FEW scenes have illustrated the draconian cruelty of austerity Britain better than the weekend’s kettle of disability protesters in Westminster.

Disabled People Against Cuts activists demonstrating against the government decision to close the Independent Living Fund (ILF) — a literal lifeline for 18,000 severely disabled people — were deemed such a threat that hundreds of police descended on the scene.

Thuggish officers not only encircled the 60 or so brave individuals who refused to budge but prevented food or drink being delivered to the protesters, many of whom were disabled.

Reports that police charged into the crowd, causing several people to fall on top of wheelchair-users, and attempted to remove access ramps to the grounds of Westminster Abbey, shame the force.

And the craven response of Dean of Westminster John Hall — who refused to meet activists or take action to prevent the police brutality — is an absolute disgrace.

Under the vicious assault on social security piloted by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, a self-proclaimed Christian, disabled people have seen their right to live in dignity snatched away.

The punitive “fit for work” programme carried on by disgraced privateer Atos has cost thousands of lives — it is impossible to say how many, since after November 2011, when 10,600 people had died within six weeks of being declared “fit for work,” the government stopped counting.

The same government that is supposedly so desperate to get disabled people into the workplace launched sweeping closures of Remploy factories built to facilitate exactly that, casting thousands of people onto the dole.

At the same time government rhetoric about “scroungers” — designed to turn working-class people against each other and distract them from an elite which continues to make billions in profit in the so-called austerity era — has seen a rapid rise in hate crimes reported against disabled people, which last year was unfortunately combined with a decline in convictions.

Closing the ILF, with the contemptuous rider that the funds will now be the responsibility of local authorities being starved of cash by the very same government, is simply another kick in the teeth for those most in need of state support.

Like the other anti-disabled measures spewed out of Mr Duncan Smith’s poisonous department it will cost lives.

The Dean of Westminster should take his cue from the many religious figures of all faiths — including the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby — who have taken the side of the government’s victims, rather than turn his back on them.

Up to the task

THOSE marching in honour of the 30th anniversary of the great miners’ strike at the weekend were not merely commemorating the struggles of the past.

Since Thatcher’s government launched the neoliberal crusade which has seen Britain’s assets privatised, its public services run down and its trade unions hemmed in by authoritarian anti-union laws, we have seen spiralling wealth for the elite while ordinary people’s share of national output has plummeted.

The current government’s class war against the working class is as vicious and uncompromising as anything seen in Thatcher’s day.

But today’s labour movement is rising to the challenge, with co-ordinated strike action on July 10 now likely to see millions walk out to defend their pay, pensions and working conditions.

The spirit of the miners who stood defiant against the Tories in 1984-5 is alive and well. This time, we must ensure that we win.