DISABILITY campaigners celebrated their resistance against austerity, welfare cuts and the Covid-19 crisis in an online event marking International Day of Disabled People (IDDP) on Thursday.

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and the People’s Assembly Against Austerity co-hosted the evening of politics, conversation and music under the theme of accessibility.

Ahead of the event, DPAC co-founder Linda Burnip said: “This year deaf and disabled campaigners have supported each other to survive the pandemic, at the same time as challenging official approaches to it that discriminate against us. 

“It has demonstrated the power of solidarity and we want the event on IDDP to restore the hope that not only is an alternative society possible, but that together we can win it.”

Speakers included Coronation Street actor Cherylee Houston, former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, TourettesHero co-founder Jess Thom, economist and political commentator Grace Blakeley and Ellen Morrison, who was recently elected as the first-ever disabled members’ representative on the Labour Party’s national executive committee.

Ms Thom said that issues in society, rather than disabilities themselves, are what put up barriers for disabled people.

She added that Covid-19 lockdowns have demonstrated how easily society could be restructured to improve accessibility.

GMB organiser Helen O’Connor told the panel that she saw disabled people’s resistance first-hand when she was working for the NHS. 

She warned that “drastic cuts” to benefits and social housing, along with reduced access to services, are “quite literally killing disabled people.”

Mr McDonnell spoke about his experiences protesting with DPAC and praised disability campaigners’ efforts. 

Remembering being inspired while seeing the “movement in the making,” he added: “It is so good to just see the new generation coming through as well.”

Filmmaker Ken Loach also sent a message of solidarity, slamming successive Tory governments for their austerity programme and praising the former Labour front bench under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. 

“I know from personal experience of meeting them that they were genuine and that they would have restored the cuts and ended the punitive sanctions of the benefits system,” he said of the party under Mr Corbyn, adding that those in the labour movement “can’t give up the fight yet.”