England V Disability

Disabled people in the United Kingdom (UK) have endured relentless
attacks on their rights and opportunities on multiple fronts. Many
hard-won freedoms have been steadily rolled back in recent years.
This document summarises some of these policies that have either
been proposed or successfully enacted. Disabled people are often
used as the testing ground for future policies, so being aware of what
is happening to them has broader implications for the rights of other
groups. During the Holocaust, many of the procedures developed on
disabled people were later applied to wider populations. More recent
examples include bank account surveillance systems, which are laying
the groundwork for more extensive population-wide surveillance.
Following the 2008 financial crash, attacks on disabled people’s rights
intensified. In 2016, the United Nations (UN) found that the UK was
engaged in “grave and systematic” violations of disabled people’s
rights, and linked these actions to a significant number of excess
deaths. In 2024, the UN follow-up report to the inquiry declared that
the UK made “no significant progress” on implementing the inquiry’s
recommendations regarding independent living, social security, and
an adequate standard of living. Now, in 2026, things have only gotten
worse. This zine cannot adequately cover every front of attack or the
rapid changes currently taking place, but it aims to provide a broad
snapshot of the situation in England in the Summer of 2026.