force said. ’For far too long, malnutrition and dehydration has been thought of as a third world problem,’ said Helen Davidson, honorary chair of the British Dietetic Association – the professional body for UK dieticians. ‘The reality is, malnutrition and dehydration is a very big problem here in the UK’ (Daily Express, 9 May). Malnutrition Task Force task force chair Dianne Jeffrey claimed that one in ten older people are malnourished and estimates put the figure at about three million. That is capitalism for you. Even in an advanced country like the UK old folk are malnourished.

Artful Dodgers                       

Workers are constantly being reprimanded by politicians and journalists for being ‘benefit fraudsters’ but in fact whatever dodges they may get up to it’s as nothing compared to the tax evasion of the owning class. 'More than 100 of Britain's richest people have been caught hiding billions of pounds in secretive offshore havens, sparking an unprecedented global tax evasion investigation. George Osborne, the chancellor, warned the alleged tax evaders, and a further 200 accountants and advisers accused of helping them cheat the taxman: ‘The message is simple: if you evade tax, we're coming after you’ (Guardian, 9 May). Despite Osborne's threat this is a constant running battle between the government and the owning class's armies of accountants and financial advisers devising new and better methods of evasion.

Support for All (2017)

From the April 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

A look at how capitalism treats people with disabilities.

There are various forms of disability, and plenty of room for arguments about definition. Under the Equality Act of 2010, an impairment has to be long-term (twelve months or more) and ‘substantial’ (so not trivial). The Act lays down certain ‘rights’ covering areas such as education and employment. It is all very well saying that ‘As a disabled person, you have rights to protect you from discrimination’ (gov.uk), but rights under capitalism mean very little and it is the reality of people’s situations that matters.

There are two basic approaches to characterising disability. The standard medical model sees it as something intrinsic to an individual’s condition, while the alternative social model ‘identifies systemic barriers, negative attitudes and exclusion by society (purposely or inadvertently) that mean society is the main contributory factor in disabling people’ (Wikipedia). Under the social model, an individual’s condition only leads to them being disabled under certain societally-determined circumstances, a claim which should be borne in mind in reading what follows.

There is no doubt that, in practice, people with disabilities encounter all sorts of problems and difficulties, from accommodation to work and travel. A Guardian article (8 January) gave a number of examples relating to people in their twenties and thirties. For instance, two brothers with Duchenne muscular dystrophy live with their parents and younger sisters. Under pressure from a charity, the local council is paying for personal assistants for them, but this arrangement is shared between them both, making it very difficult for them to live separate lives. One of them would like to go to university, but cannot do so, as the financial situation means his brother would have to go with him. Another woman has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and autism, and was housed for a while in a cold and damp fifth-floor flat, where the lift hardly ever worked.

It is common to hear of those who have a choice between eating and heating, but disabled people face this even more starkly because of high heating costs. According to the charity Scope (13 January), one in four has struggled to pay their energy bills, and many are forced to use expensive pre-payment meters. People turn off their heating even though it is cold, they wear a coat indoors, they wrap themselves in a blanket, they go to bed early, and they can spend up to twice as much on energy as the average household. As the charity’s chief executive has stated, ‘Life costs more if you are disabled. Scope research shows that these costs add up to on average £550 a month, and higher energy bills play a significant part.’ Vicious cuts to benefits and arbitrary decisions to withdraw support make things even worse.

Around one-third of adults with disabilities live in low-income households, which is twice the rate for those without disabilities. This is because they are less likely to be working, with only forty percent of people who are disabled but are not lone parents being in work. Almost half the unemployed are disabled. Three and a half million adults ‘report a longstanding illness or disability which limits their activity’ (poverty.org.uk), while other sources give seven million with a disability in the UK. Such longstanding impairments are more common the less well-off people are, with poverty probably being both caused by and a cause of the disability. Globally, about one person in ten has a disability: they are disproportionately likely to be illiterate and subjected to violence.

Over the years governments have proposed various schemes to increase the number of disabled people who have jobs, but the proportion in paid work has changed very little. Furthermore, having a job does not in itself solve the problems. A blind teacher has written (Guardian, 13 February) of how he enjoyed and was good at his job, even though things like marking and keeping student records took him longer than sighted colleagues. But as the paperwork increased, he was less able to cope and became a support coordinator for disabled students. But even here the emphasis on numbers and speed and ‘efficiency’ made him appear less competent, and the workplace became ‘racked by rumour and rivalry’.

Under the law, employers have to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to ensure that workers with disabilities are not seriously disadvantaged when doing their jobs. This can cover everything from installing ramps or letting people work on the ground floor to providing a special computer keyboard. But, as noted earlier, people with disabilities are less likely to be employed. Further, there is evidence that when in work they are more likely to suffer various kinds of ill-treatment, such as being subject to intimidating behaviour, having their opinions ignored or being treated unfairly.

Internet access is also much harder for people with disabilities. ‘According to the Office for National Statistics, in May 2015, 27% of disabled adults had never used the internet, compared to 11% of non-disabled adults’ (Guardian 29/06/15). Assistive computing can help disabled people use computers, and many do find the internet a great help, such as doing their weekly shop online rather than struggling round a supermarket. But the fact remains that a crucial part of communicating with government or local councils or support organisations is effectively barred to many people with a disability.

People with disabilities are not just workers but also consumers: their spending power is often referred to as the purple pound (compare the grey pound and the pink pound), and is supposedly worth well over two hundred billion pounds. Companies that ignore the needs of disabled customers may miss out on sales: ‘Three quarters of disabled people and their families have left a shop or business because of poor customer service or a lack of disability awareness’ (Business Disability Forum 03/05/16). M&S are one example of a company with a range of clothes for disabled children (not available in their shops, though).

While there have definitely been improvements in recent years, travel can still be a major problem too, especially, though not only, for people who use wheelchairs. The BBC’s Frank Gardner, who was paralysed in the legs when shot while reporting, has commented that he sometimes gets left on a plane for a while when an airbridge is not used (using one costs the airline money). In a well-publicised recent case, a woman was forced to wet herself on a train journey as there was no disabled toilet available.

If we look at things from the standpoint of the social model of disability, it would be reasonable to aim for a world where as few people as possible are disabled, or at least where as few as possible are disadvantaged because of any disability. This would be a world where production is keyed to fitting work to humans rather than the other way round, where those with special needs get the support they require, where goods and services truly meet human need. Despite the best efforts of many well-meaning people, a society based on the profit motive cannot be transformed into such a world.

Paul Bennett

A Woman's Place? (1998)

TV Review from the February 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last May saw the election to Westminster of over a hundred women Members of Parliament for the first time in British parliamentary history, trebling the previous total. The benches of the Commons— particularly the Labour benches, for that is the party the vast majority of the new women members represent—are no longer bedecked by the massed ranks of grey suits. There is now more than just a smattering of colour.

In a great many respects this is, of course, a good thing. That Parliament has not represented a wide variety of groups within society previously has been one of the factors undermining trust in Britain's supposedly democratic Institutions and procedures, a trust which has, in any case, always been somewhat fragile. Now it would seem, the House of Commons (if not the House of Lords) is more representative and therefore more democratic and worthy of respect.

Two programmes on BBC2 in January sought to pursue this theme. The first, Women At Westminster was an interesting meander through how the increased numbers of women in Parliament has affected the place, how they allegedly will affect it in future, and how Parliament In turn has affected the women themselves. Much of this concerned the facilities of the Palace of Westminster, an important enough concern to those affected directly but less so for everybody else.

The more compelling part of the programme was an analysis of how the culture of the Commons chamber itself is changing, for the better. It was alleged that there has been (and certainly will be in future) a decline in the "yah-boo" politics previously encouraged by a male dominated chamber. This has - most positively - been evidenced by new women members confronting the sexism of the older male MPs. Such sexism. at its worst, has involved sustained barracking and sexual intimidation of women MPs making their speeches, and has been typically directed at the massed ranks of new Labour women (though at some female Tory MPs too at times, as for instance recounted by Teresa Gorman in her book The Bastards). Unfortunately a number of the other instances of how women are allegedly changing the nature of the House were examples of wishful thinking or were trivial and superficial - like the claim that new women MPs asserted their independence from the stuffy conventions of the Commons when they clapped Tony Blair on his first appearance at Question Time (as clapping in the House is not allowed). This was a claim that was both entirely superficial - just like New Labour itself - and wrong too (ditto). Many new MPs clapped Betty Boothroyd on her election as the first woman Speaker in 1992 but soon learned not to do it again after a few quiet words from the Whips Office. History is likely to repeat itself.

We Begg to differ

BBC2s other effort on the new women MPs focused on Anne Begg, the Labour member for Aberdeen South who is not only a woman but disabled as well. In fact, Begg is the first MP to be allowed to sit on the floor of the House in her wheelchair. The difficulties engendered by her disability in a place like Westminster was brought across excellently in what was, in effect, a video diary of her first few months in the House. It was a programme which demonstrated that Anne Begg, like many of her new colleagues, is a very able and articulate woman. The tenacity she has shown in becoming the first ever wheelchair-bound MP has been tremendous. It was a programme which illustrated what, by and large, it was meant to illustrate, that having Anne Begg and all the other new women members in the Commons is indeed an advance, just as the election of ethnic minority MPs has been.

What was never mentioned is what all this is essentially a product of. It is a product of the shift away from feudal, archaic ideas of noblesse oblige, class and rank, and towards the meritocracy of capitalism. This is a meritocracy where "positive discrimination" is favoured for people who are disadvantaged "through no fault of their own" - women, ethnic minorities, the disabled, but where huge value judgments are still made about anybody else who may be disadvantaged—like the poor There is no special treatment for them, no closed shortlists to get them into Parliament or special sections in the Labour Party. They were the people who couldn't be bothered to do their exams at school, who don't want a job, or deliberately get pregnant so they can be given more benefits or a bigger council slum.

If you are of the view that there is nothing wrong with the system and that everyone but the "naturally disadvantaged" (or those clearly disadvantaged due to the persistence of outdated pre-capitalist ideas) is only disadvantaged because of their own indolence, then you end up like Anne Begg and most of the other new Labour women MPs. You end up voting to cut benefit from single mothers as nearly every single one of them did. If you can be persuaded of their indolence sufficiently, you could even end up voting to cut benefits to the disabled as well. After all, Anne Begg herself has demonstrated that the disabled can invariably do some work with sufficient "encouragement", so why should they be paid to sit at home lounging about on benefit?

It is armed with such thinking that the new women of New Labour aim to take the House of Commons by storm. Convinced - against all the accumulated evidence - that the promotion of "equal opportunities" within capitalism ensures a level playing-field, they go about their mean-spirited tasks with all the zeal of evangelist preachers. And just like evangelist preachers these are people who, underneath the rhetoric, represent a barely diluted danger to the working class and deserve the unremitting, principled opposition of socialists.

Dave Perrin

Sting in the Tail: Spare Parts For Sale (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spare Parts For Sale

Those who take the view that profit has nothing to do with health must have been startled by the reports of the General Medical Council hearing on the "kidneys-for-sale" allegations.

Four doctors were in the dock accused of serious professional misconduct. They were charged with buying kidneys from four Turkish donors for use in transplant operations.

The defence produced Geoffrey Alderman, Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at Holloway and Bedford College. University of London, who told the hearing: "I think it should be open to living donors to give or sell their kidneys."

The report in The Independent (18 January) stated:

  He claimed the decision to give a kidney would always be an altruistic one even if money was received. "No money could compensate for the loss of a kidney".
  Nor should arguments about exploiting the poor prevent the sale of kidneys, he said. "In a liberal democracy there are bound to be inequalities. This is the way of the world".

The professor's “liberal democracy" is of course really capitalism. Inside capitalism everything is for sale. We leave the reader to judge the "altruistic" nature of poverty-stricken desperate workers selling vital organs, and the "inequalities" that let people die because they are too poor to buy a life saving transplant.

As far as capitalism is concerned "this is the way of the world". As far as socialists are concerned it is time we got rid of the whole rotten system.

Caring Capitalism

From time to time we hear from the government that they care about the plight of the poor, the ill and the handicapped.

They point to such things as attendance allowance for those who look after terminally ill people.

A report in The Independent of 23 January 1990 illustrates what this "caring" amounts to in practice.

  But Community doctors at University College and Middlesex School of Medicine argue that many ill people die before their carers receive the allowance because of a six month qualifying period.
  Dr. Irene Higginson and colleagues discovered from records of nearly 500 cancer patients who were sufficiently disabled for their carers to be able to claim, that 92.8 per cent died within three months and 98.8 per cent within six.

Some "caring" - some system!

After Dinner Waffle

The Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd recently visited East Berlin. After a very good dinner he gave his host the East German Foreign Secretary the benefit of his views on free elections.

It was all very impressive stuff - dealing as it did with fair access to the media for all political parties. It must have been a very good dinner indeed for according to The Independent (23 January) he said:

  For in order to hold legitimate and successful free elections it Is not enough to assert a principle or even to fix a date. There have to be rules of fair and open administration of elections.
  There has to be equity in the opportunities open to the political parties. There has to be fair access to press, radio and television.

We applaud Mr. Hurd's sentiments, but we fear it was just another of those empty after dinner speeches much loved by politicians.

He surely doesn’t mean that in Britain at the next election the Socialist Party will have equity of access to the press, radio and TV.

This Gun for Hire

The fall of the dictatorships in Eastern Europe has not been greeted by universal joy. One group who are less than thrilled are the former spies and secret police who now face unemployment.

A number of Middle East regimes have started recruiting these security experts, thrown on the scrapheap by recent events. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Israel are now recruiting this pool of spooks, spies and thugs.

The Saudi intelligence chief, Turki Bin-Faisai is reported as having a 3 million dollar budget to start hiring secret agents, it says a lot for the "freedom and democracy" so beloved by the media, that every government in the world has a secret police.

Big Burger Business

27,000 people applied for a job in the latest McDonald's fast food restaurant according to Time magazine (February 5).

The American culinary empire - which some say has more to do with gastro-enteritis than gastronomy - already stretches from Seattle to Singapore. The newest offering, besides being the largest in the company's 11,300 chain, is also the first of 20 planned outlets in a $50 million deal that took 14 years of negotiation and which will see Big Mac boldly going where no burger has gone before.

Meanwhile, the lucky 605 youngsters chosen for exploitation at wages of S2.40 an hour are busy learning how to say "have a nice day" with the appropriate ingratiating smile. They can also look forward to dressing up in silly hats and scurrying around at top speed. After all, fast food demands staff who're fast on their feet.

That should be no problem for the new starts according to George Cohon, President of the Canadian subsidiary of McDonald's.

"These kids win a lot of medals in the Olympics," he says. "We can train them to work in McDonald's"

So where is this new 700 seat restaurant? It's in Pushkin Square, Moscow, just a few streets from the Kremlin.

Is there anyone out there who still thinks capitalism isn't a world wide system?


Only Human

If you ever watch "The Money Programme" or "Business Daily" on TV you will see some of society's great men being interviewed.

They are industrialists, bankers and financiers. How assured and articulate they are. and how they seem to have all the answers to every question. Here, surely, are brilliant men whom workers should admire and regard with awe.

But are they really so brilliant? Many of them who were lionised only yesterday don’t look so clever now. For example Ernest Saunders, ex-chairman of Guinness, is in disgrace and awaiting trial on serious charges. Then there's Alan Bond, the Aussie who could do no wrong but whose vast financial empire now lies in ruins. And what about all those so-shrewd bankers who threw away billions by lending to countries the rest of us wouldn't have trusted with a fiver?

Now we learn that Ferranti was taken for £215 million by a con-man who sold them a dodgy American company. What does this make Ferranti’s chairman and board?

So all of these men are clearly as fallible as anyone else and probably owe their exalted status to a combination of ability, luck, having the right connections and, in many cases, not having been caught yet.

Scorpion.