LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR on postal workers' fight against privatisation.
Louise Nousratpour
Friday March 20, 2008
The Morning Star
THE Communication Workers Union is leading a Europe-wide campaign to stem the tide of privatisation in the postal sector in light of new EU laws dictating that all member states must open their markets by 2011.
Last week, the CWU invited union delegates from 19 European countries, including France, Germany and Holland, to attend a "working conference" aimed at developing a co-ordinated political and industrial strategy against the regressive plans.
Even senior representatives from British regulator Postcomm and the Royal Mail were invited to justify why they are allowing private profits to override the legal duty of delivering a universal service at an affordable price.
Britain rushed to full "liberalisation" in January 2006, three years before the original EU timetable.
The measure has led to poorer services and higher prices for ordinary costumers, while workers' jobs and conditions have come under vicious attacks, union officials warned.
Opening the two-day event in central London on Wednesday, general secretary Billy Hayes urged delegates to see the British experience as a "clear warning."
Mr Hayes held the government, Postcomm and Royal Mail management collectively responsible.
He condemned ministers for introducing the "Thatcherite" policy and accused Postcomm of tipping the balance of competition in favour of the private sector.
Mr Hayes also charged Royal Mail management with deliberately running the service into the ground to prepare it for full privatisation at a bargain price.
CWU deputy leader Dave Ward stressed: "It is important for unions across Europe to take stock of what liberalisation could mean if we don't fight together against the worst aspects of this policy."
The government has conceded the union's demand for an independent review of the impact of privatisation on the postal sector.
Mr Ward welcomed the investigation as an opportunity to force through changes that would salvage what is left of Royal Mail as a public service and to protect members' pay.
CWU members staged a nine-day strike across Britain last year in a bitter dispute over plans to drive down pay.
"Our members stood firm against concerted attacks from government and Royal Mail management," Mr Ward recalled.
"We defeated their attempt to introduce market-rate pay."
In a stark warning to Labour's re-election campaign, he added: "We are at a crossroads in our relationship with the government.
"They have done us wrong and we see this review as an opportunity to put things right."
The CWU is working with Unite on a "robust" response to the review, urging more government investment in Royal Mail, a level playing field to allow fair competition and a guaranteed minimum wage across the sector.
Current Postcomm regulations allow private competitors to cherry-pick lucrative business mail and dump the less profitable services on Royal Mail, which is unfairly obliged to meet the cost of maintaining a universal service at a fixed low price.
Unite delegate Paul Reuters observed: "The private sector is being subsided by the Royal Mail."
Mr Ward added: "Private competitors may appear to be fighting for a share of the market, but, in reality, they are carving up the profits between them and are working together against their common enemy - the workforce.
"In the interest of workers everywhere in Europe, we must co-ordinate a political and industrial strategy to defeat them."
Imagining a better world
Former FBI most wanted ANGELA DAVIS explains why she's battling today's 'prison-industrial complex.'
LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR
Monday March 17, 2008
The Morning Star
ALTHOUGH Angela Davis left the Communist Party of the USA in the early 1990s, she still describes herself as a communist, albeit "with a small c."
Davis shot to international fame when her name appeared on the FBI 10 most wanted list in August 1970 after a gun which was registered under her name was used in a fatal shoot-out to free Black Panther prisoners George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette.
"The charges were in connection with my involvement with the Black Panther movement and the campaign to free the Soledad Brothers," she says.
This was Davis's second brush with the authorities. In 1969, she was sacked from her job as assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, for her membership of the Communist Party. The Supreme Court later overturned the decision.
"When the CIA and the FBI were hunting me, it was part of a campaign to terrorise women, particularly black women, who were getting increasingly involved in the civil rights movement at the time," she explains.
Charged with three capital crimes of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy, the young Davis went underground until the FBI caught up with her in January 1971. An international campaign to free her led to her eventual acquittal a year and a half later.
"I can remember the enormous support in Britain," Davis recalls, smiling, "from black communities, from communists and the trade union movement.
"Had it not been for that transnational grass-roots struggle, I would probably still be in jail and people would have forgotten my name."
Even her trademark afro hairdo, which has become iconic in its own right, was worn by "thousands of others" long before she was famous, she observes.
Davis rejects the "hyper-individualism" promoted by capitalism in favour of what she refers to as the "collective community in struggle," which was reflected in her warm interaction with an obviously adoring audience of mostly black British working-class women at the International Women's Day event in London earlier this month.
"We have to be able to imagine communities in struggle, we have to be able to recognise that the most important figures of revolutionary movements were people whose deeds we have to imagine because they rarely have a place in recorded history," she stresses.
"We must remember that International Woman's Day recalls the struggle of courageous women at the beginning of last century, who were militant strikers against the garment industry but whose names are forever lost."
It is through these epic struggles for social, political and economic rights, Davis argues, that communities are forged.
"A community is based on history, not biology or a neighbourhood," she says.
"Our political commitment and activism is what creates the community, which can be transnational in scope."
Just as the word community is meaningless without that political and historic cement, Davis believes that "diversity" as a concept has become over-rated, an empty cliche.
"The Bush administration is the most diverse government the US has ever seen," she says with a raised brow.
"We have to ask ourselves what kind of diversity? Those in power are looking for the kind that will not bring political change."
She welcomes the political enthusiasm that the current US presidential elections have generated, particularly among young people, but she regrets the prevailing assumption that the prospect of electing a woman or a black man will, by itself, bring about progressive change.
"We have a black woman secretary of state, that's not what we want," she says, adding that Britain's experience of the first woman prime minister did not bode any better.
"Many people emphasise the symbolic values that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are guarding, perhaps more than they actually represent and more than what they are actually willing to fight for.
"It is not so much about electing a white woman or a black man, but about how they stand on important issues such as the need to challenge US unilateralism and ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"There is great resistance to the war in Iraq and that is very important. But there is an inability to imagine the Iraqi people as a member of our community as they are objectified as the 'others.' We must reach out to those people and create a community of struggle that transcends borders."
Davis warns that the war on terror is now being used against those who fought in the liberation movements of the 1970s but escaped the clutches of the FBI.
Western governments often accuse Cuba, China and other developing countries of holding political prisoners. Davis points to "a whole number" of political prisoners languishing in US prisons, many from the era when she had her run-in with the law.
"There are over 100 people whose names we can very easily count," she sighs.
"Former Black Panther activist Assata Shakur, who escaped from prison in 1986 and now lives in Cuba, has recently been identified as a wanted terrorist and the FBI has put a $1 million bounty on her head.
"She lives in constant fear of being kidnapped and taken back to the US."
Most of the political activists of the 1970s and '80s were either killed by the FBI or got life imprisonment on trumped-up charges of murder, robbery and other crime.
Civil rights activist Sekou Cinque TM Kambui (William J Turk) has been in prison for more than 30 years, falsely charged with two murders and former Black Panther and community activist Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on death row for decades, framed for the murder of a police officer.
Davis, who now earns her living teaching at the University of California in Santa Cruz, has been campaigning against what she calls the "prison-industrial complex" since her Soledad Brothers days.
She is a founding member of abolitionist group Critical Resistance, which aims to build an international movement to challenge the "normalisation of prison as a solution to social, political and economic problems.
"My obsession right now is with the issue of prison abolition," she says.
"We need to abolish prisons as the dominant form of punishment. The institution depends upon the oppressive systems of racism, classism, sexism and homophobia. It promotes violence and therefore reproduces itself."
Davis observes that the "era of global political economy" is driven by privatisation of all human services, transforming them into "profit-generating commodifying activities of corporate enterprises."
Prison privatisation is a "major danger," she warns. "It is no longer just about the prison being there for those who have committed a crime, but the prison has become a source of profits, so you now have these private corporations which have a stake in people's continued incarceration."
Davis mentions the Corrections Corporation of America, which is the largest private operator of US prisons. On its website, the company boasts about rising profits due to a "notable increase" in prison populations.
"With 2.3 million prisoners, the US incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world.
"One in every 100 adults is behind bars, one in every nine young black men is behind bars," she reports, adding: "This is the nature of democracy that George Bush wants to introduce to Iraq."
The privatisation of services in Britain seems to be a carbon copy of the US model, where every social service is either completely privatised or littered with outsourced contracts.
The Thatcher era paved the way and new Labour made sure that it continued. Now, nearly all public services are up for grabs, from schools and hospital beds to electronic tagging devices, asylum detentions and prisons.
Often the company that runs the prison also holds contracts in health and education. British-based Serco, which has made headlines in the past for its appalling treatment of asylum detainees in the notorious Yarl's Wood centre, is one such example.
Serco operates all over the world, including in Iraq. It runs four prisons and two asylum detention centres in Britain, as well as holding contracts in defence, the NHS and local education authorities.
No wonder, then, that its pre-tax profits jumped 17 per cent to £123.2 million last year.
"To reap profits from the process of incarceration seems so absurd," Davis says, but she sees it as an inevitable part of global capitalism where "the market is the model for everything.
"This drive for privatisation makes it necessary to look at a whole range of issues. Free and inspiring education, universal health care, employment and housing are some of those issues that, if addressed, would keep many off the track that leads directly to prison."
An abolitionist, Davis argues, would also take a fresh look at the justice system.
"Can justice be something more than revenge?" she asks.
"Can we imagine a justice that does not assume that one mistake should ruin an entire lifetime? Can we imagine a justice that strives for a society free of racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia? Can we imagine a justice that focus on decarceration rather than incarceration?"
Davis says that the prison system bears all the hallmarks of slavery and exhorts progressives everywhere to "become 21st century abolitionists."
Britain blamed for rising Iraq violence
Louise Nousratpour
Saturday March 15, 2008
The Morning Star
IRAQI Women's League guest speaker Dr Shatha Besarani warned on Friday that British support for a religious majority in Iraq's parliament had led to a "dramatic" rise in misogynist crimes.
Addressing the final day of the TUC women's conference, Ms Besarani painted a gruesome picture of the suffering endured by women and girls at the hands of religious fanatics and occupation forces.
There have been many reported cases of British and US soldiers involved in the rape and killing of women and young girls, as lawlessness and a "gung-ho" culture has become the order of the day.
According to conservative estimates, over 2,200 women and girls were killed between 2003 and 2006 as a result of gender-specific violence.
This month, Women for Women International said that the situation for women in Iraq had gone from "one of relative autonomy and security before the war into a national crisis."
Ms Besarani warned of a rise in religious attacks on women and accused US and Britain of supporting religious fundamentalism in Iraq.
"The occupation forces are using their powers to divide and rule the country and have given far too much power to religious groups," she stormed.
Since January, more than 60 Iraqi women have been found dead on the streets.
"Shi'ite fundamentalists have claimed responsibility for many of these deaths," Ms Besarani said.
"They have been leafleting cities, declaring that make-up is banned and the hijab is compulsory."
She argued that both religious fanatics and occupation forces were using the killing of women as "the best way" to terrorise Iraqis into submission.
"When the Iraqi parliament was being formed, many women organisations pleaded with British ministers to ensure that a secular government runs the country," Ms Besarani recalled.
"Our request was ignored. Now, we are in a situation where religious groups occupy 85 per cent of parliamentary seats.
"The majority have stood against women's rights.
"Indeed, they have abolished family laws to the detriment of women."
The Iraqi Women's League launched a campaign in January to highlight the escalating violence against women in Iraq.
Saturday March 15, 2008
The Morning Star
IRAQI Women's League guest speaker Dr Shatha Besarani warned on Friday that British support for a religious majority in Iraq's parliament had led to a "dramatic" rise in misogynist crimes.
Addressing the final day of the TUC women's conference, Ms Besarani painted a gruesome picture of the suffering endured by women and girls at the hands of religious fanatics and occupation forces.
There have been many reported cases of British and US soldiers involved in the rape and killing of women and young girls, as lawlessness and a "gung-ho" culture has become the order of the day.
According to conservative estimates, over 2,200 women and girls were killed between 2003 and 2006 as a result of gender-specific violence.
This month, Women for Women International said that the situation for women in Iraq had gone from "one of relative autonomy and security before the war into a national crisis."
Ms Besarani warned of a rise in religious attacks on women and accused US and Britain of supporting religious fundamentalism in Iraq.
"The occupation forces are using their powers to divide and rule the country and have given far too much power to religious groups," she stormed.
Since January, more than 60 Iraqi women have been found dead on the streets.
"Shi'ite fundamentalists have claimed responsibility for many of these deaths," Ms Besarani said.
"They have been leafleting cities, declaring that make-up is banned and the hijab is compulsory."
She argued that both religious fanatics and occupation forces were using the killing of women as "the best way" to terrorise Iraqis into submission.
"When the Iraqi parliament was being formed, many women organisations pleaded with British ministers to ensure that a secular government runs the country," Ms Besarani recalled.
"Our request was ignored. Now, we are in a situation where religious groups occupy 85 per cent of parliamentary seats.
"The majority have stood against women's rights.
"Indeed, they have abolished family laws to the detriment of women."
The Iraqi Women's League launched a campaign in January to highlight the escalating violence against women in Iraq.
Spectre of women's rights
Louise Nousratpour
Friday March 14, 2008
The Morning Star
LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR witnesses Mary Macarthur's ghost leading International Women's Day celebrations.
THE ghost of early 20th century trade union leader Mary Macarthur joined TUC women delegates in celebrating International Women's Day in Eastbourne on Wednesday night.
Actress Lynn Morris resurrected Macarthur in a brilliant performance, which took the audience back to the time when women were still fighting for the right to vote and child labour was legal.
The year is 1910 and Macarthur is addressing a rally at Cradley Heath by women chainmakers, who are in the middle of a bitter dispute for better pay and conditions.
Dressed in a white frock and black hat, she gives a passionate speech describing the appalling treatment of the labouring women and children at the forge.
"In this medieval torture chamber, women, with their children around their feet, work 12 hours a day but can barely keep starvation at bay," she sighs.
"The oldest chainmaker is 79 and has worked there since she was 10. Her children and children's children are slaves of that forge, for I can call them nothing else."
Macarthur rallies the strikers to join the National Federation of Women Workers and be "as strong as the chains you make."
The chainmakers' historic victory paved the way for the minimum wage.
Nearly 100 years on, women's lives in Britain have improved greatly, but there is a long way to go as the pay gap is still shamefully wide, violence against women rife and the minimum wage barely "keeps starvation at bay."
NAPO general secretary Judy McKnight, who chaired the TUC women's second International Women's Day rally, hailed the achievements of women like Macarthur.
She stressed the importance of continuing in their footsteps, not least to ensure that "the rights we have gained are not snatched away from us."
Abortion Rights co-ordinator Louise Hutchins warned delegates that a woman's right to choose is under "serious attack" from Tory reactionaries 40 years after the Abortion Act.
She invited everyone to join in the lobby of Parliament on May 7 and put pressure on their MPs to oppose an expected amendment in the forthcoming Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to reduce the current 24-week time limit.
"We are the majority and we should be vocal about it," Ms Hutchins added.
In a short and sharp address, National Union of Students president Gemma Tumelty told British ministers: "We are sick of asking nicely for equal pay. We demand it."
Former Bolivian health minister Dr Nila Heredia told delegates that the historic election of Bolivia's first indigenous president Evo Morales had also led to better rights for women.
"We have agreed a new constitution which seeks equality for all," she proudly announced.
"The new laws allow women to become owners of land, which was impossible before. This is a substantial victory."
Dr Heredia also reported that rules around political representation have changed in favour of women.
"Our new constitution is the result of a revolutionary social, economic and democratic process that aims to give back more rights to those who have been excluded," she added.
Closing the event, "Ms Macarthur" informed the rally that "today marks the day of victory for women chainmakers.
"All of the manufacturers have signed the white list to give women better pay.
"Today, you can hold your head high in dignity and pride."
Defending our right to choose
Louise Nousratpour
Friday March 14, 2008
The Morning Star
LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR reports on how the women's movement is fighting the anti-abortionists' attempts to make choices for us.
ANTI-ABORTION Tory MPs who voted for the Iraq war, nuclear weapons and cuts to benefits for lone parents and the disabled like to refer to themselves as "pro-life" and call defenders of women's rights "child killers."
Tory MPs Anne Widdecombe and Ann Winterton, who both supported the Iraq war and Trident nuclear weapons replacement, are on a "road show" to promote the anti-abortion agenda around the Human Fertilisation and the Embryology Bill expected to reach the Commons in spring.
Fellow anti-abortion MP Nadine Dorries, who also voted "very strongly" for Trident replacement, insists that the debate around abortion "is not an issue of women's rights or pro-life - the question is, are we a decent and humane society or aren't we?"
Pro-choice campaigners are worried that MPs such as Dorries may table amendments to reduce the current 24-week upper time limit for abortion to 20 or even 13 weeks.
The anti-abortionists are pegging their argument on recent reports about the "excellent survival rate" of babies born alive between 22 and 25 weeks.
However, a report by the Commons science and technology committee argued last year that there has been no significant change in foetal viability to justify a reduction in abortion time limit.
Fewer than 2 per cent of abortions take place after 20 weeks and this, campaigners say, is due to "exceptional and very difficult" circumstances, including profound "denial" associated with trauma such as rape and incest, catastrophic life circumstances such as domestic violence or a crisis with an existing child, as well as chronic delays of up to eight weeks by the NHS.
Professor Wendy Savage of the Doctors for Woman's Choice on Abortion warns that restricting abortion would not reduce the number of terminations but would help to create a market for back-street abortions.
The anti-abortion lobby's decision to rip open the debate after 18 years of relative silence may actually work in favour of the pro-choice activists, who plan to use the opportunity to drag the 1967 Abortion Rights Act into the 21st century.
Backed by public opinion, doctors and scientists, they want to strengthen the Act by removing the "condescending" requirement of two doctors' permission for abortion, extend the law to cover women in Northern Ireland and end the NHS "postcode lottery" of delays and inadequate services.
"But first, we must ensure that the current 24-week upper time limit for abortion is not reduced in any way," cautions Abortion Rights activist and trade unionist Marian Brain, who herself had a late abortion as a teenager.
"Any reduction would have a devastating impact on the poorest and the most vulnerable women in society, in particular, teenagers. Pro-choice MPs must table counter-amendments to preserve and strengthen current laws."
Brain dismisses the anti-choice lobby as "a bunch of hypocrites," arguing: "Many of the politicians calling themselves 'pro-life' are the same people mounting attacks on single parents and moan about money being spent on welfare.
"They don't care about the child once he or she is born - just look at the level of child poverty in Britain."
Indeed, Widdecome has, in the past, voted for legislation to cut benefits for lone parents. She believes that people on benefits have no "sense of individual pride" and yearns for the days when "being on the dole was a matter for stigma."
The staunch Catholic has particularly targeted single mothers for having children outside marriage.
"In our day, to become pregnant before marriage was a disaster. Now, the state supplies the roof and the state is the breadwinner," she said in an interview with the Daily Mail last year.
Far from being a "breadwinner," the state has increasingly neglected the poorest and most vulnerable in society, thanks to 18 years of Tory rule followed by over a decade of new Labour.
In today's Britain, single mothers make up the majority of the poor and an estimated 3.5 million children live below the official poverty line. British childcare provision is ranked worst in Europe and a nationwide maternity care survey in January highlighted the appalling treatment of mothers and babies in overstretched NHS wards.
Furthermore, Britain has the highest level of teenage pregnancies in Western Europe and the government is set to miss its target to halve the number by 2010.
Brain blames this on a lack of social support and poor sex education, as well as the "appalling" sexualisation culture perpetuated by the media and retailers.
'Many politicians call themselves "pro-life" but are mounting attacks on single parents.'
Some merchandise aimed at children as young as six are shockingly sexual - cropped tops, thongs and T-shirts saying "Babe" and "Porn Star" on them. Recent campaigns by concerned mothers have forced Tesco to pull the plug on a pole-dancing toy kit and compelled Woolworths to withdraw a bed-range for six-year-olds casually called "Lolita."
Brain believes that, if anti-abortionists were serious about reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies, they would focus on these social and economic inequalities, not "put the guilt trip on women who, for whatever reason, choose abortion."
She notes that, if she had gone through with her pregnancy at the age of 19, she would have ended up a destitute single mother sniffed at by the likes of Widdecome as "immoral" freeloaders.
Recalling the experience, Brain says: "It was an unpleasant experience. But I knew I had to do it or I would end up a single mother with no degree and little financial or social support.
"I come from a big working-class family in Birmingham. My dad died when we were young and my mum had to bring up eight children single-handedly.
"I wasn't in a stable relationship with the father, who was registered with blindness, and I wasn't ready, psychologically or financially, to bring up a child on my own."
Brain notes that she was worried that the burden would fall on her mum.
"I couldn't do that to her. She was already struggling to bring us up."
Pro-choice campaigners are also angry about a clause in the current Abortion Rights Act which allows anti-choice GPs to deny women treatment.
"As well as a postcode lottery treatment and chronic delays in the system, women have to deal with anti-abortion doctors, who deliberately delay procedures and put spanners in the works," Brain says angrily.
This is reflected by women who have recounted their stories about abortion on the Pro-Choice Majority website. Most of them blame NHS delays and anti-abortionist GPs for having a late abortion.
Cath Elliott, from Norwich, who had an abortion at 12 weeks, writes: "My doctor was very anti-abortion, which he made clear by the way he treated me.
"The first time I went to him I was two weeks pregnant, but, because of his delaying tactics, I had to wait another 10 weeks before I got the abortion," Elliott writes.
Annette, from north-west England, had her abortion at 17 weeks. She contacted her local NHS when she was nine weeks pregnant but was turned away because the hospital had reached its "quota" on abortions.
Of all the women sharing their experience on the website, only Lucy has had an abortion as late as 24 weeks and that, she says, is because her GP "misinformed" her.
"He said I had miscarried at nine weeks, which I hadn't," she recalls, adding that staff at her local clinic were so unhelpful that she had to "resort to Yellow Pages for help."
Those who went through an abortion in the first 12 weeks of their pregnancy often cite psychological or financial difficulties, unstable relationship with the father or studies.
Brain urges MPs to resist any weakening of the abortion laws and seek to remove all current obstacles to make the service more widely accessible and fairer.
"My union, the CWU, has a very strong pro-choice policy and we have put motions to the TUC women's conference in the past," she says proudly.
"The Abortion Rights Act, along with other equality legislation, has enabled women to have a better quality of life and be more economically independent. We must defend these rights and seek to extend them further."
Friday March 14, 2008
The Morning Star
LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR reports on how the women's movement is fighting the anti-abortionists' attempts to make choices for us.
ANTI-ABORTION Tory MPs who voted for the Iraq war, nuclear weapons and cuts to benefits for lone parents and the disabled like to refer to themselves as "pro-life" and call defenders of women's rights "child killers."
Tory MPs Anne Widdecombe and Ann Winterton, who both supported the Iraq war and Trident nuclear weapons replacement, are on a "road show" to promote the anti-abortion agenda around the Human Fertilisation and the Embryology Bill expected to reach the Commons in spring.
Fellow anti-abortion MP Nadine Dorries, who also voted "very strongly" for Trident replacement, insists that the debate around abortion "is not an issue of women's rights or pro-life - the question is, are we a decent and humane society or aren't we?"
Pro-choice campaigners are worried that MPs such as Dorries may table amendments to reduce the current 24-week upper time limit for abortion to 20 or even 13 weeks.
The anti-abortionists are pegging their argument on recent reports about the "excellent survival rate" of babies born alive between 22 and 25 weeks.
However, a report by the Commons science and technology committee argued last year that there has been no significant change in foetal viability to justify a reduction in abortion time limit.
Fewer than 2 per cent of abortions take place after 20 weeks and this, campaigners say, is due to "exceptional and very difficult" circumstances, including profound "denial" associated with trauma such as rape and incest, catastrophic life circumstances such as domestic violence or a crisis with an existing child, as well as chronic delays of up to eight weeks by the NHS.
Professor Wendy Savage of the Doctors for Woman's Choice on Abortion warns that restricting abortion would not reduce the number of terminations but would help to create a market for back-street abortions.
The anti-abortion lobby's decision to rip open the debate after 18 years of relative silence may actually work in favour of the pro-choice activists, who plan to use the opportunity to drag the 1967 Abortion Rights Act into the 21st century.
Backed by public opinion, doctors and scientists, they want to strengthen the Act by removing the "condescending" requirement of two doctors' permission for abortion, extend the law to cover women in Northern Ireland and end the NHS "postcode lottery" of delays and inadequate services.
"But first, we must ensure that the current 24-week upper time limit for abortion is not reduced in any way," cautions Abortion Rights activist and trade unionist Marian Brain, who herself had a late abortion as a teenager.
"Any reduction would have a devastating impact on the poorest and the most vulnerable women in society, in particular, teenagers. Pro-choice MPs must table counter-amendments to preserve and strengthen current laws."
Brain dismisses the anti-choice lobby as "a bunch of hypocrites," arguing: "Many of the politicians calling themselves 'pro-life' are the same people mounting attacks on single parents and moan about money being spent on welfare.
"They don't care about the child once he or she is born - just look at the level of child poverty in Britain."
Indeed, Widdecome has, in the past, voted for legislation to cut benefits for lone parents. She believes that people on benefits have no "sense of individual pride" and yearns for the days when "being on the dole was a matter for stigma."
The staunch Catholic has particularly targeted single mothers for having children outside marriage.
"In our day, to become pregnant before marriage was a disaster. Now, the state supplies the roof and the state is the breadwinner," she said in an interview with the Daily Mail last year.
Far from being a "breadwinner," the state has increasingly neglected the poorest and most vulnerable in society, thanks to 18 years of Tory rule followed by over a decade of new Labour.
In today's Britain, single mothers make up the majority of the poor and an estimated 3.5 million children live below the official poverty line. British childcare provision is ranked worst in Europe and a nationwide maternity care survey in January highlighted the appalling treatment of mothers and babies in overstretched NHS wards.
Furthermore, Britain has the highest level of teenage pregnancies in Western Europe and the government is set to miss its target to halve the number by 2010.
Brain blames this on a lack of social support and poor sex education, as well as the "appalling" sexualisation culture perpetuated by the media and retailers.
'Many politicians call themselves "pro-life" but are mounting attacks on single parents.'
Some merchandise aimed at children as young as six are shockingly sexual - cropped tops, thongs and T-shirts saying "Babe" and "Porn Star" on them. Recent campaigns by concerned mothers have forced Tesco to pull the plug on a pole-dancing toy kit and compelled Woolworths to withdraw a bed-range for six-year-olds casually called "Lolita."
Brain believes that, if anti-abortionists were serious about reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies, they would focus on these social and economic inequalities, not "put the guilt trip on women who, for whatever reason, choose abortion."
She notes that, if she had gone through with her pregnancy at the age of 19, she would have ended up a destitute single mother sniffed at by the likes of Widdecome as "immoral" freeloaders.
Recalling the experience, Brain says: "It was an unpleasant experience. But I knew I had to do it or I would end up a single mother with no degree and little financial or social support.
"I come from a big working-class family in Birmingham. My dad died when we were young and my mum had to bring up eight children single-handedly.
"I wasn't in a stable relationship with the father, who was registered with blindness, and I wasn't ready, psychologically or financially, to bring up a child on my own."
Brain notes that she was worried that the burden would fall on her mum.
"I couldn't do that to her. She was already struggling to bring us up."
Pro-choice campaigners are also angry about a clause in the current Abortion Rights Act which allows anti-choice GPs to deny women treatment.
"As well as a postcode lottery treatment and chronic delays in the system, women have to deal with anti-abortion doctors, who deliberately delay procedures and put spanners in the works," Brain says angrily.
This is reflected by women who have recounted their stories about abortion on the Pro-Choice Majority website. Most of them blame NHS delays and anti-abortionist GPs for having a late abortion.
Cath Elliott, from Norwich, who had an abortion at 12 weeks, writes: "My doctor was very anti-abortion, which he made clear by the way he treated me.
"The first time I went to him I was two weeks pregnant, but, because of his delaying tactics, I had to wait another 10 weeks before I got the abortion," Elliott writes.
Annette, from north-west England, had her abortion at 17 weeks. She contacted her local NHS when she was nine weeks pregnant but was turned away because the hospital had reached its "quota" on abortions.
Of all the women sharing their experience on the website, only Lucy has had an abortion as late as 24 weeks and that, she says, is because her GP "misinformed" her.
"He said I had miscarried at nine weeks, which I hadn't," she recalls, adding that staff at her local clinic were so unhelpful that she had to "resort to Yellow Pages for help."
Those who went through an abortion in the first 12 weeks of their pregnancy often cite psychological or financial difficulties, unstable relationship with the father or studies.
Brain urges MPs to resist any weakening of the abortion laws and seek to remove all current obstacles to make the service more widely accessible and fairer.
"My union, the CWU, has a very strong pro-choice policy and we have put motions to the TUC women's conference in the past," she says proudly.
"The Abortion Rights Act, along with other equality legislation, has enabled women to have a better quality of life and be more economically independent. We must defend these rights and seek to extend them further."
A Capital Chance for Londoners
Louise Nousratpour
Monday March 10, 2008
The Morning Star
LEGENDARY US activist Angela Davis urged Londoners to back Ken Livingstone's mayoral campaign at the Capital Woman conference on Saturday, noting that, in the US, "we know him as the mayor who stood up to George Bush."
A record number of women attended the annual event at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in Westminster, which coincided with International Women's Day.
With over 5,000 women from all ages and ethnic backgrounds, there was one delegate for every 700 woman living in the capital.
If this truly democratic representation is anything to go by, Mr Livingstone will win the election to serve a third term in office.
Deputy mayor Nicky Gavron stressed the importance of a high turnout in the May elections, highlighting far-right BNP bid to win seats on the London Assembly for the first time.
Ms Davis told an audience of adoring fans that, while she did not wish to be "an outside agitator," a vote for Ken Livingstone would be a vote against racism and neoliberal wars.
In an inspirational speech, the former Black Panther activist covered everything from the brutal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and her tireless campaign to abolish the prison system to the hype around the US presidential elections and how we should remember the struggles of working-class women on International Women's Day.
She rejected arguments by some people in the US feminist movement that the way to celebrate International Women's Day is to generate more enthusiasm around Hillary Clinton's campaign.
"Here, I offer criticism to the prevailing tendency to assume that electing a woman would, by itself, bring progressive policies," Ms Davis said, referring to Margaret Thatcher's reign as clear evidence.
"The most important dimensions of women and human rights achievements have been forged by grassroots activists, especially women, whose names we no longer have access to.
"On International Women's Day, we must acquire the habit of learning how to remember the work of these brave anonymous men and women," Ms Davis said to loud cheers.
The free one-day conference gives London women an opportunity to engage politically with the mayor and hold him to account.
Since its launch in 2001, Capital Woman has had a decisive role to play in shaping London policies on domestic violence, safer streets, subsidised childcare, employment and affordable housing.
Conference heard that, as a result, more women are employed in senior jobs, around 7,000 more low-income families have access to "very cheap" child care, over 50,000 affordable homes are in the making and crime has fallen - in particular, gender-specific violence.
In his conference address, however, the mayor acknowledged that child poverty is still a major concern and he condemned the 23 per cent gender pay gap in London, compared to the 17 per cent national average.
Mr Livingstone reiterated the labour movement's demand for mandatory pay audits to be extended to the private sector, stressing: "Force of law is the only way to ensure equal pay, which will also help tackle child poverty."
With seminars and workshops throughout the day, there was something for everyone - from non-traditional careers like DIY plumbing to advice on setting up a business and how to fix a bike puncture.
The frenzy of activity continued through the lunch hour, with abortion rights campaigners forming a human chain outside the conference to defend a woman's right to choose in the face of Tory attempts to reduce the current 24-week time limit to 20 or even 13 weeks.
Monday March 10, 2008
The Morning Star
LEGENDARY US activist Angela Davis urged Londoners to back Ken Livingstone's mayoral campaign at the Capital Woman conference on Saturday, noting that, in the US, "we know him as the mayor who stood up to George Bush."
A record number of women attended the annual event at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in Westminster, which coincided with International Women's Day.
With over 5,000 women from all ages and ethnic backgrounds, there was one delegate for every 700 woman living in the capital.
If this truly democratic representation is anything to go by, Mr Livingstone will win the election to serve a third term in office.
Deputy mayor Nicky Gavron stressed the importance of a high turnout in the May elections, highlighting far-right BNP bid to win seats on the London Assembly for the first time.
Ms Davis told an audience of adoring fans that, while she did not wish to be "an outside agitator," a vote for Ken Livingstone would be a vote against racism and neoliberal wars.
In an inspirational speech, the former Black Panther activist covered everything from the brutal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and her tireless campaign to abolish the prison system to the hype around the US presidential elections and how we should remember the struggles of working-class women on International Women's Day.
She rejected arguments by some people in the US feminist movement that the way to celebrate International Women's Day is to generate more enthusiasm around Hillary Clinton's campaign.
"Here, I offer criticism to the prevailing tendency to assume that electing a woman would, by itself, bring progressive policies," Ms Davis said, referring to Margaret Thatcher's reign as clear evidence.
"The most important dimensions of women and human rights achievements have been forged by grassroots activists, especially women, whose names we no longer have access to.
"On International Women's Day, we must acquire the habit of learning how to remember the work of these brave anonymous men and women," Ms Davis said to loud cheers.
The free one-day conference gives London women an opportunity to engage politically with the mayor and hold him to account.
Since its launch in 2001, Capital Woman has had a decisive role to play in shaping London policies on domestic violence, safer streets, subsidised childcare, employment and affordable housing.
Conference heard that, as a result, more women are employed in senior jobs, around 7,000 more low-income families have access to "very cheap" child care, over 50,000 affordable homes are in the making and crime has fallen - in particular, gender-specific violence.
In his conference address, however, the mayor acknowledged that child poverty is still a major concern and he condemned the 23 per cent gender pay gap in London, compared to the 17 per cent national average.
Mr Livingstone reiterated the labour movement's demand for mandatory pay audits to be extended to the private sector, stressing: "Force of law is the only way to ensure equal pay, which will also help tackle child poverty."
With seminars and workshops throughout the day, there was something for everyone - from non-traditional careers like DIY plumbing to advice on setting up a business and how to fix a bike puncture.
The frenzy of activity continued through the lunch hour, with abortion rights campaigners forming a human chain outside the conference to defend a woman's right to choose in the face of Tory attempts to reduce the current 24-week time limit to 20 or even 13 weeks.
Thousands of Women March for Equal Pay
Louise Nousratpour
Saturday March 8, 2008
The Morning Star
TENS of thousands of women from across Britain will march on London on Saturday to mark International Women's Day.
The Million Women Rise event, which is expected to be the largest women-only march in British history, is a response to the gender pay gap and the devastating impact of violence against women.
Men are barred from joining the march and critics warned that this "sectarian" approach could disunite and weaken the progressive movement.
Communist Party of Britain women's officer Emily Mann, while welcoming any march for women's rights, said: "It is, however, perhaps a missed opportunity that men are excluded.
"Women cannot win equality and live free from violence without winning men to their side."
This year's International Women's Day falls on the centenary of the New York City women garment workers' march for shorter working hours, equal pay, voting rights and an end to child labour.
Some 100 years on, women have the vote and child labour has been stamped out in the rich countries.
But no nation has achieved equal pay and women form the largest majority of the poor in the world.
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.
ActionAid charity warned that ambitious targets for tackling global poverty are failing to deliver because women's basic rights are being "sidelined," while the International Trade Union Confederation revealed that the worldwide gender pay gap is stuck at 16 per cent.
In Britain, the pay gap hovers around 17 per cent and the average income of women in retirement is just 57 per cent of men's.
Private-sector union Unite equality officer Diane Holland called for "a target date" to close the pay gap, which she stressed would also help end child poverty.
Ms Holland reiterated Unite's demand for International Women's Day to be made a public holiday as a way of recognising women's achievements and highlighting the challenges ahead.
"In 2005, we delivered a 10,000-strong petition to Downing Street," Ms Holland said. "We now need to raise the profile of the campaign."
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber agreed, adding: "A bank holiday in March to celebrate International Women's Day would bring us closer to the EU average of 11 public holidays."
March 8 is a public holiday in 23 countries, including China, Cuba and Vietnam.
Trade unionist and Communist Party member Mary Davis welcomed the call for March 8 to be a bank holiday.
She said: "International Women's Day was born out of the socialist movement.
"We must not allow it to become divorced from the wider political struggle," Ms Davis warned.
"Gender equality will not be achieved without the struggle to end exploitation and to bring about socialism."
Saturday's Million Women Rise march will assemble in Hyde Park at 12 noon and culminates in a rally at Trafalgar Square around 3pm.
Saturday March 8, 2008
The Morning Star
TENS of thousands of women from across Britain will march on London on Saturday to mark International Women's Day.
The Million Women Rise event, which is expected to be the largest women-only march in British history, is a response to the gender pay gap and the devastating impact of violence against women.
Men are barred from joining the march and critics warned that this "sectarian" approach could disunite and weaken the progressive movement.
Communist Party of Britain women's officer Emily Mann, while welcoming any march for women's rights, said: "It is, however, perhaps a missed opportunity that men are excluded.
"Women cannot win equality and live free from violence without winning men to their side."
This year's International Women's Day falls on the centenary of the New York City women garment workers' march for shorter working hours, equal pay, voting rights and an end to child labour.
Some 100 years on, women have the vote and child labour has been stamped out in the rich countries.
But no nation has achieved equal pay and women form the largest majority of the poor in the world.
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.
ActionAid charity warned that ambitious targets for tackling global poverty are failing to deliver because women's basic rights are being "sidelined," while the International Trade Union Confederation revealed that the worldwide gender pay gap is stuck at 16 per cent.
In Britain, the pay gap hovers around 17 per cent and the average income of women in retirement is just 57 per cent of men's.
Private-sector union Unite equality officer Diane Holland called for "a target date" to close the pay gap, which she stressed would also help end child poverty.
Ms Holland reiterated Unite's demand for International Women's Day to be made a public holiday as a way of recognising women's achievements and highlighting the challenges ahead.
"In 2005, we delivered a 10,000-strong petition to Downing Street," Ms Holland said. "We now need to raise the profile of the campaign."
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber agreed, adding: "A bank holiday in March to celebrate International Women's Day would bring us closer to the EU average of 11 public holidays."
March 8 is a public holiday in 23 countries, including China, Cuba and Vietnam.
Trade unionist and Communist Party member Mary Davis welcomed the call for March 8 to be a bank holiday.
She said: "International Women's Day was born out of the socialist movement.
"We must not allow it to become divorced from the wider political struggle," Ms Davis warned.
"Gender equality will not be achieved without the struggle to end exploitation and to bring about socialism."
Saturday's Million Women Rise march will assemble in Hyde Park at 12 noon and culminates in a rally at Trafalgar Square around 3pm.
Protecting Women
Louise Nousratpour
Tuesday March 4, 2008
The Morning Star
LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR looks at how the reform of prostitution laws has taken on an extra urgency.
DEMANDS for a universal DNA database have filled the media since the conviction of Steve Wright and Mark Dixie for the violent murder and horrific abuse of women.
Both men were convicted on the basis of previously registered genetic data. But civil rights advocates and everyone wary of a "big brother" state were relieved when the government agreed that such a database would be a step too far.
However, the cases raised another issue on which ministers must now focus - violence against women.
Wright murdered five young women, all of whom worked as street prostitutes in Ipswich, for no other apparent reason than that they were easy prey for his psychotic, misogynist impulses.
Sweden has legally recognised prostitution as a form of violence against women and children. Laws were introduced in 1999 to criminalise the buying of sex, while offering prostitutes services such as housing, education, training, drug rehabilitation programmes and welfare.
The number of people in prostitution has since shrunk by half to an estimated 1,000, compared to 80,000 in Britain, and sex traffickers are advising each other to steer clear of Sweden. As a result, the country has the lowest number of trafficking victims in Europe.
The vast majority of women in prostitution are poor, homeless and have already suffered violence and sexual abuse throughout their life. Numerous international studies have found that up to 90 per cent of them would leave the sex industry if they had alternative options.
So, why do British ministers refuse to see prostitution for what it really is and follow the Swedish example?
Drug charity the Iceni Project has shown in practice that the Swedish model can work for Britain, though it stresses that proper resources and an iron commitment to law enforcement is key to its success.
Since the Ipswich murders, the charity has spearheaded a campaign that has helped 28 of the 30 women prostitutes in the area off the streets.
"It ain't rocket science," says Iceni director Brian Tobin. Ipswich police target kerb crawlers, while the charity offers women help to beat their drug addiction and find alternative work.
Critics of the Swedish model in Britain are calling for the decriminalisation of all aspects of the sex industry as the best way to protect women from associated violence and crime.
But prostitution cannot be divorced from substance abuse, beatings or vulnerability to rape. Neither can we ignore medical evidence that the high levels of sexual activity endured by prostitutes leave their internal organs permanently battered.
Recent UN reports have found that "many of the chronic symptoms of women in prostitution are similar to the long-term physical consequences of torture."
Amsterdam City Council admits that the red light district is a "haven" for organised crime and, in New Zealand, where prostitution is decriminalised, children's charities warn of a growing number of underage prostitutes.
Some New Zealand MPs believe that the 2003 Prostitution Reform Act has "failed." Independent MP Gordon Copeland is campaigning for the Swedish model, saying: "More and more women are beginning to realise that gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women through prostitution."
In Britain, a new campaign, entitled the Feminists Coalition Against Prostitution (FCAP), has just been launched to promote the Swedish approach of criminalising demand and decriminalising prostitutes.
It comes at a crucial time, when the government is considering an overhaul of British laws around prostitution.
The first step, argues FCAP co-founder Finn Mackay, is for all police records of prostitutes on the sex offenders' list to be wiped out.
"Such criminal records make it almost impossible for women who want to leave prostitution to get a job," she warns.
A fleet of Home Office ministers have embarked on a six-month fact-finding mission around Europe. Their visit to Sweden in January will probably be followed by a trip to the Netherlands, where prostitution is legalised through a system of licensing.
The latter has proved to be very unpopular and the government is slowly catching up with increasing public support for Swedish-style legislation as the only way to stifle the sex industry.
Campaign Against Trafficking in Women co-ordinator and former adviser to the Swedish government Gunilla Ekberg proudly observes that the introduction of the 1999 Act "has led to better rape laws and higher sentences for offenders of domestic violence."
The opposition claims that the law doesn't work because it has driven prostitution underground and women are not benefiting from the social support promised to them.
"The problem is not the law," Ekberg retorts, "but how much energy and resources a government is prepared to invest in making it work. Also, because of the inherently criminal nature of prostitution, no law can stop underground activity without suppressing the industry altogether."
The most common argument against efforts to suppress the sex industry is that prostitution is "the oldest profession" in the world.
"Well, it isn't, agriculture is," affirms Denise Marshall of Eves Housing 4 Women. "Besides, similar arguments can be made about rape, child abuse and domestic violence. Should we legalise them too?"
Decriminalisation means treating prostitution as any other type of work.
So, where would we draw the line? Should colleges be allowed to offer vocational training in brothels? Or job centres advertise prostitution as a perfectly legitimate "choice" for young mothers on the dole?
Indeed, anecdotal stories from the Netherlands suggest that unemployed women are encouraged to enter the sex industry to get them off benefits. And British job centres sparked outrage last year for advertising £100-an-hour "escort" jobs on their website.
A society which gives prostitution employment status is sending a message that torture is acceptable, gender-specific violence is "human nature," equality unachievable and welfare on its way out.
"The left must fall behind the Swedish model as part of the wider struggle for equality," Mackay stresses.
Supporters are being encouraged to write to their MPs and put motions to their trade union during the forthcoming conference season.
Tuesday March 4, 2008
The Morning Star
LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR looks at how the reform of prostitution laws has taken on an extra urgency.
DEMANDS for a universal DNA database have filled the media since the conviction of Steve Wright and Mark Dixie for the violent murder and horrific abuse of women.
Both men were convicted on the basis of previously registered genetic data. But civil rights advocates and everyone wary of a "big brother" state were relieved when the government agreed that such a database would be a step too far.
However, the cases raised another issue on which ministers must now focus - violence against women.
Wright murdered five young women, all of whom worked as street prostitutes in Ipswich, for no other apparent reason than that they were easy prey for his psychotic, misogynist impulses.
Sweden has legally recognised prostitution as a form of violence against women and children. Laws were introduced in 1999 to criminalise the buying of sex, while offering prostitutes services such as housing, education, training, drug rehabilitation programmes and welfare.
The number of people in prostitution has since shrunk by half to an estimated 1,000, compared to 80,000 in Britain, and sex traffickers are advising each other to steer clear of Sweden. As a result, the country has the lowest number of trafficking victims in Europe.
The vast majority of women in prostitution are poor, homeless and have already suffered violence and sexual abuse throughout their life. Numerous international studies have found that up to 90 per cent of them would leave the sex industry if they had alternative options.
So, why do British ministers refuse to see prostitution for what it really is and follow the Swedish example?
Drug charity the Iceni Project has shown in practice that the Swedish model can work for Britain, though it stresses that proper resources and an iron commitment to law enforcement is key to its success.
Since the Ipswich murders, the charity has spearheaded a campaign that has helped 28 of the 30 women prostitutes in the area off the streets.
"It ain't rocket science," says Iceni director Brian Tobin. Ipswich police target kerb crawlers, while the charity offers women help to beat their drug addiction and find alternative work.
Critics of the Swedish model in Britain are calling for the decriminalisation of all aspects of the sex industry as the best way to protect women from associated violence and crime.
But prostitution cannot be divorced from substance abuse, beatings or vulnerability to rape. Neither can we ignore medical evidence that the high levels of sexual activity endured by prostitutes leave their internal organs permanently battered.
Recent UN reports have found that "many of the chronic symptoms of women in prostitution are similar to the long-term physical consequences of torture."
Amsterdam City Council admits that the red light district is a "haven" for organised crime and, in New Zealand, where prostitution is decriminalised, children's charities warn of a growing number of underage prostitutes.
Some New Zealand MPs believe that the 2003 Prostitution Reform Act has "failed." Independent MP Gordon Copeland is campaigning for the Swedish model, saying: "More and more women are beginning to realise that gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women through prostitution."
In Britain, a new campaign, entitled the Feminists Coalition Against Prostitution (FCAP), has just been launched to promote the Swedish approach of criminalising demand and decriminalising prostitutes.
It comes at a crucial time, when the government is considering an overhaul of British laws around prostitution.
The first step, argues FCAP co-founder Finn Mackay, is for all police records of prostitutes on the sex offenders' list to be wiped out.
"Such criminal records make it almost impossible for women who want to leave prostitution to get a job," she warns.
A fleet of Home Office ministers have embarked on a six-month fact-finding mission around Europe. Their visit to Sweden in January will probably be followed by a trip to the Netherlands, where prostitution is legalised through a system of licensing.
The latter has proved to be very unpopular and the government is slowly catching up with increasing public support for Swedish-style legislation as the only way to stifle the sex industry.
Campaign Against Trafficking in Women co-ordinator and former adviser to the Swedish government Gunilla Ekberg proudly observes that the introduction of the 1999 Act "has led to better rape laws and higher sentences for offenders of domestic violence."
The opposition claims that the law doesn't work because it has driven prostitution underground and women are not benefiting from the social support promised to them.
"The problem is not the law," Ekberg retorts, "but how much energy and resources a government is prepared to invest in making it work. Also, because of the inherently criminal nature of prostitution, no law can stop underground activity without suppressing the industry altogether."
The most common argument against efforts to suppress the sex industry is that prostitution is "the oldest profession" in the world.
"Well, it isn't, agriculture is," affirms Denise Marshall of Eves Housing 4 Women. "Besides, similar arguments can be made about rape, child abuse and domestic violence. Should we legalise them too?"
Decriminalisation means treating prostitution as any other type of work.
So, where would we draw the line? Should colleges be allowed to offer vocational training in brothels? Or job centres advertise prostitution as a perfectly legitimate "choice" for young mothers on the dole?
Indeed, anecdotal stories from the Netherlands suggest that unemployed women are encouraged to enter the sex industry to get them off benefits. And British job centres sparked outrage last year for advertising £100-an-hour "escort" jobs on their website.
A society which gives prostitution employment status is sending a message that torture is acceptable, gender-specific violence is "human nature," equality unachievable and welfare on its way out.
"The left must fall behind the Swedish model as part of the wider struggle for equality," Mackay stresses.
Supporters are being encouraged to write to their MPs and put motions to their trade union during the forthcoming conference season.
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