Disabled activist Neil Goodwin was arrested under the controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act outside parliament
The below article is an opinion piece from Neil Goodwin, an activist who was arrested for blocking an entrance to parliament with his mobility scooter
[Click to listen to the article]
I’m in Westminster Magistrate’s Court at 10am on Wednesday 3 April, charged with blocking the entrance to parliament in my mobility scooter; I’m disabled, living with multiple sclerosis (MS). This is a bit of what I am hoping to tell the judge.
Protesting the climate crisis as a disabled person
On 19 July 2023, exactly a year on from the hottest day on record and the devastating Wennington wild fire, I travelled up to parliament to protest. It was a Wednesday, and Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) was on – the busiest day of the week for parliament and for the media who cover it.
I positioned myself in front of the carriage entrance, facing towards the road:
[Photo]
I had dressed up the basket on the front of my mobility scooter to look like it was on fire, with a warning sign on the from showing a disabled wheelchair user caught between a fire and a flood – referencing the Wennington wildfire exactly a year previously.
It also referenced the danger from flash flooding, which was tragically emphasised in the run up to my plea hearing by the death of an 83-year-old Chesterfield woman called Maureen Gilbert, who drowned in her home during Storm Babet, as she was unable to escape the rapidly rising water inside her terrace home owing to mobility problems.
I carried a placard with fake flames coming out of the top, that said, ‘I cannot run from a Climate Emergency’. Neither run literally, because of my disability, nor run from what I feel is my social responsibility to try and spotlight the implications of a climate emergency, not just for disabled communities, but for all vulnerable people – the old and the frail.
Cops provide a concerning response
I asked the first police officer who approached me, I believe my arresting officer, to turn on his body cam and record a safety announcement – me detailing my various disabilities.
I explained exactly why I was there, and I was told that I was liable to be arrested.
I remember asking one officer, I think my arresting officer, to see it not as an arrest, but a demonstration in how difficult it would be to save someone like me from a fire at a moment’s notice and carry me to the safety of a police cell. To see it as an exercise in preparedness, as it were – to which, I remember him saying:
If you were in a burning building, I’d throw you over my shoulder and carry you out.
I remember thinking, if you threw me over your shoulder, it would be like throwing a 13-stone ironing board over your shoulder, as my back and neck are almost entirely fused, and you’d probably drop me and/or break my neck in the process. It certainly wouldn’t be that quick and easy.
I was given every opportunity to leave, invited on numerous occasions to carry out my protest along the pavement, away from the entrance. But it felt right to remain just where I was: right in the middle of what they like to call the Sterile Zone.
Now prosecuting disabled people to acting ‘socially responsibly’
It’s strange, but I felt both my strongest and weakest at the same time. Surrounded by cops, one of whom apparently had a best friend with MS, yet none of whom could lay a finger on me, through fear of breaking something.
Who knew that fragility could become a super-power; the burning issue of climate change held aloft, perhaps barring the way of prime minister Rishi Sunak who’s motorcade would have usually swept past by then.
So, I was arrested under section 143 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 which I thought was quite apt, as I sincerely believe that I was acting socially responsibly raising these urgent issues, especially for disabled, vulnerable and frail people; those who will be shoved onto the front line of this Tory government’s war against the weather.
I pleaded ‘not guilty’ because I don’t think that I did anything wrong. My mum told me to tell the judge that I had seen the error of my ways – when in fact some of us were beginning to feel a real terror in our days:
[Click through to article to watch video]
I’m here for it. The purpose of protesting is not to wave signs around in a way that is convinient and easy to ignore. Protests are supposed to disrupt things, to get the attention of people in power. There’s supposed to be an implied threat: “Look at all these upset people who are willing to break the law. Be a real shame if they went from blocking traffic to dragging oil executives out of buildings!” A polite and legal protest may be great for movement building, but it’s ultimately the same as asking nicely in terms of power and demands. His only mistake, the way I see it, was not bringing more people with him.
Yes, thank you!
This is a really important point, I think I even posted something about this a while back but it’s too late/early to go digging, but the gist is that disabled people were already isolated from society by design before covid, but over the past couple of years it has been made clear that most people don’t consider us worth protecting and we have been isolated even further. Which also means we simply can’t afford (and many, like myself just aren’t able) to assemble in large numbers (or at all) because of how risky it is. It makes it that much easier to pick on us (currently, but very much historically too), but absolutely reflects the government’s attitude to the general public - the harder it is to assemble, the less of a thereat to them we are, and the longer people ignore this and continue to bury their head in the sand as more of our rights are eroded, the easier it’ll be to et them when their turn comes…
Having others there, and this is where allies really come in to play, could absolutely have helped, though I do see the merit to him just being there on his own on his scooter.