The story of Mark Wood, who starved to death, is part of a multi-reality experience bearing witness to those killed by cruel welfare cuts
Walking into a studio space behind a warren of dressing rooms at the Young Vic theatre early in January, I saw a ghost.
A young man called Mark Wood, whose terrible, tragic death I wrote about in this column, was sitting on a bench in a brown T-shirt and grey beanie hat, with a sheet and a sleeping bag thrown over his legs, and bin bags of his possessions strewn across the floor.
I found myself sitting down on the bench next to him, completely overwhelmed. A life-sized hologram of Mark – played by an actor, appearing via a Virtual Reality headset a theatre attendant had handed to me – looked anxiously across at me. Over the headset, the voice of his wonderful mum Jill Gant was playing, telling Mark’s heartbreaking story. How her gentle artist son, who had complex mental health problems, starved to death under Tory austerity aged 44, weighing just 5st 8lb.
The Museum of Austerity, a co-production between the English Touring Theatre, Trial and Error Studio and the National Theatre which came to a close this week, is a 35-minute multi-reality experience that comes nearest to the truth of anything I have seen or read about the Conservative Austerity years.
From 2013-2024, this column, Real Britain, often felt like a coroner’s report, as we investigated one Austerity death after another – the people starved, damaged and driven to suicide by a brutalised system designed to vilify and impoverish people who needed the support of the welfare state. And here, in this small white room was a moment to reflect on lives lost. Having told Mark story so many times, I wasn’t prepared for how moving it would be to sit next to him.
Walking towards each hologram, the audience is confronted with the trite, falsely indignant, mendacious statements of the politicians who condemned them. But among the clips of a braying Boris Johnson and slick austerity salesman David Cameron grandstanding in Parliament, we also heard the voice of Debbie Abrahams, the Labour MP who tirelessly spoke up for the casualties of welfare reform.
Approaching each of eight virtual figures triggers testimony told by their relatives, curated by Disability News Service’s veteran campaigner John Pring, bringing each person to life. So many of them voices I’ve spoken to over the years and knew without waiting for their names.
Testimonies have been given by the mighty battler Joy Dove, whose daughter Jodey, 42, took her own life in 2017 as her mental health collapsed after her disability benefits were stopped. By Imogen Day, who never stopped fighting for her 27-year-old sister Philippa, who battled a string of mental health conditions including Borderline Personality Disorder. She died from a brain injury in 2019 after a deliberate overdose of insulin. Her inquest found the much-loved mum’s overdose was linked to financial distress caused by the administration of welfare benefits.
There, leaning against a wall, next to his empty fridge, was David Clapson, a vulnerable former soldier who had diabetes. I can still remember breaking the story of David’s heartbreaking death, and I must have spoken to his amazing sister Gill – whose voice was coming through the audio – a hundred times.
David was looking for work when he died – a pile of CVs was found next to his body. But he had been sanctioned by the Job Centre for a single missed meeting, leaving him no money for food or put credit on his electricity card. As a result, the fridge – where he kept his insulin – was off. David died three weeks after he was sanctioned, from diabetic ketoacidosis, caused by a severe lack of insulin.
A few yards from David, lying on a plinth with a duvet pulled over him was Errol Graham, who weighed just four and a half stone when bailiffs discovered his body after breaking into his Nottingham council flat to evict him. He died with a letter in neat handwriting next to him that pleaded with the DWP to “please judge me fairly”.
A couple of details about Errol have always remained in my mind. He had an ‘Anfield’ cubby hole full of Liverpool memorabilia, and the only food in his cupboards were two tins of fish, both of which were four years out of date. When Errol’s daughter-in-law, Alison Turner told me about the fish, I remembered that when he died, David Clapson had only a tin of pilchards in his cupboard.
The Museum of Austerity is not just a virtual reality mausoleum to the dead. It’s a tribute to all those relatives who refused to let the faceless Department for Work and Pensions escape responsibility for the deaths of their loved ones. Their courage in bereavement is on a parallel with the Hillsborough families, the Grenfell survivors and bereaved, and the Covid Bereaved Families, all of whom have spent years battling the state and vested interests – in this case the companies like ATOS, Maximus and Capita employed to carry out state duties at arm’s length.
As I stood there, the words of Errol’s daughter-in-law, Alison Turner, an extraordinary campaigner, herself disabled, rang in my ears. Not from the exhibition but from an interview we did together. “The public pays for that department,” she said. “We own that department. We pay our taxes, and they should answer to the people. If we demand answers we are entitled to know. My kids can’t see Granddad anymore because someone made a bad decision.”
The architects of welfare reform are long gone now. Former Tory Chancellor George Osborne works for big tech. Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has just left Meta. Ex-PM David Cameron is a life peer who advises investment companies. But the families of those who lost their lives cannot move on.
A museum is supposed to be a collection of things from the past. But, far from being assigned to the history books, the war on welfare lives on. Last summer, Downing Street was forced to back down over welfare cuts by a major backbench rebellion. Now, the latest Work and Pensions chief and Starmer ally Pat McFadden is widely rumoured to be planning new changes.
The Museum of Austerity closed its doors this week at the Young Vic, but it deserves to tour until our broken welfare system is fixed and fair. Not just as a reminder of lives lost to ideology, but as a living reminder that political actions have consequences. It should be compulsory viewing for all MPs, and especially anyone who takes up a ministerial or civil service role in the DWP.
This is a show that must go on.
