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Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People
In austerity Britain, disabled people have become the favourite target. From social care to the benefits system, politicians and media alike have made the case Britain's 12 million disabled people are a drain on the public purse. In Crippled, leading commentator Frances Ryan exposes the disturbing reality, telling the story of those most affected by this devastating regime. This includes a paralyzed man forced to crawl down the stairs because the council wouldn't provide accessible housing; the malnourished woman sleeping in her wheelchair; and the young girl with bipolar forced to turn to sex work to survive. Through these personal stories, Ryan charts how in recent years the public attitude towards disabled people has transformed from compassion to contempt: from society's `most vulnerable' to benefit cheats. Crippled is a damning indictment of a safety net gone wrong, and a passionate demand for an end to austerity measures hitting those most in need.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 27, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 110 reviews
April 27, 2019
As a disabled person I have never felt that a book could convey the way I am forced to lived. Yet Dr Ryan has given my community a voice and boy is it loud.
This fact based book of testimony and savage treatment is hard to read but you will be thankful you did.
This fact based book of testimony and savage treatment is hard to read but you will be thankful you did.
February 12, 2022
rtc in vlog
August 29, 2019
In the decade since a Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition government came to power in the UK in 2010, austerity policies will have cut social security benefits by £35 billion, while tax cuts will cost the UK Treasury some £47 billion per year. [p176] It goes without saying that this regressive and economically illiterate policy has never achieved its stated objectives - public debt has increased and the government’s budget is not likely to balance any time soon - but it is only very recently that polls show the public seriously questioning the justifications given for austerity. Polls also show consistently high public support for the extent to which austerity policies have targeted the disabled, which this book is intended to challenge.
“Disabled people and their social security not only became fair game in the vilification of benefit claimants – they became the prime target. Newspapers and television shows hunted examples of the disabled ‘milking the state’. Politicians talked openly of the ‘bloated disability benefits bill’. [Page 33]
” Overall, the 2010 coalition set in motion £28 billion worth of cuts to disabled people’s income, including the introduction of the bedroom tax, cuts to council tax support, the roll-out of the out-of-work sickness benefit ESA, and the tightening of benefit sanction rules.” [Page 27]
“The Centre for Welfare Reform calculated in 2013 that disabled people would endure nine times the burden of cuts compared to the average citizen, with people with the most severe disabilities being hit a staggering nineteen times harder.” [Page 11]
” As then disability minister Esther McVey put it in 2013 when defending sanctions, ‘What does a teacher do in a school? A teacher would tell you off, or give you lines and detentions, or whatever it is, but at the same time they have your best interest at heart.’ ... When the state deems it a success to stop the money a disabled person needs to eat, it hasn’t only abandoned its duty of care but morphed into an agent actively causing harm.” [page 47]
Ryan is thus producing her book in a deeply hostile environment. The government, with media support and encouragement, has secured public acceptance of a policy towards disabled people that is actively and systematically harming them. To implement these obscene policies, government ministers like Esther McVey and Ian Duncan Smith have either directly lied in Parliament or presented information in flagrantly dishonest ways, while demonstrating a level of incompetence in public administration that is breathtaking. Far from gaining sympathy, the disabled have been turned into hate figures, and every claim in defence of the disabled is subject to hostile scrutiny by extreme sceptics who are not usually arguing in good faith.
In the face of a wall of indifference and misinformation, it is a big challenge to consolidate so much highly emotive material into a compact and effective account while keeping the tone and the arguments calm and reasoned. Ryan proceeds by examining the impact on disabled people of the so called austerity policies in a range of separate but connected aspects of public policy. For each topic, she sets out key research findings from respected and authoritative sources. The book thus contains a plethora of solid evidence, but it never adopts an academic writing style and the factual material is always presented in a brief, matter of fact manner.
Alongside this she also describes the personal experiences of individuals directly affected by each policy, using a very anecdotal, journalistic style of writing which makes it very accessible, bringing home the true severity of problems that otherwise might lose their impact through being abstract and remote, connecting the evidence with the justifiable emotional response. As Stalin observed, a million people is a statistic, only an individual is a tragedy.
Ryan provides extensive evidence of the poverty afflicting disabled people in the UK.
Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) shows that 4 million disabled adults are now living below the breadline in 2018. To get a picture of the scale of this, that number accounts for over a third of all adults in poverty in the country. [Page 20]
A groundbreaking study by Heriot-Watt University for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2018 found that 1.5 million people in Britain are so far below the poverty line that they are officially destitute. This means that their weekly income is not enough to buy even basic essentials... Strikingly, a vast chunk of those designated destitute are disabled: Heriot-Watt University found that almost 650,000 people with physical or mental health problems in the UK are experiencing destitution.”[p26]
In the single biggest nationwide study on food banks to date, the University of Oxford in partnership with the Trussell Trust found in 2017 that the majority of people going to food banks are hit by disability or illness. [p40]
Under the heading of work, she demonstrates the incompetence and dismal failure of the government’s methods for driving the disabled into work, the brutality of the punishments for those incapable of work under the conditions given, the depressing withdrawal and underfunding of previously successful schemes to support disabled workers, the unfair and often exploitative conditions under which the disabled have to work and the ways access to legal remedies have been blocked.
Researchers from the University of Liverpool in 2015 found that the new ‘fit-for-work’ tests could be linked to 590 extra suicides. [p52]
By 2017, with a new private company, Maximus, having taken Atos’s place, the NAO [National Audit Office] calculated that the government was actually spending more money assessing whether people are ‘fit to work’ than it is saving in reductions to the benefits bill. [p54]
One in two disabled people have experienced bullying or harassment at work because of their disabilities, according to research by the charity Scope in 2017. The same study found that this discrimination has reached such heights that over half of workers with a disability feel at risk of losing their job. [p64]... Unsurprisingly, since fees were introduced, disability discrimination claims have fallen rapidly: MoJ [Ministry of Justice] figures show that 63 per cent fewer claims were accepted by the employment tribunals between the first quarter of 2013–14 (pre-fees) and the first quarter of 2014–15 (post-fees). [p68]
In 2014, a key Conservative ‘welfare’ minister, Lord Freud, was recorded as stating that some disabled people are ‘not worth the full wage’. They could, he suggested, be paid as little as two pounds an hour. In 2018, Chancellor Philip Hammond linked the low productivity of the economy with the increased number of disabled people in the workforce... The chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, Labour MP Frank Field, published an essay in September 2017 recommending paying disabled people less than the minimum wage as a way of reducing disability unemployment. [p61]
In a chapter about independent living, Ryan discusses the historical achievement of taking disabled people out of crushingly restrictive and often abusive institutional care, to live independent lives in the community, often including full or part time employment, with the assistance of quite modest forms of support. These supports have been slashed, trapping disabled people in their homes, depriving them of the resources needed to live with dignity and increasingly threatening to remove them into residential care homes designed for quite different ends (typically, care homes for the elderly).
The housing conditions of disabled people are horrendously bad. According to research by the London School of Economics (LSE) for the charity Papworth Trust in 2016, there are 1.8 million disabled people struggling to find accessible housing. Leonard Cheshire estimates that as many as one in six disabled adults and half of all disabled children live in housing that is not suitable for their needs... a staggering 93 per cent of housing stock is inaccessible to disabled people [p101] Once housing is built, alterations are expensive. Councils are given a duty to undertake alterations costing up to £30,000, but are largely failing to meet their duties, not least because budgets have been slashed despite rising demand. Many of these problems are avoidable if the government was prepared to implement building regulations setting a “Lifetime Homes Standard,” which has been available for decades and estimated to add as little as £500 to the cost of an average house. Instead, the profits of builders and developers have taken priority.
Housing conditions have become worse, and often intolerable, with the loss of social housing stock and its substitution with privately rented accommodation offering insecure tenancies and weak if any regulatory protection. In 2018, research by the Housing & Finance Institute showed that 6 million more people are living in short-term rented housing than fifteen years ago. [p106]... Many private landlords outright refuse to take tenants if they pay their rent with social security; a form of discrimination that’s akin to putting a ‘No Disabled, No Poor’ sign in the window... To make matters worse, private sector landlords are notoriously reluctant to permit even small-scale adaptations to make a home more accessible. [p107]
Ryan observes that women are more likely to be disabled than men and disabled women face multiple layers of discrimination.
The union ASLEF suggests that on-street prostitution increased by 60 per cent between 2010 and 2017, which has in particular been linked to an increase in women having their benefits sanctioned. [p130]... Sheffield Working Women’s Opportunities Project in 2016 warned that austerity measures, including benefit rejections and sanctions, were behind an estimated 400 per cent rise in women using their service who had entered prostitution [p131].
...the charity SafeLives estimating half a million disabled women aged sixteen to sixty-four in the UK are suffering domestic abuse. According to research by Women’s Aid, one in four women experience domestic violence in their lifetime. For women with a disability, this figure more than doubles. [p135]
Refuge, which runs forty-two refuges across twenty-three local authorities nationwide, tell me that a third of the women they assisted long-term in 2017–18 had one or more disability. ‘The disabled women we support report physical, sexual, coercive, psychological and economic abuse. We see many cases where the perpetrator is also the carer... [p136]
Public Health England in 2015 found that disabled women, as well as being more likely to be abused, experience domestic abuse for longer periods of time, and more severe and frequent abuse than those without disabilities [p136] ...
Research consistently shows that, as well as enduring higher rates of domestic abuse, disabled women experience more of these barriers to accessing support to escape, anything from the lack of a sign language translator for a Deaf survivor to a staircase as the only entrance for a wheelchair user. Just one in ten domestic violence refuge spaces in the UK is accessible to people with physical disabilities, according to a BBC investigation in 2018. Talk to those on the ground and inaccessibility is often cultural as much as practical. [p138]
... a report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in 2017 found that more than 1,000 women and children have tried to leave their abusers only to be turned away from shelters in the last six months of the year, with other studies finding that many refuges are turning away as much as 60 per cent of their referrals due to lack of space. [p138]
In 2018, the charity Action for Children found that council budgets for early help services designed to prevent families reaching crisis point have shrunk by £743 million in five years – amounting to a cut of more than a quarter. p143]
Research by the children’s commissioner for England in 2016 found four out of five young carers who look after sick, disabled or addicted family members receive no support from local authorities. The commissioner’s survey of English local authorities found there were 160 carers aged under five, some of whom had been formally assessed and supported as carers. [p153]
between 2012 and 2017 Britain’s child safety net was repeatedly cut, from freezing child benefit to introducing the ‘two-child-limit’ child tax credits.[p155]
The roll-out of Universal Credit alone will see a £175 million cut to child disability payments, with thousands of families with disabled children set to lose £1,750 a year under the new system [p156]
Research by the Disabled Children’s Partnership, a coalition of sixty charities and organizations, in 2018 found a £1.5 billion funding gap for services needed by disabled children, resulting in tens of thousands missing out on help that might enable them to ‘eat, talk, leave the house, have fun and attend school’. Only a few months later, more than 120 national organizations, including children’s charities, disability groups and teaching unions, joined forces to warn the government that services for children and young people were ‘at breaking point’, including healthcare, social services and education for disabled children. [p158]
...just 253,000 of the country’s 1.2 million SEND [Special Educational Needs] pupils have care plans or special educational needs statements. According to the regulator, Ofsted, two thousand children with the greatest needs who do have care plans were still awaiting provision in 2018 – three times more than in 2010. [p168]
Over the course of a decade, people with disabilities, chronic illness and mental health problems have been routinely driven into destitution, pushed from the workplace and stripped of the right to live in their own homes. The gains that generations of disabled campaigners fought for have been rapidly rolled back, and the promise that the Great British welfare state would always protect disabled people shown to be little more than a fantasy. [p178]
The suicide of thirty-three-year-old mother Jane Kavanagh reported in the Daily Mirror in October 2018 was one case that gained much attention on social media at the time. Jane was sole carer to her fifteen-year-old daughter, who needed 24/7 care due to a severe degenerative condition, but had no respite breaks, no social care, not even adaptations to her inaccessible house for her daughter’s wheelchair.[p163]
“Disabled people and their social security not only became fair game in the vilification of benefit claimants – they became the prime target. Newspapers and television shows hunted examples of the disabled ‘milking the state’. Politicians talked openly of the ‘bloated disability benefits bill’. [Page 33]
” Overall, the 2010 coalition set in motion £28 billion worth of cuts to disabled people’s income, including the introduction of the bedroom tax, cuts to council tax support, the roll-out of the out-of-work sickness benefit ESA, and the tightening of benefit sanction rules.” [Page 27]
“The Centre for Welfare Reform calculated in 2013 that disabled people would endure nine times the burden of cuts compared to the average citizen, with people with the most severe disabilities being hit a staggering nineteen times harder.” [Page 11]
” As then disability minister Esther McVey put it in 2013 when defending sanctions, ‘What does a teacher do in a school? A teacher would tell you off, or give you lines and detentions, or whatever it is, but at the same time they have your best interest at heart.’ ... When the state deems it a success to stop the money a disabled person needs to eat, it hasn’t only abandoned its duty of care but morphed into an agent actively causing harm.” [page 47]
Ryan is thus producing her book in a deeply hostile environment. The government, with media support and encouragement, has secured public acceptance of a policy towards disabled people that is actively and systematically harming them. To implement these obscene policies, government ministers like Esther McVey and Ian Duncan Smith have either directly lied in Parliament or presented information in flagrantly dishonest ways, while demonstrating a level of incompetence in public administration that is breathtaking. Far from gaining sympathy, the disabled have been turned into hate figures, and every claim in defence of the disabled is subject to hostile scrutiny by extreme sceptics who are not usually arguing in good faith.
In the face of a wall of indifference and misinformation, it is a big challenge to consolidate so much highly emotive material into a compact and effective account while keeping the tone and the arguments calm and reasoned. Ryan proceeds by examining the impact on disabled people of the so called austerity policies in a range of separate but connected aspects of public policy. For each topic, she sets out key research findings from respected and authoritative sources. The book thus contains a plethora of solid evidence, but it never adopts an academic writing style and the factual material is always presented in a brief, matter of fact manner.
Alongside this she also describes the personal experiences of individuals directly affected by each policy, using a very anecdotal, journalistic style of writing which makes it very accessible, bringing home the true severity of problems that otherwise might lose their impact through being abstract and remote, connecting the evidence with the justifiable emotional response. As Stalin observed, a million people is a statistic, only an individual is a tragedy.
Ryan provides extensive evidence of the poverty afflicting disabled people in the UK.
Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) shows that 4 million disabled adults are now living below the breadline in 2018. To get a picture of the scale of this, that number accounts for over a third of all adults in poverty in the country. [Page 20]
A groundbreaking study by Heriot-Watt University for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2018 found that 1.5 million people in Britain are so far below the poverty line that they are officially destitute. This means that their weekly income is not enough to buy even basic essentials... Strikingly, a vast chunk of those designated destitute are disabled: Heriot-Watt University found that almost 650,000 people with physical or mental health problems in the UK are experiencing destitution.”[p26]
In the single biggest nationwide study on food banks to date, the University of Oxford in partnership with the Trussell Trust found in 2017 that the majority of people going to food banks are hit by disability or illness. [p40]
Under the heading of work, she demonstrates the incompetence and dismal failure of the government’s methods for driving the disabled into work, the brutality of the punishments for those incapable of work under the conditions given, the depressing withdrawal and underfunding of previously successful schemes to support disabled workers, the unfair and often exploitative conditions under which the disabled have to work and the ways access to legal remedies have been blocked.
Researchers from the University of Liverpool in 2015 found that the new ‘fit-for-work’ tests could be linked to 590 extra suicides. [p52]
By 2017, with a new private company, Maximus, having taken Atos’s place, the NAO [National Audit Office] calculated that the government was actually spending more money assessing whether people are ‘fit to work’ than it is saving in reductions to the benefits bill. [p54]
One in two disabled people have experienced bullying or harassment at work because of their disabilities, according to research by the charity Scope in 2017. The same study found that this discrimination has reached such heights that over half of workers with a disability feel at risk of losing their job. [p64]... Unsurprisingly, since fees were introduced, disability discrimination claims have fallen rapidly: MoJ [Ministry of Justice] figures show that 63 per cent fewer claims were accepted by the employment tribunals between the first quarter of 2013–14 (pre-fees) and the first quarter of 2014–15 (post-fees). [p68]
In 2014, a key Conservative ‘welfare’ minister, Lord Freud, was recorded as stating that some disabled people are ‘not worth the full wage’. They could, he suggested, be paid as little as two pounds an hour. In 2018, Chancellor Philip Hammond linked the low productivity of the economy with the increased number of disabled people in the workforce... The chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, Labour MP Frank Field, published an essay in September 2017 recommending paying disabled people less than the minimum wage as a way of reducing disability unemployment. [p61]
In a chapter about independent living, Ryan discusses the historical achievement of taking disabled people out of crushingly restrictive and often abusive institutional care, to live independent lives in the community, often including full or part time employment, with the assistance of quite modest forms of support. These supports have been slashed, trapping disabled people in their homes, depriving them of the resources needed to live with dignity and increasingly threatening to remove them into residential care homes designed for quite different ends (typically, care homes for the elderly).
The housing conditions of disabled people are horrendously bad. According to research by the London School of Economics (LSE) for the charity Papworth Trust in 2016, there are 1.8 million disabled people struggling to find accessible housing. Leonard Cheshire estimates that as many as one in six disabled adults and half of all disabled children live in housing that is not suitable for their needs... a staggering 93 per cent of housing stock is inaccessible to disabled people [p101] Once housing is built, alterations are expensive. Councils are given a duty to undertake alterations costing up to £30,000, but are largely failing to meet their duties, not least because budgets have been slashed despite rising demand. Many of these problems are avoidable if the government was prepared to implement building regulations setting a “Lifetime Homes Standard,” which has been available for decades and estimated to add as little as £500 to the cost of an average house. Instead, the profits of builders and developers have taken priority.
Housing conditions have become worse, and often intolerable, with the loss of social housing stock and its substitution with privately rented accommodation offering insecure tenancies and weak if any regulatory protection. In 2018, research by the Housing & Finance Institute showed that 6 million more people are living in short-term rented housing than fifteen years ago. [p106]... Many private landlords outright refuse to take tenants if they pay their rent with social security; a form of discrimination that’s akin to putting a ‘No Disabled, No Poor’ sign in the window... To make matters worse, private sector landlords are notoriously reluctant to permit even small-scale adaptations to make a home more accessible. [p107]
Ryan observes that women are more likely to be disabled than men and disabled women face multiple layers of discrimination.
The union ASLEF suggests that on-street prostitution increased by 60 per cent between 2010 and 2017, which has in particular been linked to an increase in women having their benefits sanctioned. [p130]... Sheffield Working Women’s Opportunities Project in 2016 warned that austerity measures, including benefit rejections and sanctions, were behind an estimated 400 per cent rise in women using their service who had entered prostitution [p131].
...the charity SafeLives estimating half a million disabled women aged sixteen to sixty-four in the UK are suffering domestic abuse. According to research by Women’s Aid, one in four women experience domestic violence in their lifetime. For women with a disability, this figure more than doubles. [p135]
Refuge, which runs forty-two refuges across twenty-three local authorities nationwide, tell me that a third of the women they assisted long-term in 2017–18 had one or more disability. ‘The disabled women we support report physical, sexual, coercive, psychological and economic abuse. We see many cases where the perpetrator is also the carer... [p136]
Public Health England in 2015 found that disabled women, as well as being more likely to be abused, experience domestic abuse for longer periods of time, and more severe and frequent abuse than those without disabilities [p136] ...
Research consistently shows that, as well as enduring higher rates of domestic abuse, disabled women experience more of these barriers to accessing support to escape, anything from the lack of a sign language translator for a Deaf survivor to a staircase as the only entrance for a wheelchair user. Just one in ten domestic violence refuge spaces in the UK is accessible to people with physical disabilities, according to a BBC investigation in 2018. Talk to those on the ground and inaccessibility is often cultural as much as practical. [p138]
... a report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in 2017 found that more than 1,000 women and children have tried to leave their abusers only to be turned away from shelters in the last six months of the year, with other studies finding that many refuges are turning away as much as 60 per cent of their referrals due to lack of space. [p138]
In 2018, the charity Action for Children found that council budgets for early help services designed to prevent families reaching crisis point have shrunk by £743 million in five years – amounting to a cut of more than a quarter. p143]
Research by the children’s commissioner for England in 2016 found four out of five young carers who look after sick, disabled or addicted family members receive no support from local authorities. The commissioner’s survey of English local authorities found there were 160 carers aged under five, some of whom had been formally assessed and supported as carers. [p153]
between 2012 and 2017 Britain’s child safety net was repeatedly cut, from freezing child benefit to introducing the ‘two-child-limit’ child tax credits.[p155]
The roll-out of Universal Credit alone will see a £175 million cut to child disability payments, with thousands of families with disabled children set to lose £1,750 a year under the new system [p156]
Research by the Disabled Children’s Partnership, a coalition of sixty charities and organizations, in 2018 found a £1.5 billion funding gap for services needed by disabled children, resulting in tens of thousands missing out on help that might enable them to ‘eat, talk, leave the house, have fun and attend school’. Only a few months later, more than 120 national organizations, including children’s charities, disability groups and teaching unions, joined forces to warn the government that services for children and young people were ‘at breaking point’, including healthcare, social services and education for disabled children. [p158]
...just 253,000 of the country’s 1.2 million SEND [Special Educational Needs] pupils have care plans or special educational needs statements. According to the regulator, Ofsted, two thousand children with the greatest needs who do have care plans were still awaiting provision in 2018 – three times more than in 2010. [p168]
Over the course of a decade, people with disabilities, chronic illness and mental health problems have been routinely driven into destitution, pushed from the workplace and stripped of the right to live in their own homes. The gains that generations of disabled campaigners fought for have been rapidly rolled back, and the promise that the Great British welfare state would always protect disabled people shown to be little more than a fantasy. [p178]
The suicide of thirty-three-year-old mother Jane Kavanagh reported in the Daily Mirror in October 2018 was one case that gained much attention on social media at the time. Jane was sole carer to her fifteen-year-old daughter, who needed 24/7 care due to a severe degenerative condition, but had no respite breaks, no social care, not even adaptations to her inaccessible house for her daughter’s wheelchair.[p163]
January 1, 2020
A necessary read for everyone in Britain and it’s a shame that people who voted Tory didn’t (wouldn’t) read it prior to the election. It’s a forensic analysis of the purposeful attacks on people with disabilities in the UK as a way to ‘other’ them and justify the austerity policies of this outgoing decade.
A huge amount of data and storytelling, I wished the editors had helped structure the book in a way that created more of a potential outcome or series of answers to the crisis.
Also missing were more interviews and perspective of those in opposition power, policy and politics, and in the media, and the academics working in this field, to help lay out alternative paths. At times the sheer volume of crisis stories and statistics is overwhelming and while essential it left the book ‘top heavy’ and without the space for a more powerful analysis of what we can do about the situation.
Ryan is a superb journalist and her work here is vital and deserves plaudits and a wide audience.
A critically important book for everyone in Britain to read about how we treat each other, and evidence/armour for the battles that are to come.
A huge amount of data and storytelling, I wished the editors had helped structure the book in a way that created more of a potential outcome or series of answers to the crisis.
Also missing were more interviews and perspective of those in opposition power, policy and politics, and in the media, and the academics working in this field, to help lay out alternative paths. At times the sheer volume of crisis stories and statistics is overwhelming and while essential it left the book ‘top heavy’ and without the space for a more powerful analysis of what we can do about the situation.
Ryan is a superb journalist and her work here is vital and deserves plaudits and a wide audience.
A critically important book for everyone in Britain to read about how we treat each other, and evidence/armour for the battles that are to come.
July 14, 2021
This took me much longer than I expected to finish because it affected me so much. As a disabled person living in the UK (currently in a household where 2 of us are disabled, and in a relationship with another neurodiverse person) things are bleak, but this book showed me that, even at that, I'm still doing not too badly. This book had me crying of frustration, anger and sadness at several times, and my hatred for the Tory party only grew. Though the book does offer a small shred of hope at the end, I was left feeling like we're stuck in this increasingly deep hole that we're never going to get out of. It also left me even more passionate about the cause for Scottish independence.
February 20, 2021
I felt very represented by this book which was quite an unusual feeling. When I talk to people about what it’s like to need care, accessibility and the process of going through PIP etc they tend to be quite shocked. The thing is they shouldn’t be, as as this book shows the way disabled people are treated across Britain is appalling. I found myself nodding my head about care cuts, about having to go to bed by 6pm and being stuck there unable to do anything for 14 plus hours as you’re on someone else’s schedule, to talk of care homes and everything else and that’s before even looking at access to buildings, services and the additional costs of being disabled and being criminalised alongside it all. Every politician should have to read this, maybe then we might see some changes in the right direction. Thank you Frances Ryan for writing this!
September 10, 2020
Probably one of the most important books I’ve read this year. Have definitely been forced to confront a lot of ableist privilege that I maybe hadn’t been aware of previously.
An excellent introduction to the topic and something I’d like to read more about in future.
An excellent introduction to the topic and something I’d like to read more about in future.
August 12, 2020
‘Crippled’ examines the tragic situation facing the disabled in the last ten years of cuts to benefits that have taken place. Of course, it is stirring stuff. These things should be read and the ensuing anger should be felt. It places most of it blame on the Coalition and then Conservative government of that period, but it does point out that the earlier Blair Labour government was not without guilt in its treatment of the disabled. That it does all this is admirable. These governments should be blamed. What it doesn’t really cover is the fact that our own guilt in acquiescing to a system that allows Money (personified with a capital M) to make decisions about what we can and what we cant do. What happened to humanity that it can no longer decide that something should be done and go about doing it. A must read , and one that ought to be thought about.
wish-list
June 18, 2019
Crippled: Austerity and the Demonisation of Disabled People by Frances Ryan – review This damning insight into the state’s callous treatment of disabled people calls for a new ‘solidarity politics’
February 12, 2022
(Listened) this wasn’t an easy listen as the book delves into the many ways disabled people have suffered the devastating consequences of Tory cuts and calculated demonisation. Through facts, Ryan articulates how ableist austerity has actually cost more money overall than if careful/considered support was available, and also covers the damaging effects of the lack of disabled representation within welfare decision making and across popular culture etc. I found the whole conclusion very powerful.
March 3, 2021
upsetting!
Ryan does a really good job of both showing the suffering of disabled lives under austerity without reducing it to anything inherent or tragic in disability itself: at each step she shows the structural character of material deprivation under austerity and the surreal necropolitical cruelty of it.
The ironic title "Crippled" begs the question: who is doing the "crippling"? (hint, its the Tories and also labour fuck you all)
One star however removed for the Guardian op ed writing style !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hate it here !
Ryan does a really good job of both showing the suffering of disabled lives under austerity without reducing it to anything inherent or tragic in disability itself: at each step she shows the structural character of material deprivation under austerity and the surreal necropolitical cruelty of it.
The ironic title "Crippled" begs the question: who is doing the "crippling"? (hint, its the Tories and also labour fuck you all)
One star however removed for the Guardian op ed writing style !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I hate it here !
July 29, 2021
The book begins strongly, with many well-written vignettes of disabled people impacted by the absurdity of austerity. But things really went off the rails for me in Chapter 5, the chapter about women. That chapter presents and reinforces harmful gender binaries. The next chapter on children focuses exclusively on parents, effectively erasing the disabled people whose stories are only told through parents in ways that are at many times troubling.
Throughout the book, The author continually perpetuates a false narrative of history in which “things were okay” for a while and then got worse—which is demonstrably untrue and unhelpful. The author herself seems to even understand this, saying in the conclusion, “The kind of history that seems to dominate our culture is too often centered on the concept of a benevolent ruling class bestowing rights upon marginalized groups.” Yet from that keen observation the author somehow only manages a meager call-to-action that is little more than encouraging disabled people to continuing pursuing a “rights model” of disability—a model that relies on hoping the benevolent ruling class will bestow rights upon us. This is perplexing.
The author further advocates for strengthening the welfare state and improving the social safety net, but completely fails to grapple with the fact that such a social safety net is ONLY NECESSARY under capitalism, or how its “strength” comes from resources accumulated through colonization and imperialism.
I, for one, as a disabled person, am tired of fighting for my right to exist. I also do not want my existence to be predicated on the misery and suffering of others. I am fighting for liberation from the capitalism and imperialism that lies at the core of undermining those rights and perpetuating that misery. Ultimately, while offering helpful stories to better understand the horrors of capitalism, the author’s lack of class consciousness prevents this work from providing useful analysis toward the cause of disability liberation. It is a highly disappointing work from such a promising young mind.
Instead, I encourage readers to pick up Marta Russell’s “Capitalism & Disability” or A.J. Withers’ “Disability Politics & Theory,” both of which take time to wrestle with the full historical and dialectical nature of disability, including the impact of class.
Throughout the book, The author continually perpetuates a false narrative of history in which “things were okay” for a while and then got worse—which is demonstrably untrue and unhelpful. The author herself seems to even understand this, saying in the conclusion, “The kind of history that seems to dominate our culture is too often centered on the concept of a benevolent ruling class bestowing rights upon marginalized groups.” Yet from that keen observation the author somehow only manages a meager call-to-action that is little more than encouraging disabled people to continuing pursuing a “rights model” of disability—a model that relies on hoping the benevolent ruling class will bestow rights upon us. This is perplexing.
The author further advocates for strengthening the welfare state and improving the social safety net, but completely fails to grapple with the fact that such a social safety net is ONLY NECESSARY under capitalism, or how its “strength” comes from resources accumulated through colonization and imperialism.
I, for one, as a disabled person, am tired of fighting for my right to exist. I also do not want my existence to be predicated on the misery and suffering of others. I am fighting for liberation from the capitalism and imperialism that lies at the core of undermining those rights and perpetuating that misery. Ultimately, while offering helpful stories to better understand the horrors of capitalism, the author’s lack of class consciousness prevents this work from providing useful analysis toward the cause of disability liberation. It is a highly disappointing work from such a promising young mind.
Instead, I encourage readers to pick up Marta Russell’s “Capitalism & Disability” or A.J. Withers’ “Disability Politics & Theory,” both of which take time to wrestle with the full historical and dialectical nature of disability, including the impact of class.
July 29, 2024
Me ha parecido un libro con un tono bastante airado. Frances Ryan es una periodista, doctora en política y activista británica en favor de las personas con discapacidad. La organización filantrópica Shaw Trust la citó en 2021 como una de las personas discapacitadas más influyentes del Reino Unido. Además, ella misma tiene una discapacidad muscular y debe desplazarse en silla de ruedas.
En el marco de los servicios sociales británicos, la autora relata la historia de personas con discapacidad, enfermedades crónicas o problemas de salud mental a las que no les llega la ayuda social gubernamental debido a los recortes y la austeridad en el gasto social. Básicamente, su enfado se vuelca en las campañas de desprestigio que los gobiernos británicos de los últimos 15 años han desplegado hacia las personas que viven de las ayudas, y que han calado entre la población. Ante la necesidad de recortes en la administración pública, el gobierno no tuvo ningún pudor en recortar de las distintas "paguitas" hacia este colectivo, tales como adaptación de las viviendas a sus necesidades, salario de cuidadores, subvenciones para alimentación especial, etc... de hecho, el libro recoge titulares de importantes periódicos que vuelcan su ira hacia las personas que están aprovechándose de la ciudadanía y viviendo alegremente de las subvenciones. Es un libro que me recordó al famoso Chavs: La demonización de la clase obrera, también británico.
El libro es doloroso, a veces dan ganas de llorar por la descripción sin paños calientes de cómo acaban la mayoría de discapacitados tras retirarles su ayuda económica. Desde luego, aunque no es nuevo para mí, ser discapacitado no es equivalente a que te toque el sueldo Nescafé. Personas que vomitan en la cama, que fallecen solos, que no pueden salir de casa en semanas...
Un libro de odio y de desahogo a favor de los discapacitados. Hay que estar un poco fuerte mentalmente para leerlo.
Como obra literaria, no me ha parecido un manuscrito super elaborado, de ahí mis estrellas. Sin embargo, como mensaje lo comparto totalmente.
En el marco de los servicios sociales británicos, la autora relata la historia de personas con discapacidad, enfermedades crónicas o problemas de salud mental a las que no les llega la ayuda social gubernamental debido a los recortes y la austeridad en el gasto social. Básicamente, su enfado se vuelca en las campañas de desprestigio que los gobiernos británicos de los últimos 15 años han desplegado hacia las personas que viven de las ayudas, y que han calado entre la población. Ante la necesidad de recortes en la administración pública, el gobierno no tuvo ningún pudor en recortar de las distintas "paguitas" hacia este colectivo, tales como adaptación de las viviendas a sus necesidades, salario de cuidadores, subvenciones para alimentación especial, etc... de hecho, el libro recoge titulares de importantes periódicos que vuelcan su ira hacia las personas que están aprovechándose de la ciudadanía y viviendo alegremente de las subvenciones. Es un libro que me recordó al famoso Chavs: La demonización de la clase obrera, también británico.
El libro es doloroso, a veces dan ganas de llorar por la descripción sin paños calientes de cómo acaban la mayoría de discapacitados tras retirarles su ayuda económica. Desde luego, aunque no es nuevo para mí, ser discapacitado no es equivalente a que te toque el sueldo Nescafé. Personas que vomitan en la cama, que fallecen solos, que no pueden salir de casa en semanas...
Un libro de odio y de desahogo a favor de los discapacitados. Hay que estar un poco fuerte mentalmente para leerlo.
Como obra literaria, no me ha parecido un manuscrito super elaborado, de ahí mis estrellas. Sin embargo, como mensaje lo comparto totalmente.
April 8, 2020
This book is INFURIATING.
April 11, 2021
I had to take a little breath before reviewing this because I was so intensely angry. I was a bit worried this book would be a lot of facts or interviews with little structural analysis, but it happily proved me wrong. 'Crippled' is not only an example of excellent journalism as defined by Michael Hobbes, researched up to the eyeballs but with human interest in the form of personal accounts, it also provides the historical origin of our current attitude and treatment of disabled people. The UK has moved from putting disabled people in the work house, to later forcing them in homes where abuse by staff was endemic and now are once again being forcibly moved into care homes due to austerity where abuse by staff is once again endemic. This impact of austerity and many others are discussed in relation to the disabled dichotomy that allows this to happen; we're either seen as 'vulnerable', childlike and sexless (many working class disabled people's children are forcibly taken away) or are seen as fakers. Both of these stereotypes harm *all* disabled people equally and need a lot of work undoing in the mainstream portrayal of disability. The 'faker' stereotype discussed by Ryan has been widely promoted by the Tories to justify benefit cuts and has negative ramifications in my own life. I am now afraid to use a cane in public to help with chronic pain/balance issues because I'm so worried about being attacked by strangers. I've been accosted for using disabled toilets. This book plainly laid out many of my fears, I am two people away (my partner and older brother) from being in big trouble, but in doing so reaffirmed my solidarity with all disabled people.
This is essential reading for able bodied people and whilst I'm delighted that able bodied people are reviewing this on the Goodreads book page I do feel a sliver of frustration. I am perhaps being unfair as I'm sure a lot of people will move forward with a renewed solidarity with disabled people, as Ryan's conclusion recommends, but wailing about able bodied privilege does little. 'Crippled' mentioned two disabled activist groups, DPAC and Sisters of Frieda, that you can join. Disabled people have won any rights they have for themselves, without the help of currently abled people. You can join us anytime. Do it as favour to your elder self, yeah?
This is essential reading for able bodied people and whilst I'm delighted that able bodied people are reviewing this on the Goodreads book page I do feel a sliver of frustration. I am perhaps being unfair as I'm sure a lot of people will move forward with a renewed solidarity with disabled people, as Ryan's conclusion recommends, but wailing about able bodied privilege does little. 'Crippled' mentioned two disabled activist groups, DPAC and Sisters of Frieda, that you can join. Disabled people have won any rights they have for themselves, without the help of currently abled people. You can join us anytime. Do it as favour to your elder self, yeah?
May 9, 2021
Really interesting delve into the horrifying effects of austerity for disabled people in the last decade. As the vast majority of the book was recounting stats and stories from disabled people effected by austerity, it wasn’t until the conclusion that the book focused on the future (basically saying get the tories out) - I would have liked more of a look in to discussing how the author feels positive and progressive change could be brought about in the future, but it was an fascinating (and tough) read nonetheless
September 13, 2021
Very grateful I came across this book. I especially liked the chapters on women and children, think it ties really well within intersectionality. Glad Frances Ryan brought light to so many of the issues disabled people face. Wished these topics were tied into policy conversations as a default.
January 4, 2021
Interesante ver como la sociedad británica menosprecia y demoniza a las personas discapacitadas. En algunos sentidos es un poco redundante. Se podría decir lo mismo en muchas menos páginas.
April 5, 2021
This was hard fucking going, but that's the point.
Detailed and empathetic journalism, chronicling the ways in which austerity politics have driven disabled people into fear, anxiety and destitution.
I do think the book would have benefitted from a deeper understanding of neoconservative politics. Frances Ryan repeatedly describes a 'deliberate' war on disabled people, conjuring up some nefarious plot to deny human rights. I think the reality lies closer to simple callousness.
Leaving disabled people to starve is surely wrapped up in the neocon idea of there being economic winners and losers, and if you lost, it's your own fault and you don't get no guvmnt handouts. Ryan never really delves into the political history that set the stage for austerity, making this book feel narrower than it could have done.
Notes on the audiobook:
I cannot recommend the audiobook reading by Georgie Morrell, which I found lacking in vocal variety/'texture'. Morrell has a tendency TO stress RANDOM words in a SENTENCE, which drove me batty and frequently caused me to misunderstand what was being said.
Detailed and empathetic journalism, chronicling the ways in which austerity politics have driven disabled people into fear, anxiety and destitution.
I do think the book would have benefitted from a deeper understanding of neoconservative politics. Frances Ryan repeatedly describes a 'deliberate' war on disabled people, conjuring up some nefarious plot to deny human rights. I think the reality lies closer to simple callousness.
Leaving disabled people to starve is surely wrapped up in the neocon idea of there being economic winners and losers, and if you lost, it's your own fault and you don't get no guvmnt handouts. Ryan never really delves into the political history that set the stage for austerity, making this book feel narrower than it could have done.
Notes on the audiobook:
I cannot recommend the audiobook reading by Georgie Morrell, which I found lacking in vocal variety/'texture'. Morrell has a tendency TO stress RANDOM words in a SENTENCE, which drove me batty and frequently caused me to misunderstand what was being said.
October 8, 2019
Read it and weep.
June 16, 2021
It’s rare that I actually get angry about social issues, but this book made me angry. Ryan is writing about the experience of being disabled in Britain in the age of Tory government austerity, and I think what really riles me is the self-righteousness of those who imposed such a regime of cruelty on their own people. There was always a touch of moral panic mixed in with the economic dogma of austerity, and Ryan does well to emphasise the former in this text. Some members of the Tory party may see poverty as a tragedy, but not as much of a tragedy as the possibility that some vulnerable people might be getting more protection from the ravages of destitution than they deserve.
.
Frances Ryan does not see disabled poverty as a tragedy either – she sees it as a policy. For her, the callousness of austerity is not possible without the preceding decades of dehumanization that disabled people have undergone in British society. Likewise, the exclusion of disabled people from society can’t be separated from the material conditions which make that exclusion possible. Ryan’s exposition of this cycle of exclusion and humiliation makes this text an illuminating work of social commentary.
.
There are two big lessons that I took away from this book:
1) Ableism is often experienced as a kind of double bind. From one direction, disabled people are prevented from fully participating in society by inaccessibility, prejudice, and discrimination. These processes make them much more dependent on a reliable social safety net to help keep their head above water. But the same ableism which leads to their exclusion also drives cuts to the unemployment and disability payments which disabled people depend on once they’ve been excluded from full participation.
2) Different people need different things. The activist slogan “Same struggle, same fight” has resonance when it comes to some of the basics of human existence – money, respect, freedom – but breaks down a little when it comes to specific solutions to specific problems. This lesson was already somewhat familiar to me from the discourse around intersectionality: for some, feminism means getting the opportunity to go back to work after you’ve had a kid; for others, it means not having to work two jobs while also raising a newborn baby on your own. But the salience of diverse needs is much more evident when you’re looking at disability. Two different disabled people might have two completely different disabilities, two completely different sets of circumstances, and two completely different kinds of problems. What they have in common is ableism, and a need to be listened to and taken seriously when they speak up with their demands for a decent life.
.
Some may find the book too parochial in its focus on Britain, others may wish that Ryan had more to say about the economics of austerity. I definitely found myself skimming at points, feeling like I had grasped the argument of the book after a few chapters and was just being given more examples of the same phenomenon from there.
.
But there is value in the brute simplicity of Crippled. Even that title, which I’ve been hesitating to actually write down in this review, has real illustrative power. Suggesting not an unfortunate circumstance, but a violent attack, the title reminds us that there is nothing so disabling as being on the wrong side of a society’s war on its own people. If, as her subtitle suggests, there is a war on disabled people, then you only really need to ask yourself one question after reading Frances Ryan’s book: which side are you on?
.
Frances Ryan does not see disabled poverty as a tragedy either – she sees it as a policy. For her, the callousness of austerity is not possible without the preceding decades of dehumanization that disabled people have undergone in British society. Likewise, the exclusion of disabled people from society can’t be separated from the material conditions which make that exclusion possible. Ryan’s exposition of this cycle of exclusion and humiliation makes this text an illuminating work of social commentary.
.
There are two big lessons that I took away from this book:
1) Ableism is often experienced as a kind of double bind. From one direction, disabled people are prevented from fully participating in society by inaccessibility, prejudice, and discrimination. These processes make them much more dependent on a reliable social safety net to help keep their head above water. But the same ableism which leads to their exclusion also drives cuts to the unemployment and disability payments which disabled people depend on once they’ve been excluded from full participation.
2) Different people need different things. The activist slogan “Same struggle, same fight” has resonance when it comes to some of the basics of human existence – money, respect, freedom – but breaks down a little when it comes to specific solutions to specific problems. This lesson was already somewhat familiar to me from the discourse around intersectionality: for some, feminism means getting the opportunity to go back to work after you’ve had a kid; for others, it means not having to work two jobs while also raising a newborn baby on your own. But the salience of diverse needs is much more evident when you’re looking at disability. Two different disabled people might have two completely different disabilities, two completely different sets of circumstances, and two completely different kinds of problems. What they have in common is ableism, and a need to be listened to and taken seriously when they speak up with their demands for a decent life.
.
Some may find the book too parochial in its focus on Britain, others may wish that Ryan had more to say about the economics of austerity. I definitely found myself skimming at points, feeling like I had grasped the argument of the book after a few chapters and was just being given more examples of the same phenomenon from there.
.
But there is value in the brute simplicity of Crippled. Even that title, which I’ve been hesitating to actually write down in this review, has real illustrative power. Suggesting not an unfortunate circumstance, but a violent attack, the title reminds us that there is nothing so disabling as being on the wrong side of a society’s war on its own people. If, as her subtitle suggests, there is a war on disabled people, then you only really need to ask yourself one question after reading Frances Ryan’s book: which side are you on?
November 7, 2022
As a disabled person, have experience of some of the issues tackled in this book. However, disabled people are not monolithic and it is important to read books like this to acknowledge that there are people experiencing, in this case, the effects of austerity in different ways. This book felt like a rallying cry, a howl at the moon and a frustrated sob all at once.
One thing this didn't have much of was possible solutions, which meant it didn't embody that much hope for the future - in fact, it often stated that things will get worse - which made it a very hard book to read. It feels very much that the author had a story or narrative that they wanted to convey and found case studies and stats to support that, rather than the book being open to including different points of view than their own. I would have found it interesting to see the occasional counterpoint argued by someone with the knowledge to do so, or an explanation of the reasons for the current situation and why successive governments find it so difficult to address and change. Having potential solutions to take to those with decision-making power would have been really powerful and a great way to end the book. Nevertheless, this was a great book that should be thrust into practically everyone's hands, and particularly those who have no exposure to the subject matter through knowledge or experience.
One thing this didn't have much of was possible solutions, which meant it didn't embody that much hope for the future - in fact, it often stated that things will get worse - which made it a very hard book to read. It feels very much that the author had a story or narrative that they wanted to convey and found case studies and stats to support that, rather than the book being open to including different points of view than their own. I would have found it interesting to see the occasional counterpoint argued by someone with the knowledge to do so, or an explanation of the reasons for the current situation and why successive governments find it so difficult to address and change. Having potential solutions to take to those with decision-making power would have been really powerful and a great way to end the book. Nevertheless, this was a great book that should be thrust into practically everyone's hands, and particularly those who have no exposure to the subject matter through knowledge or experience.
April 11, 2020
This book was really hard to read at points as it’s so painful to hear the stories of suffering that have been inflicted upon disabled people under austerity. Despite being difficult at points I think it is essential reading, especially as so often disabled people are missing from reporting about politics, policy and programme Interventions. This book synthesises personal stories, policy, statistics, and a range of other sources to show the far-reaching and destructive effects that austerity has had on all aspects disabled people’s lives. More importantly it shows that the suffering that many are experiencing now was the result of political choices based upon and perpetuating a narrative that demonises disabled people as scroungers. This book is eye-opening, whatever your background please read it.
February 13, 2021
This book paints a harrowing picture of how the politics of austerity and capitalism by default strip away human rights and basic dignity from people with disabilities who are unable to participate in capitalist society. This is an infuriating but vital read for anyone who wants to understand the importance of disability rights movement and why capitalist society inherently oppresses people with disabilities.
August 28, 2022
This book is a pretty harrowing look at the devastation austerity policies have caused, particularly for disabled people. The details are horrifying, made me feel very grateful that I’ve had the luck not to be in the receiving end of this hardship, and angry that anyone should be enduring this. I wanted to hear more about the alternatives to austerity, but that wasn’t really the purpose of this book. There’s a covid update at the end that felt particularly powerful. Recommended, easy to read.
December 16, 2020
Ryan does a great job of mixing individual human stories with cold, hard numbers. Though she is writing about Britain, the rise of individualistic thought and subsequent undermining of social services is all too familiar to American audiences! The book ends with the reminder that when the safety net fails disabled people, it fails all of us.
April 11, 2024
incredibly informative and engaging
brilliantly researched. every other page has a harrowing statistic that makes you question the morality of the state.
my main critique is that the book ignores how racism might intersect with the demonisation of disabled people.
“the rallying cry for our times is clear: things are not how they need to be. disabled people’s lives depend on it”
brilliantly researched. every other page has a harrowing statistic that makes you question the morality of the state.
my main critique is that the book ignores how racism might intersect with the demonisation of disabled people.
“the rallying cry for our times is clear: things are not how they need to be. disabled people’s lives depend on it”
July 9, 2023
Ontluisterend, onthutsend... relaas over leven met een beperking in de UK: drempels, (voor)oordelen...
"(...) disabled people are the ones who know their own lives, and it is their voices that should be amplified in a society that so often tries to speak for us."
"(...) disabled people are the ones who know their own lives, and it is their voices that should be amplified in a society that so often tries to speak for us."
February 3, 2022
I highly recommend this book, everyone should learn more about disability, politics and the impact of government policies like austerity.
March 12, 2021
A very important but relentlessly upsetting book. It will make you very angry.
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