Liz Carr compared Tory austerity measures to the Nazis at a Labour party fringe conference yesterday.
She used the Daily Mirror’s Real Britain Reconnecting Britain event in Liverpool to reveal that welfare cuts pose a threat to her own disability benefits.
In a powerful speech, Liz compared government efforts to move people from benefits to jobs to the Nazi slogan displayed at Auschwitz concentration camp, “Arbeit macht frei”. She declared, “We are told – and I’ve heard this before – that ‘work sets you free’. Where have we heard that before? Sorry, but it needs to be said.”
Actress Liz, who plays Clarissa Mullery in BBC drama Silent Witness, said she felt a “moral responsibility” to raise awareness about this issue, stating, “I can’t be a silent witness”.
“For many people, being disabled in austerity Britain means being hated, stigmatised, demonised as burdens, drains on the state. It means being labelled as fraudsters and work shy. It’s about being segregated and excluded and oppressed and discriminated against. It’s about being forgotten and derided and abused and sanctioned and attacked and killed and cut and rationed and reduced and starved and homeless and hungry and fearful and terrified and alone and isolated and abandoned and denied resources and silenced and rendered invisible and made to jump through hoops to prove your worth, devalued, punished, subject to vicious attacks – both by individuals and the state. It’s about being inhuman, being seen us useless and the undeserving poor. That’s the reality for disabled people in today’s society. We are the collateral damage in this ideological war this government is waging.”
This article first appeared on our Twin Media site: www.divamag.co.uk
