Pathways To Work Green Paper – Actions You Can Take – A Spiral Dance

After days of speculation about the government’s proposed plans to save £5bn by making cuts to disability benefits, Labour finally officially announced their plans in a Green Paper entitled Pathways To Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working. And just as many disabled people and organisations had feared, the proposed plans will have a massively damaging effect on the disabled community.

I’m not going to to into the details of it in this post – many others have already done so in a far better way than I can. But what I wanted to do was create a list of ways in which we can take action. Not all of these will be possible for everyone – many of us have limitations that will make some things impossible – but I hope that everyone will find something within this list that works for them.

And, as always, know this – your worth is not defined by what you can or can’t do. No matter how much the government wants us to believe this. So if you can’t do anything, please do not feel bad. We shouldn’t have to be fighting this hard for our own survival in the first place.

Please also note that this list is not just for disabled people. We desperately need our non-disabled allies to come together and fight with us. Many of us are too poorly to mobilise in the way that other marginalised groups have. We are also the only marginalised group that anyone could join at any time. So if you won’t do this for us, maybe do it for future you.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the things I have found so far.

Respond to the Pathways To Work Green Paper

The government has published its green paper, and opened up a consultation. You can access a copy of the green paper here, and respond to it here. You can also respond to the green paper via email by messaging [email protected]

Please note that the online response form is a Microsoft Form and as far as I’m aware there is no way to save your answers and come back to it at a later point. I have gone through the form and copied the questions ready to fill in myself, so I’m sharing it here for your use. I purposefully saved it as a Word document rather than a PDF so that you can add your answers straight into the document once downloaded.

It is also worth noting that the consultation does not ask all the questions it should be, such as whether certain proposals should go ahead. Benefits and Work explains this in more detail here. I still plan on filling in the response form when I can, making the damage as clear as I can within the questions asked. But I completely understand if you feel unable to do so.

Follow disabled journalists

Disabled journalists will be covering this a lot over the coming months, and they are the best placed to speak about this. Two of the ones I regularly turn to for updates are Rachel Charlton-Dailey and Frances Ryan. You can find both of them at the following places:

Rachel Charlton-Dailey – Threads, Bluesky, Instagram
Frances Ryan – Threads, Bluesky, Instagram

Follow disabled charities and organisations

There are so many charities and organisations devoted to all kinds of disabilities and health issues who will be mobilising as much as possible over the coming months too. Look into the ones that resonate with you most. I created a list of several of them to include at the end of my poetry book, and you can find that list here if you don’t know where to start. Please note that it is far from exhaustive.

You might also want to check out organisations and groups specifically set up to fight such cuts as these. Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) is the big one, but smaller groups are also forming such as Crips Against Cuts on Threads.

Write to your MP

This can often feel like a pointless exercise, I know, when you have MPs across all sides of the political spectrum who don’t seem to care at all about disabled people. But it is our right, and if you’re able to do so, it counts. You can find the contact details for your MP here. I shall keep my eye out for any email templates that make it easier and add them here when I find them.

Write about it

I’m going to pop a little reminder here that my blog is open for guest posts under the Existence is Resistance series. If you’d like to get involved, check out this post.

Support each other

We are often all we’ve got, and we have to support each other. Having a community of people who understand what you’re going through can make a huge difference. Look for Facebook Groups, search for hashtags on socials, and share your own story to connect with others who will understand.

I’m sorry that we’re having to expend the energy we don’t have to spare on all of this. It shouldn’t be this way. But I hope that some of the resources and links in this post will help you feel less alone and helpless.