Disabled activists and allies used negotiation and peaceful direct action to ensure that hundreds of copies of a book about decades of Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) “bureaucratic violence” will reach MPs this week.

Their action ensured that every MP will receive a copy of The Department, which details how DWP’s actions eventually led to the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of disabled people in the post-2010 austerity years.

The project was crowdfunded by nearly 350 supporters, who raised almost £7,300.

After meeting outside DWP’s Caxton House offices on Monday, activists – including relatives of two of the disabled benefit claimants who died – carried all 650 copies across Westminster to Portcullis House, where many MPs and the House of Commons Post Office are based.

Although they had been assured weeks in advance – both by the Post Office and Commons security – that they would be allowed to bring in the copies through the security scanners at Portcullis House, managers refused to allow them to bring in the sealed envelopes, each addressed to an individual MP.

In protest, activists – led by Disabled People Against Cuts and Black Triangle – used the books to block the public entrance to the building for more than an hour.

After negotiations with security and police, House of Commons managers eventually agreed to collect all 650 copies – without charge – and take them to be scanned by their outsourced security contractors, before delivering them to MPs.

Among those who supported the event were Gill Thompson – whose brother David Clapson died in July 2013, three weeks after having his jobseeker’s allowance sanctioned – and her husband Mike.

She said the crowdfunding and action had been “quite an achievement”.

She also said: “We have had our obstacles, but we got there in the end.

“That book has given me David back, it’s put him in a human light and given him back his dignity that [DWP] took away from him.”

Another supporting the action was Joy Dove, whose daughter Jodey Whiting took her own life in February 2017, 15 days after she had her out-of-work disability benefits wrongly stopped for missing a work capability assessment.

She said: “These MPs need to see the stories in the book, how each and every family has suffered the life-changing loss of a loved one.

“There needs to be change now there’s a new Labour government.”

She said she was encouraged that her new Labour MP, Chris McDonald, asked to meet her outside Portcullis House, and supported her campaign for justice.

Jodey’s daughter Emma also travelled to London to support her at the action.

She told Disability News Service (DNS) afterwards: “It massively opened my eyes speaking to different people who have also lost their family members.

“I feel like the MPs should read the book as it’s not just my mam’s story.

“There are there so many families in the book and over a decade of evidence is not something to be ignored.

“It was an amazing day, and it made me want to join another and fight more with my amazing nana Joy.”

Among disabled activists who helped take copies of the book – written by DNS editor John Pring – to Portcullis House were actors Cherylee Houston and Lisa Hammond.

Asked why it was important for MPs to read the book, Hammond said: “How do you ever learn anything if you don’t learn from what’s happened before?

“The DWP has been a disaster and absolutely devastating. If the MPs don’t know what has happened historically, how can they work to change what is about to come?”

She said she had enjoyed being part of the protest with other members of her disabled community.

She said it was “important to turn up and have peaceful protests” as “so many of us cannot fight financially, physically or [because of their] mental health”.

Houston, who travelled from Manchester to attend the event, said she was “very glad” to be helping to defend her community by taking part in the protest.

She said delivering the book to MPs was important “so they can see the lived experience of disabled people, what benefits mean to people and what benefit cuts mean to people and what that is in true life experiences”.

She said: “There are so many I know who are on their knees already. How the hell can you put any more pressure on them?”

Asked for her message to the Labour MPs who might now be able to influence the government’s future social security reforms, Houston said: “Talk to us and find out what you need to reinstate. Please don’t cut anything else.”

Another disabled activist who helped take the books to Portcullis House was Carole Vincent, who for 10 years has been part of a group of volunteers who help claimants fill in their benefit forms.

She said: “Delivering the books is essential because there has been an absolute failure by the previous governments to acknowledge that we have a broken system.

“It’s essential reading for them because people have died because the system doesn’t work.

“They need to fix it properly.”

Another disabled activist, Jenny, said it was important that MPs read the book.

She added: “I wanted to be here as part of the fightback – anything that will get the issue out to the public.”

The project has been led by disabled activists, including Black Triangle Campaign and the UK Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations’ Coalition, and supported by disabled people’s organisations, allies and families of those who have lost their lives, as well as Pluto Press, which has published The Department.

Among the organisations supporting the campaign are Disabled People Against Cuts, Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, Inclusion London, Disability Rights UK, Recovery in the Bin and the radical working-class media organisation The Canary.

John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle Campaign, whose idea it was to launch the crowdfunder, said: “The Department provides a casebook of how not to run a social security system.

“The current disability benefit assessment system is making people even sicker.

“Pushing disabled people into work that medical experts say we cannot do won’t address labour shortages and more disability benefit cuts, as the government has planned, are not a common-sense strategy for ‘fixing the foundations’.

“Long term-costs to the economy increase exponentially by failing to provide a stitch in time and save lives.

“There are alternative fiscal policies that could be adopted which won’t lead to more DWP-created avoidable harm and death.

“Instead, Deaf and disabled people and our organisations call upon the government to sit down with us to co-produce a safe and efficient disability benefit system that provides a genuine safety net to those who need it.”

Author and activist Ellen Clifford, from the UK Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations’ Coalition, who has helped lead the project, said: “The success of the crowdfunder shows how important it is to people outside the Westminster bubble that our elected politicians finally address the grave injustice of DWP attacks on Deaf and disabled people.

“Across the UK, there is growing concern about the impact of yet more cuts.

“It is apparent that lessons from the past are being deliberately ignored.”

Veruschka Selbach, managing director of Pluto Press, said: “We are very proud to be publishing John’s book.

“It is an exceptional work of investigative journalism that is both heart-breaking and shocking.

“We are also extremely honoured to be participating in this action to ensure that all MPs get a copy of the book. These stories can’t be ignored any longer.”

In a covering letter to MPs sent with the books, McArdle and Clifford say: “It is certain that the new government will be announcing reforms to personal independence payment, benefit sanctions, universal credit and the work capability assessment in the coming months.

“All these areas of DWP policy have been strongly linked to tragic deaths of claimants over the last 15 years, and we believe this will continue to happen if the government does not take the necessary steps to build a new, safer culture within DWP.

“All we ask is that you read this book before deciding your position.”The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, by DNS editor John Pring, was published by Pluto Press last month

Credit for this article goes to ‘The Disability News Service’ for their outstanding journalism. More articles like this can be found at https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/contact-dns1/