Let me say first an foremost that I am not in the business of trying to censor anyone, but, as I have touched upon once or twice of late, I am becoming very worried indeed about the writings of Simon Stevens. I discovered yesterday that he writes for the Huffington post – possibly the most prestigious online publication around. This gives Stevens’ ill-informed ramblings a weight they do not warrant, and that worries me.

I’m now convinced that a concerted effort needs to be made to counter simon stevens and his buffoonish articles in the huffington post. He may be a fool, but nevertheless he is a threat: for example, he has written of how the disabled people’s movement has been overrun by those with lesser impairments, who take benefit money which would otherwise go to him. How selfish, and how arrogant: he seems to have appointed himself arbiter of what others can and cannot do, how profound impairments are, and what defines disability. He claims his is a positive message aimed to encourage people to get off benefit and be more independent, but the problem is it plays straight into tory hands. As I recently wrote here the danger lies in the fact that others will think he speaks with some authority – he even has the audacity to call himself a disability consultant – when in fact he is an outsider whose views are born of mere selfishness. The government can use his utterances to support their victimisation of disabled people, through which they are forcing very vulnerable people back into work.

It is vital we defend each other as one community. I have cerebral palsy, which affects my dexterity, mobility and speech quite profoundly; but I would not for one second claim a person with, say, asbergers or OCD is any less disabled than I am, nor would it stop me defending their right to support. But that is precisely what Stevens is saying: ”The old movement has been all but dead for a number of years as its generation of activists have been institutionalised into the system they supposedly once fought against. But in 2010, the welfare reforms created a new ‘sick and disabled’ movement where we were now called to stand together to fight against ‘cuts’ that are yet to materialise in any meaningful way, and help sick people to, well, have the right not to work.” In other words, to stevens, the disability movement of old – the band of heroes which freed us in the seventies and eighties – has been overrun by people who are merely ‘sick’ and lazy. Needless to say, this analysis bears no resemblance to reality: quite frankly, I find it insulting, as a man who went to a special school and whose partner grew up in a scope home, to hear such words from on of the first beneficiaries of inclusive education. Moreover, what right does stevens have to cast doubt on other people’s conditions? How does he know they aren’t as severe as his? Such words divide us, and doom us.

The goal of the disabled people’s movement is as it always has been: equality. We may no longer be locked away in scope homes, but now we face other forms of persecution. And these forms of persecution now affect greater numbers of people, so that they too have every right to call themselves disabled ad fight alongside us. To argue we should stop fighting, and that the movement has been overrun by lazy malcontents, gives carte blanche to those who would oppress us to ignore our entire movement, to continue with the cuts and the back to work schemes. That’s why it is vital we try to have Stevens’ articles taken offline: they are damaging, devicive and hurtful, and, if seen by the wrong person, potentially very dangerous indeed.