The police getting heavy handed at Atos demo yesterday, one wheelchair user had his shoulder broken.
Activists staged a protest today against Atos, the controversial firm which sponsors the Paralympics and carries out the Government’s “fit for work” assessments.
Disabled and anti-cuts campaigners have been rallying all over the country for the last week because they claim the tests for people on disability by Atos are “damaging and distressing”.
Today they took their protest to Atos’s London headquarters before carrying out a “secret action” at the Department for Work and Pensions building in central London.
Several protesters got into the DWP building and a further two in wheelchairs chained themselves to the doors, according to UK Uncut, who have been staging the protests together with Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC).
Pictures posted on Twitter showed the group sporting a banner which read “Tax Avoidance = £25 billion, Welfare Cuts = £4.5 billion” outside the DWP’s offices in Caxton House.
Molly Solomons, a spokeswoman for UK Uncut, said around 150 people had taken part in the protest at Atos’s headquarters, with a further 30 moving on to the DWP building.
She said: “We are doing this to highlight that Atos, a sponsor for the Paralympic Games, is receiving £100 million from the Government in the hope they will assess people with disabilities and get them off benefits.
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This is the wheelchair user “Patrick Lynch” who got injured in yesterdays demo’s,???
I hope Patrick will be ok, he was extremely brave in the face of the police onslaught. Many of us tried to keep the police away from the wheelchair users, we did our best but we aren’t trained to crush others. We’re just your average activist.
We did manage to get him clear of the fighting, I just hope this doesn’t deter other less able bodied protesters from turning out against ATOS and The DWP!