Paralympics 2016: When will Paralympians speak up for the disabled facing a daily fight in Britain?

Now is the time to speak out against the Tory cuts which have made the lives of those with disability an everyday struggle

Great Britain’s Paralympians at the opening ceremony in Rio (Getty)

These have, indeed, been days of Superhuman achievement from our Paralympians - right up there with the Olympians and, in the case of four 1,500m runners, better, faster, stronger than them. For me, it was the look in the eyes of the British wheelchair basketball players after Sunday night’s defeat to the USA which brought the artificial divide between the disabled and able-bodied crashing down. In defeat, our boys were devastated and angry. Their elite sport had just delivered us an evening of unmissable sport.

But with 35 gold medals and still counting, how does it feel for a British Paralympian to hear our national anthem play from a podium in Rio de Janeiro? What mental image of Great Britain does it conjure when they know that the place they will return to next week is governed by a political party which has abolished the disability living allowance, closed the Independent Living Fund and accelerated the ‘work capability assessments ‘which it is paying private sector firms to carry out.

Do you know about the new ‘20 metre rule’? It’s the one which means that to qualify for a mobility scooter, electric wheelchair or car, all those with disability must show they can “stand and then move" no more than 20 metres "safely, to an acceptable standard, repeatedly and in an acceptable time period."

That has concerned the Parkinson’s Disease Society deeply because no two days are the same for those people with the condition. People like my friend John, who was always ok on a good day but who found those increasingly infrequent as time and his illness wore on. He ‘passed’ the 20 metre test in the end but was so debilitated by then that he could venture nowhere, not even his beloved Manchester City.

It has to be said that this message has not been hurled from the rooftops by Britain’s Paralympians these past few weeks. The wheelchair racer Ben Rowlings talked about the mobility cuts before he flew to Rio to compete in the T34 100m and 800m. So, too, Carly Tair, another sprint wheelchair racer, who spoke in April. She will be one of the many to have lost a mobility car.

But now, while the audience is captive, is the time to speak of such iniquities and deep indignities and to let them be known about.

Let us be ordinary, let us be every day and let us at least have rights.

&#13; <p>Penny Pepper, writer and disability rights activist</p>&#13;

How much it would mean if someone stepped down from a podium and spoke, for example, of Freya Levy, the European gold and twice silver medal winning wheelchair basketball player. Levy had trials for the GB Paralympic wheelchair basketball team but was forced to pull out amid the struggle simply to find a home. She’s been living in sheltered accommodation for the over 60s, the only accessible place she could find.

The search for people in sport to articulate such a message at this time is difficult. Some calls and messages went unreturned, this week. Perhaps that’s understandable, because the world loves an uncomplicated winner. No-one wants to pour cold water on this fire. But sport can effect change if its participants make a stand. Significant events on the other side of the Atlantic are revealing that much.

Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, knelt when the national anthem was played before an NFL game last week and then he did so again. In a nation for which flag and anthem are so totemic, this carried material risks but Kaepernick wanted to take a stand against a climate of racial injustice. This was his signal that a nation must earn pride in its anthem. Inexorably and unmistakably, the significance of his unspoken gesture has grown.

Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who chose not to stand for the national anthem (Getty Images)

Four Miami Dolphins players followed Kaepernick's lead and knelt, too. Others from the New England Patriots and Tennessee Titans raised their fists in solidarity with him, identifying with the Black Lives Matter movement which started after the string of police killings of unarmed black citizens. Barack Obama entered the conversation. “He cares about some real, legitimate issues that have to be talked about," Obama said of Kaepernick this week.

The struggle facing the disabled is no less significant, in its own way, and it actually stretches way beyond the imagination of some Paralympians. It was about ten years ago that a group of Parkinson’s patients, including John, won a National Lottery grant to subsidise a weekly session of swimming, which had found hugely therapeutic for their condition. The grant lasted for a finite time, so John took it upon himself to write to local companies asking for donations. This was a complicated and sometimes chaotic process because the condition was depriving him of some of old mental focus by then. Others weighed in to help, money was secured, and the weekly sessions at a local leisure centre run to this day.

We lost John last year but this was his legacy, with physical and psychological benefits are so profound that you rage against a Government that will not roll this out to those who do not have an organiser at their hub.

For those who have seized their moment in Rio to say that those with disability deserve infinitely better would be more significant step than anything a podium might offer. The writer and disability rights activist Penny Pepper has put it best. “The superhuman shtick is a tiresome diversion away from what is important,” she said. “Let us be ordinary, let us be every day and let us at least have rights.”