Category Archives: Politics

Feminism

Scottish Women’s Aid – impressive, but threatened…

November 8, 2010 – 10:54 pm

I spent (a very packed and interesting) weekend at the Scottish Green Party conference. More on this shortly, but one of the highlights was learning more about women’s issues in Scotland.

Scottish Women’s Aid had a stall at the conference, and a very hardhitting campaign with its “Save Violence Against Women” pledge. Up until now, they’ve had funding and support that we can only envy in England.

The Rape Crisis Specific Fund has provided £50,000 per rape crisis centre per year across Scotland to ensure a basic level of service, also funding the creation of five new rape crisis centres. The Children’s Services Fund has provided more than 100 children’s workers.

But they are clearly concerned that cutbacks mean this is all at risk.

Steady funding has, however, enable them to build real political muscle and lobbying capacity – again something that in England we can only envy.

They had an excellent paper from the Scottish Women’s Budget Group, which campaigns for Gender Budget Analysis in public spending decisions and budget-setting processes “as a means of ensuring both compliance with the requirements for gender impact assessment (Equality Act 2006), and as a means of ensuring political commitment to gender equality are translated into decisions about resource allocation and budgetary commitments.”

A Women’s Aid report identifies just over £8.3m a year spent by the Scottish government on violence against women, the current allocation of which will run out in March 2011. (A study in the UK in 2008 estimated domestic abuse costs in England and Wales £40bn per annum.) A study, also there, found that the cost savings in providing housing and support to women fleeing domestic violence was almost £19,000 per individual women, twice the cost of providing support.” Additionally: “When women threatened by domestic violence were able to access support services and leave an abusive partner, the risk of further assults was reduced by 80%.”

They also had an interesting summary report from a census conducted over 24 hours on September 24, 2009. In that time 365 women and 360 children were in Scottish refuges, 642 women and 307 children and young people were being supported by Women’s Aid, 101 women contacted Women’s Aid for the first time, and 12 women and 5 children had to be turned away from refuges due to lack of space. Sadly, four women had to be turned away because they had “no recourse to public funds” as a result of their immigvration status. “Most are forced to return to their partner.”

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Politics

Mayor and London Assembly Question Time in Camden

November 2, 2010 – 11:46 pm

To Mayor and London Assembly Question Time in Camden this evening, which proved rather livelier, and less bogged down in political pointscoring than I expected, with the notable exception of Caroline (did-I-mention-the Lib-Dems) Pidgeon. It was also surprising (or not) that somehow while everyone else’s microphone went on and off, Boris Johnson’s was perpetually on, allowing him to butt in whenever he wanted.

On the proposed UKCMRI medical lab in Somers Town, was pleased to hear Brian Coleman publicly repeat his opposition, but very disappointed by Jennette Arnold’s backing for it (definitely a letter heading her way) – seems like she’s swallowed the Gordon Brown line.

The mayor, probably reasonably enough, was not commenting on development applications on which he might have to rule, a point made before the UKCMRI question.

Other notable points/questions:

* Jenny Jones: “anyone who thinks we are going to have the same number of police numbers [after the cuts] is barking mad.” She also noted that the Tory-LibDem coalition was planning to abolish the Police Authority, with “something puny being put in its place”. To save money Jenny suggested that the Territorial Support Group would be cut by half and the number of press officers (“a scandal” at 72) be reduced.

* Boris Johnson had a tough time (rightly) on the closure of Tube ticket officers and the reduction in safety staff – he apparently signed a pledge not to cut ticket office hours before the election. On this, as on many other questions, he simply warbled on a bit without substantive answer.

* Shahrar Ali got possibly the strongest round of applause of the night for a question on the closure of Tube lines for works, particularly at weekends, asking for at a minimum transparency about what is being done and why. “God help you if you happen to live and work in Brent and need to get out.”

* A question on when London cycle hire bikes would get to Kentish Town was also popular – Boris appeared to be mixing Kentish Town and Highgate when he suggested North London was too hilly for the scheme. (In fact he suggested expansion east and west would come before the north, if the last happened at all.)

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Books Feminism

Being positive about feminism: a new academic study

October 30, 2010 – 5:21 pm

I learnt about the existence of Jonathan Dean’s new book Rethinking Contemporary Feminist Politics, from an interview with the author on The F-Word. That great group blog is one of its three specific subjects of study, the others being Women’s Aid and the Fawcett Society. Since I’ve just become a trustee of the latter, it seemed essential to lay hands on a copy. I blanched, however, when I looked at the price on Amazon – £54. £54! Luckily, as a member of the London Library I had a plan B, which was to get them to buy a copy (also fitting in with my ongoing campaign to ensure it has a good feminism collection.)

That’s a pity, for while this is clearly an academic book, with a conclusion dense packed with political theory that’s going to be accessible to only a few (I may come back to it if I can find a time when I’m less tired – a debate about Deleuzianism, “Lacanian theorists of lack” and post-Gramscian political theory” extending my knowledge of political theory into 21st-century debates with which I’ve not previously engaged), the bulk of the text, the study of the three feminist institutions, is perfectly readable, useful and well worth the attention of anyone involved in contemporary feminism.

That’s particularly because this is broadly a positive story. Dean sees a strong resurgence in UK feminism particularly in the past half-decade. He in part accepts the broadly charted narrative of decline up to that point, although he does see it as being based on somewhat simplistic and problematic definitions of what an authentic, radical, autonomous feminist movement is and might be, suggesting that there’s been too strong a focus on what the feminist movement of the early to mid-Seventies was as a perfect model, any deviation from which has automatically been defined as a decline.

Using radical as a term for demanding significant change, rather than the specifics of “Radical Feminism”, he finds elements of real strength and drive in each of the three institutions that he studies. He also notes that a more recent model for identifying an authentic political action, as advocated by Zizek and Badiou among others, which is “a ‘heroic’ conception … predicated upon sudden rupturing and clearly visible instances of political contest; anything else is implicitly viewed with suspicion and risks being cast as ‘inauthentic’.” Dean adds that this approach “betrays an almost theological – and undoubtedly resolutely masculinist – standpoint” and “a political purism which strikes me as ill-equipped to grasp the locatedness and inevitable messiness of processes of feminist political articulation”. (p. 170)

On Fawcett, he says:

“…there are two main logics at work within the organisation …At one level, the organisations is strongly underwritten by a political logic of claimmaking directed at political elites in which – one may argue – a more radical feminist critique is absent. However, by contrast, the eveness of this logic is undermined by a logic of radicalistion that has become especially apparent since late 2005. This logic of radicalisation… refers in particular to Fawcett’s recent efforts to cast their demands within the context of a broader intervention into the public gender debate, situated within a more forthright affirmation of feminism.” (p64-65)

On The F-Word, he finds that while it is open to criticism of being very individualised and lifestyle-focused, he sees an increasing trend over its development whereby “the self-identity as feminist need not occasion a drift into apolitical complicity with logics of individualisation but, rather, translates into a more engaged political awareness, feeding into increased radicalism”. (p. 162)

On Women’s Aid, he’s also broadly positive, but in a passage that I found very interesting, for it reflects much of the difficulties I have in engagements with much local “community consultation” (indeed a meeting I was at all this morning on the future of the King’s Cross area with Camden officials and local volunteers), Dean looks at, however, engagement in government processes is, for “Women’s Aid as expert” problematic.

“I want to raise the question whether the organisation’s enthusiasm for multi-agency work, coupled with its position as an ‘expert’ voice, renders them partiallty complicit with the logics of what we might call ‘interest group pluralism’. In a manner that may curtail the organisation’s vitality and radicalism. … interest group pluralism refers to a mode of governance in which various actors are engaged in processes of making political claims which are then adjudicated by the government apparatus, and is thus symptomatic of what Zerilli and Arendy refer to as the domestication of politics to ‘the social’. A further dimension of interest group pluralism, as Iris Marion Young has pointed out, is that it tends to reduce politics to a process of rule by experts who are delegated responsility for particular issues.” p. 121

read more »

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Politics

Why does the British government want to follow the failed ‘American model’?

October 17, 2010 – 10:51 am

I’ve been pondering this for a while. The “American model” of politics and society supports a small state and everything possible (and sometimes impossible) being left to the market. And the most minimal of minimalist (ranging to non-existent) social support systems.

This is a society that despite being the richest by per capita income in the world, has nearly 15% of households suffering food insecurity – in simple terms they sometimes don’t know where there next meal is coming from.

About 1 in 50 Americans lives in a household that has no income but food stamps – a hundred to a couple of hundred dollars a month that can only be used for basic purchases.

It is a society that has just about the worst maternal mortality rates in the developed world,

On the side of medicine, run basically for the benefit of the deeply flawed, indeed often deadly, pharmaceutical industry, giant healthcare providers who get away wiith charging crazy prices, and medical insurance companies that make enormous profits.

So what is Britain now doing? Both the former Labour government and the current Tory-Lib Dem coalition is privatising the much-loved and valued NHS at a rate of knots, steaming towards the privatised American system.

They’re slashing away our already (by European standards) inadequate benefits system at a rate of knots, heading towards the American “you probably won’t actually starve, but you’ll sometimes go hungry” model.

I’ve been pondering a figure I came across that the basic Job Seekers’ Allowance of £65.45 is equivalent to just 41 per cent of the Minimum Income Standard for a working-age adult. (I’ve been just about living recently on Night Nurse, an anti-cough medicine that’s the only thing that allows me to sleep at night, and if you’re on job seekers’, that, at around £6 a bottle, is clearly not in the budget, so I’d just have to be coughing all night…)

But my headline question is really rhetorical. Because if you look at some other figures about America, such as the fact that the top 1% of earners get 23.5% of the income – it is clear why America is the way it is: it is run for the benefit of the few.

And now Britain, under two successive government of different hues, is going the same way.

The unanswered question is how democracy has managed to deliver this outcome…

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Feminism

Future female? A Fawcett discussion

October 9, 2010 – 10:10 pm

To the Fawcett AGM this afternoon – business briskly conducted, we turned to an interesting debate, with the broadranging topic of “what might a female future look like?” Speakers were Mary MacLeod MP (Conservative), Jean Lambert MEP (Green Party), Baroness Kate Parminter (Liberal Democrat) and Rushanara Ali MP (Labour).

I haven’t heard Kate speak before (she said she only uses baroness when she has to) and she was very impressive, as was Jean Lambert, who took the generally appointed Green role of doing the blue sky thinking. Her discusion of how we need to change our whole view of and attitude towards work went down very well, and what a workinglife means, as did her line: “Why does everything that looks interesting have to wait until you retire?”

Kate has an interesting background – RSPCA with the hunting ban, Campaign for Rural England, and she only went to the Lords in July, but is clearly enjoying the experience. She spoke a lot about women “self-selecting out” from running for parliament, as she’d done herself, and was very keen on the idea of job-share MPs as a way of getting around the problem of the role’s pressures. She called on Fawcett to move the agenda forward on the issue, and added: “I know for a fact the No 10 policy unit is thinking about it.”

House of Lords reform was an important opportunity, she said: “let’s set the test for the reform to be that it must end up with a 50/50 gender balance.”

She also referred to the importance of the portrayal of women in media and sport, particularly for girls. “I want girls to feel they can say yes to all life has to offer them.” She called for the 2013 revision of sports broadcasting to ensure that at least one all-female sport is regularly shown. And she noted that in looking at secondary schools for her daughter, she found that one she had otherwise liked offered cheerleading as an after-school club. “I want that to stop.”

Referring to the impact of cuts, clearly the primary concern of the meeting, Jean came up with a powerful line that sums up much of the stupidity of where we find ourselves: “A strong social security system is an essential foundation for a strong economy.” Fawcett has powerfully taken legal action over the government’s apparent failure to fulfil its requirement to do gender audits of its decisions, but Jean added, a useful thought, that campaigners should also think about the obligation there is for this on local government, where many of the final detailed decisions about cuts will be made.

Kate also made an important democratic point (against her own side) about the making of announcements about many important policy decisions at party conferences, where they “can’t be considered in the round”, as in parliament.

Rushanara went on a specific attack – no doubt justified – about the government’s recent dropping of “go orders”, under which domestic violence perpetrators can be forced to leave the home for two weeks while the victim decides what to do, in part on grounds of cost. Jean added that this should be considered on human rights grounds – the right to safety – but that even if you chose to look at it only on financial grounds it made no sense, since the cost of dealing with the damage done to victimns and their children could be far greater than that of earlier intervention.

There was a very interesting intervention from the floor from one of the half a dozen males in the packed Toynbee Hall – he came up with the memorable line that what we’re now “living in a man’s museum”. (I think lots of people wrote that down.)

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Politics

The tragedy and pain of benefit cuts

September 19, 2010 – 6:35 pm

A final belated report from Green Party conference last week. I chaired the session on “Benefit cuts: how the poorest and most vulnerable will suffer the most”, organised by Green Party national disability spokesperson Alan Wheatley, with speakers Claire Glasman, from Winvisible, Kim Sparrow from Single Mothers’ Self-Defence and Sarah Bukasa from the All-Africa Women’s Group, so I didn’t get time to write a lot of notes, but a few points that were particularly striking…

* We were told that Job Centres have been given strict rules on sanctioning – each week they have to sanction 6% of recipients of jobseekers’ allowance, and with 50 completely cut their benefit.

* One third of all adults who are on the autistic spectrum are living without income, from employment or benefits, of any kind.

* Private, for-profit providers are being paid £62,000 for each long-term unemployed person they are able to get into work, irrespective of how long-term or appropriate that work is.

* People fleeing domestic violence have just one month to try to get their life back on track, then they are on job seekers’ allowance, and expected to meet all of its rules about applications etc, on £62 a week, when they may have been left with no household goods, furniture, housing etc…

* The worst (legally) paid people in the country are carers, who must be looking after people who need at least 35 hours of care a week (and it is often much, much more) for the princely sum of £53.90 a week.

* 37% of people applying for employment support allowance, the replacement for incapacity benefit, drop out before their assessment before the private supplier ATOS is completed. No research has been conducted on what happens to them. Undoubtedly some have recovered, but anecdotal evidence suggests many have been so horrified/damaged/frightened by the experience that they are simply not getting benefits to which they should be entitled, but instead are, in the words of campaigners “begging, shoplifting, or living with their families with no income”.

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