As a disabled person, Yes offers hope but a No vote more suffering

A column for outside contributors. Contact: agenda@theherald.co.uk

‘AND the land shall reek of falsehood, sweat lies and chicane.” The words of the 19th century philosopher Albert Pike could not be more relevant to the land we live in today. As the referendum to decide our future comes ever closer, we should consider carefully what we are voting for.

Would a defeated Westminster government cut off its own nose to spite its face by snatching away the pound? I very much doubt it. This to me is a distraction. A Yes vote is a vote to preserve the very foundations of our society, our fundamental human rights.

As an Englishwoman who understands that Scotland with a unique culture and identity, I sat mainly on the fence but was generally in favour of an independent Scotland. But when, as a severely disabled individual, I learned that the Westminster Government planned to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a UK Bill of Rights, I jumped, shoes and walking stick first, into the Yes camp.

I took to the campaign trail with a level of zeal and determination that is only matched by the zeal and determination it takes me to perform some of the basic functions of life that most people take for granted.

As a severely disabled individual, I am acutely aware that the frontline of the human rights struggle in this country is the disability rights struggle.

There is concern about the coalition’s austerity programme’s impact on the human rights of disadvantaged people, including disabled people.

The relentless onslaught comprising cuts and welfare reforms is targeted at the most vulnerable people in our society: the working poor, those rendered jobless through no fault of their own and, most poignantly, disabled people.

Disabled people have borne and will continue to bear the brunt of the billions of pounds of austerity cuts the next Westminster government will implement in the coming years.

For the majority of disabled people, these austerity cuts have brought shame, fear and despair. The spectre of constant interviews for the largely discredited Work Capability Assessment and the euphemistically named Personal Independence Payments creates endless opportunities for disabled people to fail.

They are living out their lives in poverty and suffering behind closed doors, away from the gaze of the public at large. I do not write of this from the perspective of a woman who has her information from internet blogs or rumour mills.

I write of them from the perspective of a disabled person who has been through the system. There are people who have worked all their lives and have fallen into disability, sitting in floods of tears, surrounded by piles of paperwork that they can barely get to grips with, let alone get on top of.

Yet the human spirit endures. There are disability champions who have fought many a disabled person’s corner at the Work Capability Assessment.

Disabled people help disabled people, defending the most vulnerable people in our society from having their dignity and human rights stripped from them in the most callous and heartless fashion. The White Paper for an independent Scotland promises to reverse the most damaging of these welfare reforms.

The choice for me as a disabled voter is simple. It’s a choice between the certainty of more suffering and the hope arising from a society based on human rights, free from poverty and social apartheid.

If we want to see an example of what a society with degraded human rights legislation looks like then we need look no further than the United States, where more than one million people work full time while living in homeless shelters and disabled people beg on the streets.

This is an extreme example, perhaps, but we are on a slippery slope. It is time to take a stand with Disabled People For Yes, for human rights, disability rights and civil rights. Helen McGoldrick is a founding member of Disabled People for Yes.

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