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Telephone: 07739 904924 |
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Telephone: 07739 904924 |
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I, Steve Wallis, have been a political prisoner on psychiatric wards on numerous occasions since the summer of 1998, in England, Scotland and one occasion in Barcelona. This is because I am an effective political activist (a revolutionary socialist) who is a threat to the rule of big business in society. I have composed the following list of demands, based on my experience with the psychiatric services:
The right to refuse drugs in and out of hospital. When I was last on a psychiatric ward in Glasgow, I was finally tested on no medication in hospital, as I had requested on numerous occasions, for the first time ever. This was undoubtedly due to the strength of socialism in that city – in the Scottish parliamentary elections on May Day 2003, the Scottish Socialist Party got over 15% of the vote across Glasgow with two candidates (Tommy Sheridan and Rosie Kane) elected. I proved that I was fine without medication. However, after I was transferred back to Manchester, I was soon put back on medication against my will.
Drugs that make us feel better (like those given in Barcelona, Catalonia) unlike those given in the UK, which mess with our minds. If you think there are conspiracies in capitalist society (as many of us do), and you realise that some of them are acting against you (as they have a lot of motivations to do for someone like myself), and you tell a psychiatrist this, you will probably be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia (as I have been). If problems of capitalist society (such as being unemployed) make you feel low, you may be diagnosed as having depression or manic depression (bipolar disorder). In either case (or both, in which case you could be diagnosed as having ‘schizoeffective disorder, as I was for a while), people who are likely to fight back against capitalism (by getting involved in the struggle for a democratic socialist society) are identified and put on drugs, and led to think that they will need to be on them for the rest of their lives). Most of these people have not yet joined left-wing organisations, because such organisations could offer them solidarity and expose what is going on. I’ve probably been given every anti-psychotic drug and mood stabiliser available from the NHS, and compensating for them slows your brain down to some degree. Additionally, all anti-psychotic drugs I have tried in the UK make you drowsy to some extent – this is supposed to be a side effect, but I think that it is deliberate; if you fall asleep in meetings and spend less of the day awake, you will be less effective as a political activist. Olanzapine (brand name Zyprexa) is particularly bad, because it makes you irrationally pessimistic – I have therefore set up an ‘anti-olanzapine’ discussion group (mailing list), at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-olanzapine, to oppose the use of that drug. Unfortunately, I don’t know what the drugs I was given were when I was in Barcelona, because I was just told ‘medication’ when I asked. They may have been anti-depressants, but that seems odd to give someone who has been diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia.
The right to change your consultant psychiatrist without being vetoed by him/her or the NHS Trust. If you lose trust in your psychiatrist, you should be able to change to another.
The removal of the power of psychiatrists to discharge you from hospital without removing you from a section. On a previous occasion, I was discharged from hospital leaving me on the section for the remaining period of several weeks, so that I had to go back for a ‘ward round’ every week and the slightest thing I did wrong could lead to me going back to hospital (which it did). My current psychiatrist now says that he is inclined to let my six months section elapse, even though I will probably have over four months left to go!
The democratisation of the tribunal system. Patients, their relatives and members of staff should be able to elect members of the Mental Health Review Tribunal, which is currently a quango that chooses all three people who sit on tribunals.
The presumption at tribunals that patients are ‘innocent until proven guilty’. At present, it is the other way round.
The right of patients at tribunals to cross-examine members of staff who have written false statements about us in our notes. At present, statements in my notes are treated as facts, even though some nurses are on the side of big business in the class struggle, and deliberately tell lies about me.
Hot meals three times a day, including porridge for breakfast and a choice of vegetarian/vegan meals for lunch and dinner. The extreme cruelty of the livestock industry means that many patients would switch to a vegetarian diet if they were given the opportunity to try good examples of such food. However, the powers that be would prefer that we feel guilty about the food we eat, so generally provide much higher quantities and choice of meat dishes than vegetarian ones. The better vegetarian options only come in half dishes (a quarter of the quantity of meat dishes) at Manchester Royal Infirmary, where I am usually incarcerated (and am now), and we have sandwiches for lunch (usually none of which are suitable for vegans).
Large quantities of milk from cows that were not given any genetically modified (GM) feed. It was discovered that all supermarkets’ own-brand milk and other dairy products came from cows given partially GM feed – without customers being aware of it – with the sole exceptions of the Co-op and Marks & Spencer. Direct action activists got organised and blockaded every Sainsbury’s depot in the early hours of one morning, attaching themselves to each other with long metal bars which the police could not shift. No Sainsbury’s milk appeared that morning, and as a result, you can buy Cravendale milk, which lasts seven days once opened and tastes nicer. Milk (as long as it is GM-free) is good for you, so enough milk should be supplied to wards, rather than severely rationing it, as often happens.
The scrapping to New Labour's proposed Mental Health Bill, which would allow people to be locked up in psychiatric wards on the basis that they may commit a crime at some point in the future, and would allow former psychiatric patients to be forcibly injected against their will in the community. I have set up a discussion group against this Bill, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-mental-health-bill, to prepare for civil disobedience by mobilising people outside someone’s home when someone is threatened with injection against their will, like with the ‘bailiff busters’ in the mass non-payment campaign that defeated the poll tax.
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