Among the working class it is those who are seen as unable to give 100% to 'normal' society who suffer the most. The elderly, children and the disabled all suffer further hardships than most. Please read the following and help in any way you can...
Dear Friends and Colleagues
As many of you know the UK Government is currently planning to ratify (bring into UK Law) the new United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Once ratified, this will create a monumental shift in the way disabled people have our rights recognized and protected across the world.
Until now the UK Govt was leading the way on the Convention but progress has now stalled and the Govt has decided that it does not want to protect disabled people’s human rights after all. The Govt wants to prevent any further moves towards inclusive education for all disabled people by opting out of its commitment to Article 24, of the UNCRPD, on education.
What the Govt seems to have forgotten is that it agreed the text of Article 24 back in August 2006 knowing that it meant it would have to plan for making the education system in Britain, inclusive, over time. This was not a problem for the Govt then so why now?
ALLFIE believes this is shameful backtracking and is a huge betrayal of the Govt’s commitment to equality for disabled people by 2025. ALLFIE believes that equality for ALL disabled people cannot be achieved without an education system that is fully inclusive of ALL learners.
ALLFIE has made numerous attempts to meet with Govt Ministers to discuss their position but they keep refusing to meet with us – so much for transparent government. Whatever happened to the Govt’s commitment to involving disabled people ?
ALLFIE has drafted a letter to Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, saying that the Govt must reconsider this decision and ratify the UNCRPD without ANY reservations. The Govt must understand that its current position is out of step with the rest of the world – no other country has opted out of Article 24 – SHAME ON THE UK GOVT!!
PLEASE PRINT A COPY OF THE ATTACHED LETTER, SIGN IT AND SEND TO GORDON BROWN AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
Ways to send the letter to Gordon Brown:
By post to
No. 10 Downing Street London, SW1A 2AA - Dear Prime Minister - No.10 Downing St Fax No: 020 7925 0918
Please Please Please do all that you can to get a copy of this letter to Gordon Brown. We must not allow educational apartheid to continue for future generations of disabled people.
In Solidarity
Tara
Regards
Tara Flood
Chief Executive Officer
Alliance for Inclusive Education
Registered office:
336 Brixton Road,
London, SW9 7AA
Company No: 5988026
Charity No: 1124424
Tel: 020 7737 6030
Mobile: 07932 750 667
Email: tara.flood[at]allfie.org.uk
Website: www.allfie.org.uk
MY SPACE URL: http://www.myspace.com/allfie
Here comes startling news. The social mobility white paper published today will propose legislation of extraordinary radicalism - simple, fundamental and profound. It should have been Labour's guiding light for the last 11 years - but better late than never.
The government will create a new over-arching law creating a duty on the whole public sector to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor. This single legal duty will stand as the main frame from which all other equality legislation flows. Race, gender and disability injustices are all subsets of the one great inequality - class. It trumps them all. The gap between rich and poor in Britain is greater than in almost all rich nations, putting the UK with the United States among the most unequal.
This new duty to narrow the gap would permeate every aspect of government policy. Its possible ramifications are mind-bogglingly immense - as astonishing as Tony Blair's promise to abolish child poverty: it will make that pledge more achievable by 2020.
Harriet Harman, the head of the government's equality office, is the architect of the new law and will outline its meaning and importance in a speech to the Fabian Society's annual conference on Saturday. Business secretary Peter Mandelson will speak at the Fabian event too, which should be interesting. Harman fought a long and successful battle for cabinet support, with virtually all agreeing with enthusiasm to its inclusion in today's white paper, though with some notable opposition. The only bill it could be included in is the imminent equalities bill, making equality itself the prime objective. One cabinet member described it with relish as "socialism in one clause".
Harman's law will be considerably more significant than the new social mobility review chaired by the resurrected Alan Milburn. Trying to get more people from poor backgrounds into the top professions is a reasonable endeavour: the army, medicine, the law, politics, media and most professions are dominated by the privately educated. Finding ways to get bright pupils from poor families into internships and work experience to reach top occupations will no doubt help to slightly rebalance the odds for a few. Geoffrey Vos QC, former head of the Bar Association, who sits on the Milburn review, chairs the Social Mobility Foundation which helps high-flying pupils on free school meals into top-rank professions.
But the evidence, globally, is that little progress can be made until the country as a whole is more equal. Inequality is the root cause of social immobility. However, politicians of all parties are happiest talking about "opportunity", pulling the ablest up the ladders - without too many questions asked about why the ladders are so steep, and why the distance is so great from bottom to top. It is a great deal less controversial than talk of narrowing the gap itself.
Even Milburn's modest review has excited the right's usual knee-jerk reaction, with accusations of "dumbing down" and "social engineering". Moves to make the privileges enjoyed by middle-class children more easily shared by others are always rebuffed with fury by potential losers. Politicians who say they want equal opportunities for all tend to sidestep the blindingly obvious fact that if more comprehensive school children go to Oxbridge, top law firms and medical schools, there will be fewer places for private school pupils. Room at the top is limited.
Labour gets round this by promising to increase the demand for top jobs - but entry level to the professions will always be a tight bottleneck. Social mobility means some must fall as others rise: naturally the middle classes will fight hard to hold their own. In more equal countries the falling hurts less when lifestyle, status and pay are less cruelly divided and penalities for failure less punishing.
In Britain, birth is destiny for almost everyone. Where you are born, is where most people stay. Family finance predicts what will happen to most children. Rags to riches celebrity stories dominate popular imagery, but the "it could be you" social lottery fantasy is mostly a convenient lie to keep everyone in their place. The countries where there is least match between a child's origins and its destiny are those with most equal distribution of wealth - the Nordics and Japan. The Liberal Democrat commission chaired by Barnardo's Martin Narey spelled out in its report yesterday how children on free schools meals have only half the average child's chance of getting five good GCSEs. Vastly increasing university places has done nothing to help: it has benefited better-off families, while only 3% more poor children have taken up the new places.
That's why Harman's law gets to the root of the question. Only by making the whole country fundamentally fairer will equal opportunities follow. What might it mean? All will depend on the legal detail. Will it be an aspiration or will it have legal teeth? It will certainly mean every public authority will have to ensure that how it spends money and how it fixes its priorities sets a course towards narrowing the gap between rich and poor. Poor children might need to have much more spent on their education per head than the better-off do. Sure Start toddlers might need more funds than older children. It might mean local lotteries to see that all children get equal access to the best schools. Poor parts of a borough might attract more services to pull them up to the standards of richer areas.
Imagine how this law might bite on central government - what might it require of the Treasury? Tax credits and benefits would rise to lift families over the poverty threshold. The Low Pay Commission would set the minimum wage at a level that narrowed the pay gap, instead of falling behind. Public sector pay would rise for the lowest grades, all the cleaners, carers, dinner ladies, porters and clerks earning less than a living wage. "It is our task in government to play our part in fashioning a new social order with fairness and equality at its heart," Harriet Harman will say on Saturday. "We want to do more than just provide 'escape routes' out of poverty for a talented few. We want to tackle the class divide."
If not now, when? Custodians of the citadels of wealth have wrecked the economy, their folly damaging the chances of poor school leavers - while their own offspring will be unscathed. There is no better time to embark on Harman's "new social order".
Polly Toynbee is the author, with David Walker, of Unjust Rewards
polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk
Action Against Classism truly hope that this will finally prove to be a step forward to positive action against classism and we will be keeping a close eye on the Social Mobility White Paper.
"Where wealth is centralized, the people are dispersed. Where wealth is distributed, the people are brought together." ~ Confucius, 5th century B.C.
