CAMPAIGNERS from around the world gathered yesterday at a solidarity summit for deaf and disabled activists.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell addressed the crowd at The Old Town Hall in Stratford, London and reaffirmed Labour’s commitment to “scrap” work capability assessments. He condemned both the Tories and the Lib Dems, who had “used austerity as an excuse to destroy the welfare state.”

He added that the “worst thing” of the last eight years of austerity was “not just the cuts, it’s not just the brutality: it is denying disabled people the right to dream of a future.”

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) organised the event to coincide with the Global Disability Summit, co-hosted by the Department for International Development (DfID).

DPAC’s Ellen Clifford said Britain hosting the Global Disability Summit was “effectively sticking two fingers up” at the United Nations following its scathing report last year that the government was guilty of “systematic violations” of disabled people’s rights.

John Clarke from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty blasted the British government for having the nerve to co-host the summit, by saying: “How dare the government of this country, that has created such horrors and inflicted such misery on disabled people, how dare they organise such a summit?”

Rose Achayo Obol, from the National Union of Women with Disabilities of Uganda, told how her organisation found success by supporting women to self-organise in groups because it is “easier to speak, easier to demand, easier to confront issues” collectively.

The summit also heard from Bolivian campaigners Alex Marcelo Vazquez Bracamonte and Felizia Ali Ramos, who were involved in a campaign to force the Bolivian government to provide a monthly allowance to people with severe disabilities.

A caravan of campaigners marched for more than a month across hundreds of miles to the capital La Paz to demand a monthly benefit of 500 bolivars (roughly £50) — they eventually won an allowance of 250 bolivars, but not before they sadly lost six comrades and were attacked by riot police.

Ms Ramos said: “What we have achieved in this battle is that people have woken up … all of a sudden we have made ourselves visible in Bolivia.”

She added that people with disabilities in Bolivia “have shown the whole society that we are strong and we are not prepared to shut up and do whatever the government tells us to do.”