The Rape of Justice

Photo by: Crossroads Women's Photo Collective

Louise Nousratpour
Tuesday February 19, 2008
The Morning Star

RAPE survivors charged politicians, police, judges and immigration adjudicators with the "rape of justice" at a mock trial this weekend which exposed the "crummy" conviction rate of sex offenders.

Saturday's theatrical trial in London, complete with three bewigged "judges" and a witness stand, heard distressing stories from survivors as they sobbed through their testimonies.

Taking the "witness" stand, woman after woman began her speech with: "I put on trial" the British Police, the Crown Prosecution Service, Solicitor General Vera Baird, Women and Equality Minister Harriet Harman, Met Commissioner Ian Blair, to name a few, for failing to deliver justice and demanded action.

The "jury" declared them all guilty of perverting the course of justice, criminal negligence and failing in their duty of care.

Women Against Rape (WAR), which organised the event, sent "court summons" to every authority and individual on trial. Unsurprisingly, they all declined to attend.

Less than 6 per cent of reported rapes result in conviction, despite statistics showing that one in six women in Britain have been raped.

The authorities were accused of falling back on "sexist, racist and other deep-rooted prejudice" when dealing with cases.

Women and children are still put on trial or blamed for being raped, discouraged from reporting, disbelieved and even accused of lying and imprisoned.

One witness, a police officer known only as Ms A, told the "court" how a male colleague had raped her and got away with it.

"My MP said he did not want to get involved for fear of 'upsetting' the force and the judge eventually threw my case out, calling me a 'whore' and saying my injuries were 'self-inflicted'," she recalled.

A Jamaican mother charged her local police in east London with the rape of her son in 2005.

"He was raped by a police officer in a cell after being arrested during one of these stop-and-search operations," she alleged.

"As soon as I began filing charges against my local police, six officers showed up at my house and arrested me on immigration charges. They took me to a removal centre and threatened to deport me."

The "court" even heard from Iraqi women, who had suffered rape and sexual humiliation at the hands of occupation troops.

Speaking on their behalf, Malak Hamdan of the League of Iraqi Women prisoners charged Tony Blair and George Bush with being "culpable in the rape and sexual humiliation of Iraqi women, children and men in US-controlled prisons as well as on the streets."

On a lighter note, the absentee "defendants" were represented by a brilliant performance from WAR activists and survivors.

Rape prosecutor "Anthony R. Slicker FU QC" said in his defence: "These are uniquely difficult cases. They are so provocative, these young girls in short skirts and drunk. The defendant may have misunderstood her signals."

Solicitor General "Viola Blurred" told her critics: "Take your grievances and shove them in our big complaint box."

The jury unanimously ruled "guilty as charged."

Giving the verdict, "prosecutor" Ruth Hall said: "The people responsible are not enforcing the law and they should be held to account by being relieved of their jobs.

"The government claims that things are getting better, but this is ridiculous in the context of what we have witnessed here today."

Minister pledges new Equality Bill

Louise Nousratpour
Thursday February 7, 2008
The Morning Star

WOMEN'S campaigners renewed calls for robust action on the yawning pay gap on Thursday after the government pledged to include an Equality Bill in the next parliamentary session.

Women and Equality Minister Harriet Harman promised "radical and effective" measures to push ahead on the issue of equal pay.

And she accused Tory women MPs of "siding" with their male Conservative counterparts against the struggle for equality.

At the current rate of change, it would take an estimated 140 years until women are paid equally in Britain and 200 years before they achieve equal representation in Parliament, research has suggested.

Fewer than 20 per cent of MPs are women, compared with 50 per cent in Spain and more than 52 per cent in Sweden.

Labour MP Lynda Waltho asked Ms Harman: "What more can we do to ensure that we get close to 50-50 representation in my lifetime - not in the lifetime of my great grand-daughters?"

Campaigners told the government to stop tinkering at the edges in tackling the yawning pay gap, currently at 17 per cent.

They want the Bill to ensure powers to take representative action, where one woman's legal victory for equal pay can bring change for many.

Other key demands included extending mandatory pay audits to the private sector and banning the dismissal of women who are pregnant, on maternity leave or within six months of returning from maternity leave.

A spokeswoman for Equality and Human Rights Commission said: "We look forward to finding out what those 'radical and effective' measures might be.

"What we are keen to see included in the Bill is the power to take representative actions so vulnerable individuals will not have to stand alone in the courts."

The commission's deputy chairwoman Baroness Margaret Prosser added: "Women who work full time are cheated of around £330,000 over the course of their lifetime.

"Nationwide, women are less able to save for a pension, leaving them poverty-stricken in old age."

The government published its Discrimination Law Review green paper last June, outlining some of the proposals contained in the Equality Bill.

Women's group the Fawcett Society criticised the paper at the time, saying that it had failed to address deep-rooted problems of gender equality.

It argued that, by focusing on equal access to traditionally male golf clubs and other private members' establishments, ministers had "distracted" the debate from serious issues such as the pay gap.

20,000 strike at Tory council

Louise Nousratpour
Tuesday February 5, 2008
The Morning Star

OVER 20,000 Birmingham City Council workers walked out on Tuesday in a row over an imposed pay scheme that could lead to staff wages being cut in half.

Members of public-sector unions UNISON, Unite, GMB and UCATT took part in the 24-hour strike, which closed more than 80 schools, major city council buildings, libraries, museums and other local services.

Union officials said that refuse collections, grave-digging and meat-testing services were also affected by the strike.

More than 5,000 strikers staged a noisy protest outside the Birmingham City Council offices in Victoria Square.

The rally was addressed by all the general secretaries of the unions involved.

UNISON regional organiser Anita Edwards, speaking at the rally, described the event as "brilliant."

Ms Edwards said: "Workers are angry at council leaders' refusal to meet our demand for a fair and equal settlement.

"We want employers to negotiate a proper deal with us, not impose unreasonable pay structures."

The strike followed the failure of last-ditch talks at the weekend, which union officials blamed on the employers' "sheer bloody-mindedness."

The Conservative-dominated council, which is the biggest unitary authority in Britain, plans to sack its entire workforce and re-employ them on inferior contracts.

The new pay and grading review, which could be imposed by the end of March, was supposed to bring about equal pay for some 40,000 workers.

But union officials warned that it would instead leave thousands of council staff - mainly women - losing between £1,000 and £18,000, with 4,000 facing a basic pay cut.

Many manual workers could see their pay halved, although some managers' salaries will be bolstered by more than £2,000.

Birmingham City Council chief executive Stephen Hughes claimed that 45 per cent of the workers would receive a "considerable increase."

Ms Edwards rejected the claim, noting: "The gains Mr Hughes is referring to are very small - in the region of a couple of pounds a week.

"Many low-paid women will see their pay cut by thousands of pounds a year. This is not fair," Ms Edwards said.

GMB regional organiser Dominic Hinks said that the strike was "very well supported and has had a massive effect on services.

"Members are sending a strong message that they are not prepared to accept the imposed pay structure," Mr Hinks said.

"Council leaders would do well to listen or there will be more days of action announced," the GMB official warned.

UNISON West Midlands regional secretary Valerie Broom warned that the new pay scheme would only increase wage inequalities between male and female workers at Birmingham Council.

"It is an absolute disgrace that Birmingham City Council is seeking to cut its wage bill while disguising this odious scheme as an attempt to bring about equality for women within the workplace," the UNISON official stormed.

Ms Broom expressed the unions' frustration with council leaders' refusal to negotiate.

"Although officials from UNISON, Unite and GMB have worked over the weekend in an attempt to sort this matter out, the sheer bloody-mindedness of the council has meant that talks have failed to reach a conclusion."
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A stalled revolution

Sunday February 3, 2008
The Morning Star (Book review)

LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR learns how a class-conscious campaign for equal rights for women could be born out of the Stop the War Coalition.

In her book Material Girls, Lindsey German argues that the women's liberation is a "revolution stalled," because it has come up against the limits of class society.

"Neoliberal globalisation has highlighted the limits of liberation within a society based on class exploitation and private property," she writes.

Women can advance as long as their rights do not threaten profits or the status quo. Any demands for equal pay or full-time free childcare, for instance, will be vigorously resisted.

Despite working in unprecedented numbers and joining unions at a faster rate than ever, women still earn just 82 per cent of men's wages and they are woefully underrepresented in top jobs, as MPs and in union leadership roles.

Fewer than 20 per cent of MPs are women and only 15 of the 62 TUC affiliated unions have female general secretaries or chairs.

According to the UN Development Fund for Women, the value of women's unpaid work stands at £6 trillion a year - almost 50 per cent of world GDP.

This virtual slavery is translated into super profits for big business, while leaving many women destitute and with little or no prospect of a career or a decent pension.

German points to a number of reasons why the vibrant and militant women's liberation movement of the last century has stalled or even regressed in the past decades.

Ironically, the arrival of Britain's first female leader Margaret Thatcher is where it all went wrong.

Her merciless attacks on the working class, through anti-union legislation and cuts to pay and social services, had a devastating impact on women's conditions and the progressive wing of the equal rights movement.

In the 1980s and '90s, many bourgeois feminists concluded that equality has more or less been achieved. The emphasis was on the individual woman's responsibility to overcome sexist barriers and prove that she can be every bit as tough as men.

German reserves her harshest criticism for this breed of feminism, which, she says, has "hit a dead end" because of failure to address class issues and confront "the basis of the exploitative system of capital."

The model "liberated" woman is the careerist who juggles work and home while looking pretty and sexy for her man.

Fashion, beauty products and cosmetic surgery have become lucrative industries that prey on the anxieties of women and, increasingly, men, to look the part. Young people are bombarded with sexual images in the media and see prostitution glamorised in TV series such as the Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

And there is no pressure on those who have "made it" to use their influence to defend their downtrodden sisters. "Every woman for herself" is the message.

"Most working-class women are discovering that they get no special favours from this new breed of women," German observes.

In a chapter on war and liberation, she talks about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how this has impacted on Muslim women in the West. She even tackles the controversial issue of the hijab.

Here, she offers hope that a new and class-conscious campaign for equal rights could be born out of the Stop the War Coalition, which has so many women activists in leadership roles and as speakers and organisers.

"Only now, against a background of growing movements against the ravages of neoliberalism and war, are the ideas of women's liberation beginning to reconnect with questions about class and how a genuinely equal society can be created," German says.