S2/E3: Death by Welfare with China Mills

Surviving Society Productions

On Tothill Street, in the heart of London’s Whitehall, sits Caxton House, home to the Department for Work and Pensions. The DWP administers the UK’s welfare system, a key infrastructure of everyday life. For many, the DWP determines if they have enough money to eat, stay warm, power medical equipment - to live. For many, it has also become synonymous with suicide. In collaboration with activists and scholars Stella Dadzie, Imogen Day, John Pring, and Rick Burgess, in this episode, China Mills (from Healing Justice London) describes the grinding bureaucratic crimes committed as the DWP sought to force disabled people into work. This painful story is also one of power. We’ll hear how disabled people and people of colour have fought tirelessly to expose the true scale of this crime - and get justice.

Useful Links

*Caring for ourselves and each other when the state tells us that we don’t matter is a radical act. We hope you find these resources useful.*

Deaths by Welfare Project podcast (including BSL interpretation and captions): https://healingjusticeldn.org/deaths-by-welfare-project/

Disability News Service: https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/advice-and-information/

DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts): https://dpac.uk.net/

Welfare State violence: a feature, not a bug with Stella Dadzie, Tumu Johnson, Derica Shields & China Mills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nJNJzm53pg&t=1564s

Website : https://materialcrimes.com/

Further Reading

Deaths by Welfare Project timeline of evidence https://deathsbywelfare.org/

China Mills and John Pring. “Weaponising Time in the War on Welfare: Slow Violence and Deaths of Disabled People within the UK's Social Security System,” Critical Social Policy 44:1 (2024), pp. 129-149.

China Mills. “For as Long as the DWP has been Killing People, Disabled Activists have been Fighting Back,” 26 November 2021, https://novaramedia.com/2021/11/26/for-as-long-as-the-dwp-has-been-killing-people-disabled-activists-have-been-fighting-back/

Bio

China Mills is Head of Research at Healing Justice Ldn and leads the Deaths by Welfare project, investigating deaths of disabled people linked to welfare reform and welfare state violence.

Healing Justice Ldn works for and with communities surviving state and systemic oppression, building towards futures rooted in dignity, safety and belonging. Their work is rooted in disability justice, aiming to build cross-disability and cross-movement solidarity, and create life-affirming systems with disabled people at their heart.

Ellen Clifford. The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe (London: Bloomsbury, 2022).