Season 2 Episode 1 Paula Peters Transcript

Below is a proof read transcript of our conversation with Paula Peters. Listen here

Ben Stevenson – 0:00
Welcome to Red Star Podcast, bringing you politics, ideas, culture, and debate.

Ben Stevenson – 0:08
For the relaunch of Red Star Podcast, we wanted to bring on somebody who would talk in detail about some of the issues affecting disabled people in Britain today.

Ben Stevenson – 0:21
So we brought on Paula Peters, a experienced disabled people’s rights campaigner and organizer.

Ben Stevenson – 0:30
We talked through Liz Carr’s documentary on assisted dying, John Pring’s new book on called The Department, about the department for work and pensions, and so much more.

Ben Stevenson – 0:41
So sit back and listen to this relaunched version of Red Star Podcasts.

Ben Stevenson – 0:48
I’m with joined today by Paula Peters who’s a disabled, people’s activist, organizer, and campaigner, and we’re going to talk a little bit about, I mean what the situation is like for disabled people in the UK today, but also about what some of the prospects are, particularly with the change in government that we’ve recently had here in the UK, with the new Keir Starmer led, Labour government and whether or not change is really living up to its mantra.

Ben Stevenson – 1:27
So Paula, it’s good to have you.

Paula Peters – 1:30
Nice to see you, Ben.

Ben Stevenson – 1:32
So, let’s start off, I suppose with the beginning.

Ben Stevenson – 1:37
I mean, you’re from DPAC, the Disabled Peoples Against Cuts.

Ben Stevenson – 1:42
I suppose you can’t really talk about DPAC without mentioning austerity, can you?

Paula Peters – 1:48
Well, DPAC word, if we go back, so summer of 2010 when George Osborne still have nightmares about him.

Paula Peters – 2:01
Just, had the emergency budget, and he was going to take over 28,000,000,000 off the welfare state and social care budgets.

Paula Peters – 2:14
And, you know, everyone in receipt of incapacity benefit was gonna be reassessed for employment and support allowance.

Paula Peters – 2:24
And, you know, previous to the summer of 2010 in the March, there was the death of Stephen Carey, you know, a man who had serious mental distress and depression, and anxiety, who was found fit for work after work capability assessment.

Paula Peters – 2:48
And, you know, left with no money and is in an appalling situation.

Paula Peters – 2:56
And Stephen took his own Steven took his own life.

Paula Peters – 3:01
And the DWP in their callousness, because Steven had put in an appeal.

Paula Peters – 3:07
They didn’t even cancel the appeal.

Paula Peters – 3:09
They allowed the appeal to carry on.

Paula Peters – 3:12
And, the tribunal service wasn’t notified about Steven’s death, so they called out his name.

Paula Peters – 3:19
And his father, who’s also, called Steven, turned up at the tribunal.

Paula Peters – 3:25
And when they called out his name, he said, here, took his son’s ashes onto the tribune into the tribunal and says, here he is.

Paula Peters – 3:35
And went through, everything that had happened and all the rest of it.

Paula Peters – 3:41
The original decision got overturned, and, Stephen wasn’t Stephen was, felt you know, declared, he shouldn’t have been found fit for work and everything.

Paula Peters – 3:59
And the back pay was, given to his children after his death.

Paula Peters – 4:05
But his death, the coroner’s report, wasn’t given to professor, Paul Harrington, who was carrying out a review government of the Lib Dems.

Paula Peters – 4:17
And we mustn’t forget the Lib Dems part in all of this.

Paula Peters – 4:20
And Ed Davey and everything else, even though loves to deny austerity, he did a part to play.

Paula Peters – 4:26
Indeed.

Paula Peters – 4:27
You know yeah.

Paula Peters – 4:28
I mean, it was so they rolled out the work capability assessment knowing that it’d already harmed disabled people, that it led to deaths.

Paula Peters – 4:40
And they carried on.

Paula Peters – 4:41
They just ignored it, hid the evidence, and carried on.

Paula Peters – 4:44
Sadly, you know, we were so concerned about the cuts to the welfare state and social care, the NHS.

Paula Peters – 4:53
So we said cuts were killed, and we were accused of being scaremongering.
Paula Peters – 4:57
And so you had the formation of Mental Health Resistance Network and Black Triangle and DPAC all in the space of, like, 6 months.

Paula Peters – 5:06
And, yeah, DPAC were formed on the 3rd October 2010, outside the Tory party conference in Birmingham.

Paula Peters – 5:15
And, we have over 20,000 members, worldwide today.

Paula Peters – 5:23
And, 15 years on, here we still are fighting, got rid of 1 Tory government, and now we’ve ended up with another one.

Paula Peters – 5:31
Oh, Labour.

Paula Peters – 5:32
Sorry.

Paula Peters – 5:33
Okay.

Paula Peters – 5:34
And

Ben Stevenson – 5:34
ended up

Paula Peters – 5:35
with the Labour government, whose rhetoric is no different from the conservatives we’ve just had.

Paula Peters – 5:43
And you’re seeing a lot of anger now online after labour means testing the winter fuel allowance because they say now we’ve got to make cuts.

Paula Peters – 5:51
It’s the Tories’ fault.

Paula Peters – 5:53
I do remember in 2010, the Tories said it was labor’s fault, and that note left on the desk said there’s no money.

Paula Peters – 5:59
But there’s money for wars.

Paula Peters – 6:01
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 6:02
There’s money to give, king Charles his, 2 helicopters, 45,000,000, 3,000,000,000 for war in Ukraine.

Paula Peters – 6:10
So there’s money for wars and bombs and arms and the arms trade, and there’s money for the royal family.

Paula Peters – 6:16
But there isn’t money for older people, and there isn’t money for disabled people.

Paula Peters – 6:21
And a government who doesn’t care about older people and disabled people, who cares about the bankers and the royal family and the arms trade, are a parasitical government who only care about the rich, and with their greasy fingers in these pies of private health care companies and arms deals and everything.

Paula Peters – 6:45
They’ve all got vested interest in.

Paula Peters – 6:47
It’s to make money for them.

Paula Peters – 6:48
Mhmm.

Paula Peters – 6:49
And but, yeah, we’ve, it’s been 15 years of day in, day out fighting a slew of cuts.

Paula Peters – 6:58
And then in 2013, the late Debbie Jolley, our cofounder, bless her, with Linda Burnett met with the UN rapporteur for their, committee on the UN Convention of Human Rights.

Paula Peters – 7:11
And they used the protocol to say, we think our rights, human rights have been gravely and systemically violated.

Paula Peters – 7:19
And that’s when we have a load of evidence of, you know, nearly 3 years.

Paula Peters – 7:25
And, the UK were the 1st state to be formally investigated under that protocol.

Paula Peters – 7:30
And it took a lot of work.

Paula Peters – 7:30
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 7:32
I don’t think people realize how much work goes into a protest, how much work goes into research, how much work goes into fighting.

Paula Peters – 7:41
There are people just think, oh, you just turn up and wave a placard, but they don’t tell you the months’ worth of the months of planning that goes into these things.

Paula Peters – 7:50
It’s a lot.

Ben Stevenson – 7:52
Absolutely.

Ben Stevenson – 7:53
I think I mean, you  mentioned 2 things that really struck me particularly with the benefit deaths.

Ben Stevenson – 8:02
And, you know, in some ways, I think at the time we were things like that.

Ben Stevenson – 8:08
But, you know, obviously we’ve seen, you know, there’s a 190,000 excess deaths during, the period of austerity.

Ben Stevenson – 8:16
That’s the current estimate as to how many people extra people have died as a result of austerity.

Ben Stevenson – 8:2That’s without the, you know, so thousands of people that die have died, unnecessarily, often quite quietly, you know, and without any kind of coverage or aplomb.

Ben Stevenson – 8:36
And like you say, it is about priorities, you know.

Ben Stevenson – 8:40
We can see that be with the different attitude to Ukraine as there is to Palestine, for example.

Ben Stevenson – 8:50
You know, particularly in the mass media, how deaths are treated, a different difference between the, you know, as tragic as it was, the sinking of the luxury yacht, and the regular number of migrants that die in the English Channel, you know, and the attitudes there, as well.
Paula Peters – 9:12
The UK are the 6th richest country on earth.

Paula Peters – 9:17
There’s money.

Paula Peters – 9:18
There’s money for wars, you know, money for bombs, money for arms to Israel, money for arms to Ukraine.

Paula Peters – 9:28
You know?

Paula Peters – 9:29
There is money.

Paula Peters – 9:30
And when they say they’re, you know, the the GDR, they’re gonna increase arms spending by 2.5% annually.

Paula Peters – 9:38
There’s money for that of its citizens.

Paula Peters – 9:41
And that’s exactly what subsequent governments over the decades have done.

Paula Peters – 9:47
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 9:47
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 9:48
It’s been covered up.

Paula Peters – 9:50
It’s been it the silent, you know, the silent dead, if you like, because that’s what it is.

Paula Peters – 9:58
People are dying in large numbers.

Paula Peters – 10:00
And it was the University of Glasgow and, the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology did a study.

Paula Peters – 10:09
And they said from 2012 to 2019, 334,000 327 human beings died prematurely because of poor housing, poor nutrition, lack of financial support.

Paula Peters – 10:25
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 10:26
Right?

Paula Peters – 10:27
And that the trip that’s an estimated figure.

Paula Peters – 10:30
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 10:30
It’s a lot higher than that.

Paula Peters – 10:32
Mhmm.

Paula Peters – 10:32
But the government, like with winter fuel deaths, they just hide the figures or they just don’t release them because there will be a massive outcry if they’ll

Ben Stevenson – 10:42
I think that’s what, sort of John Bring’s book sort of brings to light, doesn’t it?

Ben Stevenson – 10:47
In terms of, you know that this isn’t accidental in terms of the, policies that are being, you know, it’s not they haven’t just woken up one day and decided to be bastards.

Ben Stevenson – 11:01
No.

Ben Stevenson – 11:01
They’re going they’re going they’re pursuing a deliberate policy, like you say.

Paula Peters – 11:06
I mean, with John’s book, I mean, it’s called the department.

Paula Peters – 11:10
How a violent government bureaucracy killed 100 and hid the evidence.

Paula Peters – 11:15
And his book kind of I mean, his the the thorough research that he’s done.

Paula Peters – 11:22
And he goes back to the seventies where governments wanted to cut invalidity benefit before incapacity benefit.

Paula Peters – 11:32
And they were looking at ways of how to do this and using the media to demonize disabled people even then.

Paula Peters – 11:41
And then, you know, when you had the Thatcher era, they started drip by drip by drip with the state violence.

Paula Peters – 11:50
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 11:50
And getting the American healthcare insured well, the American insurance providers for, you know, the sickness insurance, started getting it entrenched into the Department of Health and Social Security, as it was called then, and weaponized in a department to harm disabled people and unemployed people with.

Paula Peters – 12:15
That’s exactly what they’ve done.

Paula Peters – 12:17
They’ve weaponized the department.

Paula Peters – 12:19
And even before 2010, disabled people were dying as a result of government policy when incapacity was bought out and the all and the personal capability assessment as labour called it.

Paula Peters – 12:36
You know, in the early nineties, you know, under a Tory government, disabled people were dying because of your work test.

Paula Peters – 12:45
Then you had the personal capability assessment before employment and support allowance, within capacity.

Paula Peters – 12:51
And it is all about cuts, tightening eligibility criteria, so people don’t find it.

Paula Peters – 12:58
It’s not impossible to, get anywhere.

Paula Peters – 13:03
And also wear you down with appeals and getting the support you’re entitled to and hoping you’re not there in the process.

Paula Peters – 13:11
But also what the book shows as well is the coroner’s lack of compassion in cases where you could see there’s a causal link between a purse that that person taking their own lives or their health deteriorating because they didn’t have the money and the heating to  use.
Paula Peters – 13:31
And even that, and it’s like, Jodie White, Joy Whiting having to fight for a second coroner’s inquest for Jodie.

Paula Peters – 13:42
You know?

Paula Peters – 13:43
Because and then Jill Thompson, when her brother was sanctioned and he died of diabetic keratosis, and he had, like, £3.44 in his bank account.

Paula Peters – 13:54
He had no food in his stomach.

Paula Peters – 13:56
And they said, oh, because sausages and chips were left on the countertop, they said he chose not to eat them.

Paula Peters – 14:03
So there can’t be that poor causal link where he had a massive diabetic high bone, and he went into a coma when he died.

Paula Peters – 14:11
And she couldn’t fight for an inquest for a she took the government to court, and she lost.

Ben Stevenson – 14:19
I mean, it’s one thing that

Paula Peters – 14:20
You know, it doesn’t bring you know, you want ministers held to you want civil servants held to account for this.

Paula Peters – 14:29
Right?

Paula Peters – 14:29
You want government ministers held to account for this.

Paula Peters – 14:33
You want the media held to account for this.

Paula Peters – 14:35
You want assessors held to account for this.

Paula Peters – 14:38
Every single person who’s been involved in these decisions, you want held to account for it.

Paula Peters – 14:43
They know what they’re doing.

Paula Peters – 14:45
They can’t say they didn’t know.

Paula Peters – 14:47
They do not they did know.

Paula Peters – 14:49
They do know.

Paula Peters – 14:51
But the silence is complicities.

Paula Peters – 14:56
And that’s what the book shows time and time and time and time again.

Paula Peters – 15:02
With every new policy, They knew it would harm.

Paula Peters – 15:06
They knew it caused distress.

Paula Peters – 15:07
They knew people would die.

Paula Peters – 15:09
They simply did not care.

Paula Peters – 15:12
That’s what’s the most horrendous thing about it, is they didn’t care.

Ben Stevenson – 15:17
I mean, they’re almost incentivized not to in some ways, aren’t they?

Ben Stevenson – 15:21
Because, you know, we talk a lot about the revolving door as being, you know, a obviously something that we want to get rid of, that’s problematic, that undermines democracy, the fact that corporate power is allowed to play a significant political role, through the sponsoring of MPs, arguably the buying out of MPs, through being at second jobs, and so on and so forth.

Ben Stevenson – 15:55
So we know that that’s something with the with those public officials that we know about.

Ben Stevenson – 16:03
Forget about the private officials who don’t have to make declarations of interests.

Ben Stevenson – 16:08
I guess, you know, it’s very much that you scratch my back, scratch yours, isn’t it?

Ben Stevenson – 16:13
It’s if you’ve got a whole load of lobbyists from private insurance companies, surrounding you, telling you this is the direction we think you should be going in, you know, taking you out to swanky corporate lunches, you can see how even from a human perspective these people go along with those kind of decisions.

Paula Peters – 16:33
I think because when you when you look in when you look right with Unum in America and their massive, disability insurance deniers, And then there, you know, they approach the UK.

Paula Peters – 16:47
Look.

Paula Peters – 16:47
We can help you here.

Paula Peters – 16:49
We think we can, help you with the with the policy decisions you want to make, and we can help you.

Paula Peters – 16:56
You can help us.

Paula Peters – 16:59
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 17:00
And so they’re deeply entrenched, and then you’ve got the words, work shy, malingerers, fraudsters, lazy, and it’s incorporated into the department.

Paula Peters – 17:10
Drip.

Paula Peters – 17:10
Buy drip.

Paula Peters – 17:11
Buy drip.

Paula Peters – 17:11
Buy drip.

Paula Peters – 17:12
So it’s just mantra.

Paula Peters – 17:12
Buy drip.

Paula Peters – 17:14
And then they just get all of these big wigs, the professors and everything to write their, you know, get some of these medical advisers in the NHS on-site.
Paula Peters – 17:25
Oh, yeah.

Paula Peters – 17:25
You know, let’s get you involved in this.

Paula Peters – 17:27
And, you know, And then they write these reports, and then a decade later, they try and deny that they even said x, y, and zed.

Paula Peters – 17:34
And then you think, but it’s written here in evidence.

Paula Peters – 17:36
Here’s the memo, and you said this, this, and this.

Paula Peters – 17:39
So how can you deny it when it’s here in black and white?

Paula Peters – 17:42
Only the department didn’t want us having access to this information for another 50 years when most of us wouldn’t be here to hold the department to account.

Ben Stevenson – 17:52
I don’t know.

Ben Stevenson – 17:53
I think you’re absolutely right.

Ben Stevenson – 17:54
I think there’s there’s definitely a big issue with the medicalization of disability and the way in which it’s been, dealt with and considered by successive governments.

Ben Stevenson – 18:07
But there’s also that, like you say, that sense of oh well they’re malingering, maybe they’re just swinging the lead, you know.

Ben Stevenson – 18:17
Particularly with mental health now, you know the new bad back as I hear most, employers calling it, You know, it’s sort of, again, you have to fight to get, to be believed to begin with, in

Paula Peters – 18:36
many ways.

Paula Peters – 18:38
I was a civil servant, and I worked for government department.

Paula Peters – 18:42
And I was in a government department where you couldn’t have a psychiatric condition.

Paula Peters – 18:47
You couldn’t have mental distress because your security clearance would be taken from you, and you’re a liability.

Paula Peters – 18:54
Yes.

Paula Peters – 18:55
And in many departments in the civil service, that still exists today.

Paula Peters – 18:58
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 18:59
So you’re denied access to working there.

Paula Peters – 19:03
And when I had my breakdown at my desk and my work my job made me sick.

Paula Peters – 19:11
There wasn’t the support to talk about it.

Paula Peters – 19:14
There wasn’t the there wasn’t the help available in the civil service to cope with the demands and the deadlines and the things you were do doing, which were horrific.

Paula Peters – 19:27
And there was no support available.

Paula Peters – 19:31
And yet many of us were going out after work and drinking to cope with what we were doing.

Paula Peters – 19:38
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 19:39
Absolutely.

Paula Peters – 19:39
And you just you know, and that’s the same in all workplaces today.

Paula Peters – 19:45
You know?

Paula Peters – 19:46
And there isn’t the health there isn’t the work home life balance anymore.

Paula Peters – 19:50
No.

Paula Peters – 19:51
I remember my dad having a job where he’d get home and he’d be called by his boss and having to go back and weekends and everything like that Christmas.

Paula Peters – 20:01
And a lot of companies are like that.

Paula Peters – 20:04
They want their pound of flesh from you.

Paula Peters – 20:06
They want you to do 4 or 5 people’s, jobs, work all these hours, and people can’t sustain that.

Paula Peters – 20:13
Oh, I’m become sick because of it.

Ben Stevenson – 20:16
On average, the average British worker is already taking 20 days off for stress, depression and anxiety.

Ben Stevenson – 20:23
That’s people who are working.

Ben Stevenson – 20:25
Forget about, the people who are not in a better economic situation, you know, who are struggling to, decide whether or not to eat or eat there, you know, whether or not to eat at home or to or to have something to eat.

Ben Stevenson – 20:39
So this is very clearly something that I think people very keenly feel, is the case now and has become endemic within modern Britain.

Ben Stevenson – 20:52
You know, we have got a mental health crisis and emergency, and just think, you know, the number of column inches that appear every time there’s a strike day on the railways, And, yeah, where is where are the column inches about the number of people who are basically taking as many days off as they, as they possibly can, you know?
Paula Peters – 21:13
Do you know I’m fed up with I’m fed up of hearing the words handouts, freebies.

Paula Peters – 21:22
We all pay into a system with progressive taxation and national insurance.

Paula Peters – 21:27
Right?

Ben Stevenson – 21:28
Yes.

Paula Peters – 21:28
And it the welfare state is supposed to support you when you fall on tough times.

Paula Peters – 21:36
But what the governments have done, subsequent governments, is bit by bit, they’ve ripped the safety net away.

Paula Peters – 21:41
Absolutely.

Paula Peters – 21:42
Now the Department of Work and Pensions is a place of coercion, fear, and distress.

Paula Peters – 21:49
And what they’ve done, subsequent governments, and what Labour are doing definitely now is causing a climate of fear and anxiety and panic.

Paula Peters – 22:00
And that is all disabled people are living in is a fear of anxiety, fear, and panic daily.

Paula Peters – 22:09
But That shouldn’t be that it should not be that way.

Paula Peters – 22:12
And that’s what I think that is what John’s book really highlights.

Paula Peters – 22:18
And then, you know, before summer recess, and John was saying, oh, my book’s gonna be published over this summer.

Paula Peters – 22:26
And then John McCardell from Black Triangle come out with this idea.

Paula Peters – 22:29
You know what?

Paula Peters – 22:31
Because now we’ve got Labour government.

Paula Peters – 22:32
Let’s give every MP in government a copy of John’s book.

Paula Peters – 22:38
They need to read it.

Paula Peters – 22:39
They need to see what’s going on because a lot of them don’t know the history of the department.

Paula Peters – 22:45
They haven’t got a clue.

Paula Peters – 22:46
They just haven’t a clue.

Paula Peters – 22:49
They’re ministers.

Paula Peters – 22:50
They haven’t got a clue what happens in the senior civil service levels of their own department because the civil servants are beavering away in the background causing chaos here and there.

Paula Peters – 22:59
And the ministers haven’t got a clue.

Paula Peters – 23:01
They just have a knock on the door by one of them or, you know, we’ve come up with this.

Paula Peters – 23:06
Here’s a way to do this, and the public, I love it.

Paula Peters – 23:09
Sitting there with their tea and chocolate biscuits.

Paula Peters – 23:11
Right?

Paula Peters – 23:12
You can imagine it, like, yes, ministering way.

Ben Stevenson – 23:15
Yes.

Paula Peters – 23:16
Being in working in civil servant, it was like that at times.

Paula Peters – 23:20
Right?

Paula Peters – 23:20
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 23:21
But what John come up with this idea, look, let’s get, you know, let’s do a crowd funder, which they did.

Paula Peters – 23:32
And let’s, get a copy of John’s book in the hands of every Labour MP.

Paula Peters – 23:40
So they set a target of, like, 3 and a half grand to get a copy of the book and everything and put it out there.

Paula Peters – 23:48
And there was a lot of things behind the scenes.

Paula Peters – 23:51
You know, we’re asking disabled people for money, and we didn’t feel comfortable with that.

Paula Peters – 23:56
But people gave disabled people in our lives just for no.

Paula Peters – 24:00
We wanna, we believe in this book, as we all do, and we really want we really think it should happen.

Paula Peters – 24:07
And we didn’t just smash that figure.

Paula Peters – 24:13
It went to, well, let’s get a copy in the hands of all political parties in parliament and independents, and they need to know what’s going on.

Paula Peters – 24:21
And then it was and then so the crowdfunder was expanded to, like, 7 a half 1000, I think it was.

Paula Peters – 24:30
And now they’ve raised enough money to put the book in every political, in every politician’s hands in the country, from elected mayors to Welsh Assembly members, to Scottish Parliament members, to Tories, to Labour, to Lib Dems, to Greens, to all the independents, because we need them to read this book.

Paula Peters – 24:51
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 24:52
We need them to think before the budget.

Paula Peters – 24:55
Read this book and see the decisions you’re voting on are harming people, and they’re causing mass devastation.
Paula Peters – 25:05
And what this department needs taking on, reforming, and its rhetoric needs putting a stop to.

Paula Peters – 25:13
The thing is with the media though, the editors and the owners, they’re all friends with government.

Paula Peters – 25:20
Right?

Paula Peters – 25:21
Get the information.

Paula Peters – 25:22
They like the exclusives.

Paula Peters – 25:23
It sells papers, doesn’t it?

Paula Peters – 25:26
But also a lot of the owners are massive campaign contributors to the political parties to further their agenda.

Paula Peters – 25:35
Yeah.

Ben Stevenson – 25:35
You know?

Ben Stevenson – 25:36
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 25:37
Get their get their name in government.

Paula Peters – 25:39
Oh, you know, we really wanna, you know, get Well, it’s all,

Ben Stevenson – 25:43
the head of Iceland has announced that, you know, this surprise minimum wage increase Labour should really think about this.

Ben Stevenson – 25:54
So, this is somebody who tried to basically donate his way into a safe seat for the Tories who Labour willingly accepted, and triumphed and, trumpeted his conversion, Damascene conversion to the Labour Party, despite the fact that he said, I haven’t changed, but the Labour Party has.

Ben Stevenson – 26:15
So we we know I mean, all of the indications are very, very, very negative.

Ben Stevenson – 26:23
And I think you’re absolutely right.

Ben Stevenson – 26:24
We need to really be finding inventive ways to put pressure on, this government.

Ben Stevenson – 26:31
And the unions really need to be playing a significant role on that.

Ben Stevenson – 26:35
I mean, because I think you’re absolutely right.

Ben Stevenson – 26:39
They they depend on our isolation, don’t they?

Ben Stevenson – 26:43
To be able to get away with pursuing such a hostile approach, aimed at some of the most potentially the most vulnerable people in society.

Ben Stevenson – 26:58
You know, if you want to know what the quality of the society is, see how it treats, the people that are that are within its care.

Ben Stevenson – 27:06
And

Paula Peters – 27:07
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 27:08
I think what what John and Ellen come up with and allies come up with was a a mass public book delivery of John’s book to parliament on the day that parliament reconvenes, which is Monday 2nd.

Ben Stevenson – 27:26
Mhmm.

Paula Peters – 27:26
And each of the books would be put in a black envelope.

Paula Peters – 27:31
And all everyone who’s coming along been asked to wear black to remember disabled people who’ve died as a result of austerity.

Paula Peters – 27:40
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 27:40
And the harm of the DWP.

Paula Peters – 27:42
And we’re going into parliament to the lobby area, to the post office.

Paula Peters – 27:48
All of the books have been named with the MPs names on.

Paula Peters – 27:52
Right?

Paula Peters – 27:53
And we’re giving this book in to every single MP.

Paula Peters – 27:57
Right?

Ben Stevenson – 27:58
Very good.

Paula Peters – 27:59
And then we’re gonna have a meeting with John McDonald to talk about social security system and what comes next, how we can put pressure on, labour and, you know, have a series rethink about what they’re doing.

Paula Peters – 28:15
Because what she’ll do, she’ll stand at that dispatch box, Rachel Deville, as I’ve now taken to calling her after Cruella, she’ll stand up there with strums Satan thinking, oh, these cuts are painful.

Paula Peters – 28:31
We had to do it.

Paula Peters – 28:33
They didn’t have to do it.

Paula Peters – 28:35
They did not have to do it.

Paula Peters – 28:36
They don’t have to do it.

Paula Peters – 28:39
There is another way, and they need to find that other way.

Paula Peters – 28:42
Because if they don’t, the next 12 months, the next 18 months, the next 2 years, the next 3 years, we’re gonna see deaths unprecedented, the likes of what we’ve not seen under a Tory government.

Paula Peters – 28:56
But what this is also doing is now we’ve got Nigel Farage in parliament and 5 reform MPs, 3 of which are in the London and Eastern region of Unite, which is giving them all support right now, is we’re seeing the emergence of the far right.
Paula Peters – 29:19
I mean, you only have to look at European elections.

Paula Peters – 29:22
You look at Italy, you look at France, you look at Trump in the States, and you look at Farage here.

Paula Peters – 29:30
And people are buying into the populist politics, not realizing what their real agenda is.

Paula Peters – 29:37
And what our concerns are, and I think what has already been discussed before this election, we’re in real danger in 2029 of electing a far right fascist government.

Paula Peters – 29:52
We’re one electoral cycle away from it.

Ben Stevenson – 29:52
Right.

Paula Peters – 29:58
And if Labour and I I don’t know if that I think that’s probably why Labour rushing through things because they know they’re not gonna get elected in 2029.

Ben Stevenson – 30:08
Well, I

Paula Peters – 30:09
And Farage has not has made it really, really clear.

Paula Peters – 30:14
He wants to be PM in 2029.

Paula Peters – 30:17
And he got 30% in some constituencies of the vote.

Paula Peters – 30:23
4,000,000 people voted for for reform and Farage.

Paula Peters – 30:26
There were really millions.

Paula Peters – 30:28
75,000 members.

Paula Peters – 30:31
Right?

Ben Stevenson – 30:31
They finished second in the

Paula Peters – 30:33
And they’ve got a multimillionaire backer who’s backing them, who’s throwing money at them.

Paula Peters – 30:38
And at their conference, oh, spend a £1,000, and you can have a picture taken with Nigel Farage.

Paula Peters – 30:45
You can do this and you can do that, but people are buying into his policies.

Paula Peters – 30:50
But he’s dang the danger is he’s sowing the seeds in parliament for the next referendum.

Paula Peters – 30:57
And that is the UK’s removal from the European Court of Human Rights.

Paula Peters – 31:02
He’s going after the Human Rights Act.

Paula Peters – 31:06
And people need to see.

Paula Peters – 31:08
You get rid of the human you get rid of human rights.

Paula Peters – 31:12
We’re all screwed.

Paula Peters – 31:14
There will be no workers’ rights.

Paula Peters – 31:16
There will be there will be slavery.

Paula Peters – 31:18
There will be, you know, there will be no rights.

Paula Peters – 31:21
We will have no protections under law.

Paula Peters – 31:23
And that is what we’ve that is what Farage and the likes of Yahtzee Lennon, the Tories, they want that.

Paula Peters – 31:32
Their rights are protected, but so the rest of us.

Paula Peters – 31:36
So we’re hoping, the visualness of presenting John’s book into parliament, it will show people on social media that something’s being done.

Paula Peters – 31:49
But also, we’re asking disabled people and allies, and we know not everyone can travel to parliament on Monday, is to wear black at home to show support to us, but also to remember disabled people who are no longer with us, and we all know someone who is not.

Paula Peters – 32:12
To use, you know, to use the hashtag, you know, the department, which is John’s book, no more benefit deaths.

Paula Peters – 32:21
I think we’re going into parliament at roundabout 12, something like that.

Paula Peters – 32:25
We want we really, really, really wanna highlight this book, but also show to the media we’re not going away, but we need this clear message to come from the second that we need every activist we’ve got from your living rooms, from your bedrooms, wherever you are to join in the resistance and take labour on because they mean business.

Paula Peters – 32:51
And she is not joking when she says we’re gonna be worse than Tories, Rachel Reeves.

Paula Peters – 32:57
And Starmer said it.

Paula Peters – 33:00
Reeves has said it.

Paula Peters – 33:01
Kendall said it.

Paula Peters – 33:03
Being on Social Security is not a lifestyle choice.

Paula Peters – 33:07
It’s not a lifestyle choice anyway.

Ben Stevenson – 33:12
It’s, I suppose showing casting a light into the real driving force behind the, you know, how the austerity agenda has been really pursued by, by past governments, and like you say, it’s going to be continued because they haven’t, you know, it’s a change of personnel at the top, not a change of strategy, not a change of direction.
Ben Stevenson – 33:44
They’ve signalled that they’re gonna continue pretty much.

Paula Peters – 33:46
I mean, I you know, when do you know something?

Paula Peters – 33:51
I mean, when somebody asked me, back in May when, SINAC was announced the general election, how did you feel about it?

Paula Peters – 34:01
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 34:02
My first immediate reaction was filled with dread and really bad anxiety, and it wouldn’t go away.

Ben Stevenson – 34:08
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 34:09
And, to be honest with you, what we’d seen of labour the last few years, you know, of all the Jeremy Corbyn stuff.

Paula Peters – 34:24
You know, the witch hunts, the pretty much the gagging of the left and everything.

Paula Peters – 34:30
You know?

Paula Peters – 34:31
And I knew they were gonna continue with austerity because of the rumblings they were making, and there was gonna be no change.

Paula Peters – 34:35
And And, also, 14 years of Labour opposition, and they were just quiet on what was happening and agreeing Yeah.

Paula Peters – 34:40
With a great deal of it.

Paula Peters – 34:42
Oh, yeah.

Paula Peters – 34:43
I mean, you know, we can still count on one

Ben Stevenson – 34:45
hand the number of people who voted against, you know, when Harriet Harman was leader.

Paula Peters – 34:56
You know, but when you go when you read the book and, Atos or Unum, as they were called then, The the private health providers or the disability deniers, the American Disability Health Insurance Companies, were entrenched in in the Department of Health and Social Security before it become the DWP, and it was the Tories who bought men in the early nineties.

Paula Peters – 35:28
And now when you go back before 92, and John covers it in his book, you know, under the Thatcher era and everything and wanting to reform invalidity benefit and cuts.

Paula Peters – 35:43
And, you know, they were wanting to bring in private in just, you know, private health insurance companies into it then even under Thatcher.

Paula Peters – 35:53
And so, you know, you know, Boonam changed because Boonam were a huge, great big American insurance guy, as you know.

Paula Peters – 36:03
But they were also there was a warning put against them how bad that company really were in the States.

Paula Peters – 36:09
Mhmm.

Paula Peters – 36:10
And, you know, they were really way entrenched into the Department of Work and Pensions before they were called the Department of Work and Pensions.

Paula Peters – 36:21
But when you read through the book, it wasn’t just, you know, ministers that were making well, ministers don’t make policy.

Paula Peters – 36:30
It’s the top civil servants that make policy, and they just present ideas to ministers.

Paula Peters – 36:35
Ministers haven’t got fucking clue what’s going on.

Paula Peters – 36:39
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 36:39
They’re just given a sheaf of paperwork and told to sign stuff, and they haven’t got a clue.

Ben Stevenson – 36:44
No.

Ben Stevenson – 36:45
Absolutely.

Paula Peters – 36:45
It’s the it’s the likes of and Rachel Reeves, don’t forget, married to Robert Devereux, senior civil servant at the DWP who since retired.

Paula Peters – 36:58
Right?

Paula Peters – 36:59
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 36:59
Nice big fat golden plate pension and all the rest of it.

Paula Peters – 37:04
So, yeah, she knew she knew for decades what the hell was going on in the department work, and she kept quiet.

Paula Peters – 37:12
But, yeah, she’s she was saying in 23rd 2013.

Paula Peters – 37:16
You know?

Paula Peters – 37:16
Living on benefits will not be a lifestyle choice.

Paula Peters – 37:19
So she’s just repeating the same mantra.

Paula Peters – 37:21
We’re gonna be tougher on benefits than the Tories.

Ben Stevenson – 37:26
Absolutely.

Ben Stevenson – 37:26
Yeah.

Ben Stevenson – 37:26
No.

Ben Stevenson – 37:28
Like you say, the mantra is still there because by and large the, you know, I mean obviously we’ve had Kirito on the speech today where he’s basically given indicated to the working class, that we’re we should be in in for 10 10 years or hurt basically.

Ben Stevenson – 37:48
It’s gonna take a decade of Starmer.
Ben Stevenson – 37:51
We’ve got to give him a decade to rebuild the country after the toys.

Ben Stevenson – 37:55
I mean, this is, you know, but we we’ve seen what he’s managed to achieve with his premiership so far, you know, and beyond a change in branding, there doesn’t seem to be any change in substance, You know?

Ben Stevenson – 38:16
So But he won’t last.

Ben Stevenson – 38:17
Certainly not in this in this area, that we’re that we’re working with.

Paula Peters – 38:22
He won’t last 10 years.

Paula Peters – 38:27
Get to 2026.

Paula Peters – 38:28
I mean, we’ve got London council elections here, And, obviously, being in the outer rim as we call the outer boroughs here.

Paula Peters – 38:37
You know, Croydon’s.

Paula Peters – 38:39
But I’m talking Bromley.

Paula Peters – 38:39
Right?

Paula Peters – 38:41
The anti ULA’s campaign sniffing, I mean, that’s still going on.

Paula Peters – 38:47
Khan’s brought in, he’s gonna bring in tolls for Blackhawk tunnel, and then there’s a SilverTown tunnel as well.

Paula Peters – 38:55
You know?

Paula Peters – 38:58
ULA’s has been a massively contentious issue here.

Paula Peters – 39:01
And what I’ve seen in local groups posting on social media are threats to kill against Khan.

Paula Peters – 39:07
I mean, they had groups going up to his house and harassing him and everything.

Paula Peters – 39:13
I mean, he’s I mean, he really increased the GLA share of the council tax and everything like that this year, which was massively unpopular as well.

Paula Peters – 39:25
To be honest with you, I think a lot of labour counsellors and everything are gonna be in serious threat in 2026 from reform.

Paula Peters – 39:33
Mhmm.

Paula Peters – 39:33
You know, Farage is keeping quiet and beavering away in the background, always buggering off to America wherever he is.

Paula Peters – 39:40
But, here come out with this slew of populist Yeah.

Paula Peters – 39:45
Policies for London and everything like that.

Paula Peters – 39:48
And there are an awful lot of race you know, an awful lot, I’d say, trade unionists and the left or you can’t call them left, a lot of members in trade unions who are buying into reforms, rhetoric and everything and are voting for them.

Paula Peters – 40:05
And in London and Eastern, the new regional secretary was absolutely horrified to hear how many members in London and Eastern.

Paula Peters – 40:14
And we’ve got quarter of a 1000000 members in London and Eastern.

Paula Peters – 40:18
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 40:20
How many of them were racist, agreed with Yapsi, Lenin, and, Farage’s points, and also members who are threatening to leave the union because they were fighting fascism and racism.

Ben Stevenson – 40:35
I remember reading the that even in 1979 a third of trade unionists voted for Thatcher, you know, so we shouldn’t be surprised.

Ben Stevenson – 40:49
There’s a long history of people voting against their own interests in that sense, But listen, I think you’re absolutely right, but this is the breeding territory isn’t it?

Ben Stevenson – 41:00
That the far right needs.

Paula Peters – 41:02
Yep.

Ben Stevenson – 41:03
It it is the combination of the demoralization of the working class, the poverty that we’re seeing, that people are suffering that’s grinding now for after 14 years of austerity, the degradation of public services, and people need something and someone to blame, and, you know, the ruling class can’t turn around and say, well, we’re to blame.

Ben Stevenson – 41:35
Yeah.

Ben Stevenson – 41:35
It’d be nice if they did, but they’re clearly on a line to blame, immigrants, refugees, however you want to, but that nebulous other, you know, that person coming down the street.

Ben Stevenson – 41:51
I’ve had it, I remember when I went to a barbecue this weekend, and, you know, a couple of my sister’s neighbours came over, and they’re very clearly racist.

Ben Stevenson – 42:03
Just racist, You know, like they’ve got racist thoughts, they think racist things, they say racist things, but this is the black country and it’s partly a reaction of, you know, you think it’s crazy because you live on the doorstep to Birmingham, one of the most diverse cities in in in Britain, but people are being forced out of Birmingham into the black country, basically through gentrification.
Ben Stevenson – 42:33
So and those people are coming from massively ethnically diverse areas into what are quite deprived, quite white areas.

Ben Stevenson – 42:44
And so the normal kind of community tension, that is being, driven, it is there, you know, and it’s just that the far right are exploiting it.

Ben Stevenson – 42:54
You know?

Ben Stevenson – 42:54
There’s no question about that.

Paula Peters – 42:56
We have that I mean, couple you know?

Paula Peters – 43:01
I mean, for reform to have their conference in Birmingham in a couple of weeks’ time, right, says an awful lot, really.

Paula Peters – 43:12
And they know that even in diverse communities, Islamophobia and racism are growing even amongst their own community.

Paula Peters – 43:21
And, here, obviously, when you say about gentrification, because where I live here in Orpington, we’ve got high levels of property.

Paula Peters – 43:33
We have a multiple debt provision level of 1, which is one of the worst in England, I think.

Paula Peters – 43:39
But you’re seeing Orpington becoming multi-diverse.

Paula Peters – 43:44
And, you know, people are being moved out of areas, have moved into here, and it’s causing massive issues, sadly, with residents who are white, who are openly racist.

Paula Peters – 44:03
I mean, a neighbour down the road, and she’s got 10 doors down from me.

Paula Peters – 44:07
And the primary school down the road here, you know, is multi-diverse and, you know, she actually shouts at black kids, hates them past in her front door.

Paula Peters – 44:21
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 44:22
Is abusive to them openly.

Paula Peters – 44:24
That 7 year olds, 8 year olds, 9 year olds, what have they done?

Paula Peters – 44:24
You know?

Paula Peters – 44:29
Nothing.

Paula Peters – 44:30
But she hates them because of the colour of their skin, and she’s openly hostile.

Paula Peters – 44:30
No.

Paula Peters – 44:35
And I’ve seen especially in the last well, the last 10 years, it’s got worse.

Paula Peters – 44:46
We’ve had I’ve had to because here, we had 2 UKIP counsellors in 2015.

Paula Peters – 44:52
And this is Farage’s backyard as well because he lives down the road or used to.

Paula Peters – 45:00
But we’ve had racist graffiti on bar stops where, like, don’t bend the knee and KKK and squash stickers and Yeah.

Paula Peters – 45:07
You know, I’ve risked you know, when I run the anti UK campaign in Bromley, there were times when my life was threatened.

Paula Peters – 45:16
I had bottles thrown at me, you know, physically threatened verbally and all the rest of it.

Paula Peters – 45:22
It didn’t stop me, but it’s getting more and more hostile, and you’re seeing kids getting targeted now.

Paula Peters – 45:32
And it’s just wrong.

Ben Stevenson – 45:32
Mhmm.

Paula Peters – 45:33
It’s just absolutely wrong.

Paula Peters – 45:36
And it was and I was at a meeting 2 weeks ago, and a new man shared the same platform as me.

Paula Peters – 45:46
I didn’t get to talk to him afterwards, sadly, because he had to dash up.

Paula Peters – 45:50
But it’s what he said that I strongly thought, yeah, is exactly what you’re saying.

Paula Peters – 45:57
A heater man who stood up, and he said, he said, you know, he said after recent weeks and the riots and rising Islamophobia, he said it’s a deep disappointment to me and deep sadness that members of my mosque, friends of mine, people I prayed with on a Friday, walked to prayers with on a Friday, that I’ve had in my house, that my kids have played with their children, hold deeply prejudicial views, and are Islamophobic, even within their own community.

Paula Peters – 46:36
And he turned around and said he said, I don’t know what we do to heal the divisions within our own community.

Paula Peters – 46:43
But he said they’re there.

Ben Stevenson – 46:45
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 46:46
And he said when we have serious, work to do, but we have, like because I’m on the Kent, Greater London borders, so it’s kind of bit like no man’s land, really.

Paula Peters – 46:59
I think you could describe it as, at a rail station, RMT put it up.
Paula Peters – 47:07
They had, national front stickers stuck up at a station with, razor blades underneath, and that rail station is not even 3 miles from me.

Ben Stevenson – 47:17
I saw

Ben Stevenson – 47:17
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 47:18
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 47:19
And that’s down the road here.

Paula Peters – 47:20
I know that station.

Paula Peters – 47:21
I used to live around the corner from it.

Ben Stevenson – 47:23
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 47:25
It’s just shit.

Ben Stevenson – 47:26
No.

Ben Stevenson – 47:27
Absolutely.

Ben Stevenson – 47:27
I remember detailing, at the time it was when I was still working for TSS, the increased spike in, reported incidents, basically, racially motivated incidents, assaults, verbal abuse, all sorts of different things.

Ben Stevenson – 47:48
We could see that it was on the rise, again in London on, you know, London’s public transport.

Ben Stevenson – 47:55
You think it’s a safe place by and large, it’s used by so many different people.

Ben Stevenson – 48:02
It’s like how can you possibly still, you know, go around.

Ben Stevenson – 48:10
But yeah.

Paula Peters – 48:11
I’ve been on I’ve been on picket.

Paula Peters – 48:13
I mean, I can remember 2 picket lines for in 2022.

Paula Peters – 48:17
One of them was Nas left one when they were going for their about pay and everything like that.

Paula Peters – 48:22
And, oh my god, the views on that picket line.

Paula Peters – 48:26
Because I actually called Nasdaq out about it because the regional, organizer did absolutely nothing with the complaint that we put in.

Paula Peters – 48:34
And, I mean, you’ve met Andy, remember, from our branch, and he came along and Shaka brought him, to our to the picket line in the car, and they were really disparaging about Andy.

Paula Peters – 48:47
Oh, look.

Paula Peters – 48:48
Is that his carer?

Paula Peters – 48:49
Is he wearing a nappy?

Paula Peters – 48:51
Is he gonna dribble?

Paula Peters – 48:53
That’s before Andy even spoke to them.

Paula Peters – 48:53
Right?

Paula Peters – 48:56
You know?

Paula Peters – 48:57
And then it was what one of them said about, Diana, but

Ben Stevenson – 49:01
Oh, yeah.

Paula Peters – 49:03
She’s a psycho and should be taken out and

Ben Stevenson – 49:05
shot.

Ben Stevenson – 49:07
Frankly.

Paula Peters – 49:08
The disabledist views, the misogyny.

Paula Peters – 49:11
And when I challenged it, you know, there were women there were female train drivers there, and they did absolutely nothing about it.

Paula Peters – 49:21
They didn’t even contact me afterwards and see if I was alright.

Paula Peters – 49:25
But the misogyny, the disablers, and the racism, and they were really aggressive, nasty views as well.

Paula Peters – 49:33
I didn’t feel the 3 of us I mean, I challenged, you know, because I’m not one to hold back as you know, and I challenged him on that picket line.

Paula Peters – 49:41
I really did.

Paula Peters – 49:42
And I got told, oh, here we go again.

Paula Peters – 49:45
She’s gonna go off on mom to me.

Paula Peters – 49:48
And I said, you’d I told him and I said, we come we’ve come here to show solidarity to you.

Paula Peters – 49:48
Right?

Paula Peters – 49:54
But I said, all we’ve been met with is hostility, aggression, racism, homophobia, disableism, misogyny.

Paula Peters – 50:06
And I turned around and said, and you think that’s acceptable?

Paula Peters – 50:09
I said, it’s not got any place here, and it’s not got any place anywhere.

Paula Peters – 50:15
And I just looked at Shaka, and I looked at Andy, and I turned around and said I pointed to Andy and said, he is one of the most decent, amazing socialist you’ll ever like you to meet.

Paula Peters – 50:26
I said, he’s come 15 miles to show support to you here today.

Paula Peters – 50:31
And I said, and if I was him and I heard what you said about him, I would have stuck 2 fingers up to you and then turn man and say, go yourselves.

Paula Peters – 50:41
And I turn man and said, and we’d be putting in a I put a complaint into the branch secretary.

Paula Peters – 50:46
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 50:46
Nothing.

Paula Peters – 50:47
Put a complaint into the regional secretary.
Paula Peters – 50:51
Nothing.

Paula Peters – 50:52
And when I was on a call with We Own It about the British Railway bill, which is a crock of shit Yeah.

Paula Peters – 51:00
I brought it up with Aflaf and said, you’ve got to do something about the abhorrent racism and everything in your union.

Paula Peters – 51:02
And I said, I stopped

Ben Stevenson – 51:15
went through everything.

Paula Peters – 51:16
I gave them dates to say, I want something done.

Paula Peters – 51:16
I said, but you won’t do anything.

Ben Stevenson – 51:16
I went through

Paula Peters – 51:23
I refused like this.

Paula Peters – 51:25
And I said the rot is I said the rot in the trade unions is from the top all the way through.

Ben Stevenson – 51:31
Yeah.

Ben Stevenson – 51:31
I think I mean, I always remember the Acala line that, you know, racism is something that is delivered from the to the working class from the top down.

Ben Stevenson – 51:44
You know.

Ben Stevenson – 51:45
It’s in many ways I, you know, despair at the working class racist obviously, because you know, fundamentally it’s so counter to even just that sense of identity about what is working class, you know.

Ben Stevenson – 52:05
I mean, when I I grew up surrounded by, you know, ideas about solidarity, international solidarity, you know, people from different countries, cultures, languages, saying we’ve got more in common than we’ve got, you know, differences.

Ben Stevenson – 52:23
But I think that a lot of this is, you know, the the fear of immigration is definitely being actively stoked, and I think that is perhaps almost connected in some ways to the fact that there are going to be a 1000000000 climate refugees estimated by 2,050.

Paula Peters – 52:48
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 52:49
It’s absolutely sometimes it just, you know, no words.

Ben Stevenson – 52:59
Yeah.

Ben Stevenson – 53:01
I think isn’t it about because what we wanna do is create the right culture, don’t we?

Ben Stevenson – 53:06
And the right environment.

Ben Stevenson – 53:07
I mean, ultimately, a socialist, communist, or Marxist, whatever, you know, we’re we’re trying to create the environment where we can see a little bit of a window into what the future society will look like, you know, because we’re not naive enough to think, oh it’s just gonna come to life one day and then, you know, magically, be delivered by proclamation, the day has come.

Ben Stevenson – 53:38
You know, it’s a process, isn’t it, of political and economic and organizational change, and trade unions have always fulfilled a role under capitalism.

Ben Stevenson – 53:51
I mean even, you know, the idea of wage militancy, the idea that, you know, I’m going to go out and get better wages, that in and of itself has very many limitations attached to it, and it isn’t necessarily a direct threat to the capitalist system.

Ben Stevenson – 54:10
Yeah it can be, and it has been, certainly when people were fighting for their industries and workers were occupying factories and they had that level of confidence, to be able to do that.

Paula Peters – 54:26
To to be honest with you, I mean, I worry about my nephews and nieces and what the future will look like for them.

Paula Peters – 54:37
I mean, you know, they’re at school and uni and everything like that.

Paula Peters – 54:41
And knowing, there won’t be a retirement age for them, and I’d dread it, you know, because when my nephew graduates, he’s not even gonna live in the UK anyway.

Paula Peters – 54:56
He’s he’s getting out.

Paula Peters – 54:58
But but because he’s a disabled person and he needs regular health care, what would that look like abroad for him, and can he afford it?

Paula Peters – 55:06
I think that, you know because he was talking to move into Canada, and I dissuaded him from doing that because I said to him, what we’ve medically insisted in death for people who are chronically, unwell.

Paula Peters – 55:20
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 55:20
And I turned around and said, you’ve got a chronic condition.

Paula Peters – 55:22
I said, you won’t be given health care in Canada.
Paula Peters – 55:25
You’ll be told, why don’t you think about this?

Ben Stevenson – 55:28
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 55:28
Why don’t you think about euthanasia?

Paula Peters – 55:30
And people need to watch Liz Carr’s documentary.

Ben Stevenson – 55:36
It was They

Paula Peters – 55:37
were off dead.

Ben Stevenson – 55:38
It was absolutely

Paula Peters – 55:41
They’ve gotta watch it.

Ben Stevenson – 55:42
I I I’ve seen this.

Ben Stevenson – 55:43
It’s absolutely shocking.

Ben Stevenson – 55:46
You know, it it presents I’ve always sat on the fence on an issue like this because in a sense, I think it, you know, up until now I’ve always been like, oh, it’s individual choice, and I can see the circumstances and everything else.

Ben Stevenson – 56:02
But I very much am not in favour of the state having the, ability to be able to kill anybody under any circumstances.

Ben Stevenson – 56:11
I don’t think that the state should have that power.

Paula Peters – 56:14
Do you know what?

Paula Peters – 56:15
I mean, I’ve been involved with Not Dead Yet for over 10 years now, and I’ve been on many protests around this.

Paula Peters – 56:24
And, I mean, I took part in the documentaries you saw because I feel that strongly about it.

Paula Peters – 56:31
And, I mean, I’ve got personal experience of, when my aunt was diagnosed with MS, and, you know, it absolutely devastated her when she was diagnosed, and she had to get a private scan because the GP just kept, ignoring her symptoms.

Paula Peters – 56:54
And, when she had a really bad footwork, she needed to get an MRI scan, and she was told over the phone that she had secondary progressive severe MS when she was at work.

Paula Peters – 57:07
Mhmm.

Paula Peters – 57:08
And it devastated her, and it, she worried about what the future holds held for her, and she didn’t wanna be a burden to us.

Paula Peters – 57:18
And she saw a program, because I do remember there was a program about Dignitas at the time.

Paula Peters – 57:26
And she wanted to go there and just thought, you know, I don’t wanna live like this.

Paula Peters – 57:31
And I I remember this.

Paula Peters – 57:34
She asked me to go with her.

Paula Peters – 57:37
She told me not to speak to my to my mom.

Paula Peters – 57:44
I pleaded with her that we get her help and we get her support and we’re sort we get on top of things in the worst of it.

Paula Peters – 57:54
She was so determined.

Paula Peters – 57:56
And when she left a note on the kitchen table, and then there was this mad she said, I’ve gone to Heathrow Airport.

Paula Peters – 58:06
I’m going to Switzerland and everything like that, and I’m booked to go.

Paula Peters – 58:11
And he was a mad dash to Heathrow Airport to talk her out of it.

Paula Peters – 58:15
And, you know, when we talked about it 3 years before she died, she died 2 days after my birthday during lockdown in 2023.

Paula Peters – 58:28
And I shared a room of my aunt growing up, so it was really, really tough.

Paula Peters – 58:33
She’s like my big sister who’s only, like, 15 years between us, actually.

Paula Peters – 58:39
And when we talked about her sister dying and everything 3 years before she died, she said, you know what?

Paula Peters – 58:47
She said in a way, she said, I’m glad you all talked to me, and we got social care support, and we got carers.

Paula Peters – 58:55
And and I got the support, she said, because I would have missed out on 15 years with all of you.

Paula Peters – 59:02
And seeing my great nieces and nephews being born and building a relationship with them.

Paula Peters – 59:11
You know?

Paula Peters – 59:12
And but when she was put into nursing care in in the April, when her carer said they couldn’t cope with her access needs anymore, and that was a hard I mean, at the end, she couldn’t swallow and she couldn’t talk and she had no bodily function left.

Paula Peters – 59:37
But to see that I think the hardest thing for my mom and my and my uncle, that they weren’t allowed into hospital because of COVID restrictions and everything.

Paula Peters – 59:54
And then saying goodbye by video call.
Ben Stevenson – 59:58
Yeah.

Ben Stevenson – 59:59
No.

Ben Stevenson – 59:59
I mean, I think we That.

Ben Stevenson – 60:02
There’s a lot of us But I

Paula Peters – 60:03
think I’ll whatever comes to terms with it.

Paula Peters – 60:07
And whenever I think about assisted dying and everything But she fought every day.

Paula Peters – 60:18
From diagnosis to when she died, she fought every day, and we have special memories that we wouldn’t have had.

Paula Peters – 60:26
Because when you go to Dignitas, they don’t give you the drink.

Paula Peters – 60:30
They just put it in your hands, and it’s down to you to take it.

Paula Peters – 60:33
You know?

Paula Peters – 60:34
And it’s not a it’s not a clean and quick death.

Paula Peters – 60:39
It takes several hours, and it’s not it’s not nice.

Paula Peters – 60:45
No.

Paula Peters – 60:46
And you have to pay for that privilege of $14 to do that.

Paula Peters – 60:52
I know.

Ben Stevenson – 60:52
I think there’s the the 2 I mean, there’s a sort of romanticization of it.

Ben Stevenson – 60:57
Isn’t there almost I mean, that those are beautiful and poignant story, I thought, that, you know I mean, I’ve been in exactly the same position of, you know, not being able to say goodbye to my dad because of the COVID restrictions, and you do think, you know, we don’t necessarily always get to choose, you know, and I think one of the things you said that was particularly poignant is there’s always that sense of we don’t want to be a burden, you know?

Ben Stevenson – 61:27
It’s something that’s very endemic in working class people I think.

Ben Stevenson – 61:30
It’s like we don’t want to feel like we’re, we’re, we’re putting others out, you know?

Ben Stevenson – 61:37
But it’s a sliding scale isn’t it?

Ben Stevenson – 61:38
We all need care of some kind or another, whether or not that’s care to swallow or care to get to work on time, You know?

Paula Peters – 61:47
Do you know?

Paula Peters – 61:49
Most people, you know, and we talked about this, which wasn’t shown in the documentary.

Paula Peters – 61:57
And we had a really powerful 3 hour discussion.

Paula Peters – 62:02
And the first thing, you know, Liz had pieces of word, words on pieces of coloured paper and everything, and we then had to discuss it.

Paula Peters – 62:11
I think you might see a bit of it, but you didn’t see the word of debate.

Paula Peters – 62:15
And when terminal was picked out, we all said the same thing, and we were all matter of fact about it.

Paula Peters – 62:23
We’re all terminal.

Paula Peters – 62:25
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 62:26
Right?

Paula Peters – 62:27
But you are.

Paula Peters – 62:28
Because from the day you’re born, you’re gonna die.

Ben Stevenson – 62:32
Right.

Paula Peters – 62:32
You’re dying.

Ben Stevenson – 62:33
No.

Ben Stevenson – 62:34
Absolutely.

Paula Peters – 62:34
You know?

Paula Peters – 62:35
I mean Terminal means different things to people.

Paula Peters – 62:38
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 62:38
And then we all said the same thing.

Paula Peters – 62:42
You know?

Paula Peters – 62:43
A lot of us wear pads and had the indignity being cleaned up and all that.

Paula Peters – 62:48
You know?

Paula Peters – 62:49
And then you said if you take the fear away from it, and you matter of fact about it, you just deal with it.

Paula Peters – 62:55
Right?

Paula Peters – 62:56
You deal with having to need equipment and and what access needs you get.

Paula Peters – 63:02
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 63:03
You’re you’ve had to fight for things.

Paula Peters – 63:05
But you have a matter of fact while dealing with it, and it gives you a strength.

Paula Peters – 63:10
People are terrified of becoming hospitals, so they’re terrified of getting older and losing their dignity and all the rest of it.

Paula Peters – 63:18
You know, last year, around Christmas, I lost my I completely lost my mobility for 3 weeks.

Paula Peters – 63:27
And I couldn’t I couldn’t get I could not lay down.

Paula Peters – 63:33
I struggled to get on the toilet.

Paula Peters – 63:35
I struggled to get off.

Paula Peters – 63:36
I couldn’t sit.

Paula Peters – 63:38
I couldn’t hobble 2 feet across from the bed to the other side of the room or anything like that.
Paula Peters – 63:45
I couldn’t do it.

Paula Peters – 63:46
Right?

Paula Peters – 63:47
The pain’s so I remember sitting in here sobbing my heart out, like, praying for the pain to stop.

Ben Stevenson – 63:56
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 63:57
Right?

Paula Peters – 63:58
And I’ve been in unbearable pain with cancer and

Ben Stevenson – 64:02
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 64:04
Surgery, arthritis, a whole lot.

Paula Peters – 64:07
But in that dark minute, you think I just want it to stop, just want it to end.

Paula Peters – 64:13
But then you know that in time, the flare will ease, the pain will ease, and it’s a better time coming.

Paula Peters – 64:23
You just make the most of the better times and try and hold on to those because they fart because those are the things you cling to when it’s crap.

Paula Peters – 64:33
Yeah.

Paula Peters – 64:34
Even in my darkest times of depression, I used to play Queen a lot.

Paula Peters – 64:40
Right?

Paula Peters – 64:42
And when I was really, really, really in this fucking crap place and I didn’t think I was gonna get out of it, I always used to play this song, the show must go on.

Ben Stevenson – 65:25
Well, that was quite a treat.

Ben Stevenson – 65:27
For anybody who wants to find and buy John Pring’s new book, please check the episode notes.

Ben Stevenson – 65:36
Anyone looking for Liz Carr’s documentary on assisted suicide, go to the iPlayer.

Ben Stevenson – 65:41
We will also include a link in the episode notes below.

Ben Stevenson – 65:47
We’ll catch you on the other side.

Ben Stevenson – 65:50
Take care and take care of each other