I’m disappointed to hear it was a majority verdict of 10:2 rather than a unanimous verdict from the jury mind, but there you go.

What has really pissed me off though, is the news that Tabak had a particular liking for violent strangulation porn.

That numerous films etc depicting this had been found on his computer, and that there was some evidence he’d watched them a number of times – i.e. they weren’t on his computer through some kind of mysterious downloading accident.

And that the judge decided this information was not relevant to the case, or at least, that telling the jury about it would have been prejudicial to Tabak getting a fair hearing.

“Mr Justice Field, the trial judge, accepted that the viewing of pornography showing violence or a threat of violence was “reprehensible”. But he did not allow the jury to hear the evidence because he felt its value in explaining why Tabak acted as he did could not outweigh the prejudice it would cause his defence.

He also turned down the prosecution’s suggestion that the evidence about escort agencies should go before the jury to correct the impression Tabak gave of being sexually naive and in a loving, monogamous relationship. The jury was left ignorant of what the police believed was important evidence.“

I mean seriously?

Understandably this information has sparked quite considerable debate on Twitter, but it’s difficult to fit everything people have to say about this into Twitter’s character limit, so I thought I’d give people some space to vent/discuss the issue here.

So, your thoughts please: do you think the jury should have been told about Tabak’s liking for violent misogynist porn?

Do you think a liking for violent misogynist porn is relevant evidence in a murder/sex crime case such as this?

Or do you think Mr Justice Field was right, and that to admit such evidence would have been prejudicial?

—
cross-posted from Cath’s blog

In fact I’ll go one further, and state for the record that I don’t know enough about Swedish law, and in particular Swedish sex crimes law, to even begin to speculate on the rights and wrongs, he said she saids, in this case.

No, my issue with John Band’s piece on this site the other day is not that I think Assange is a man and all men are rapists therefore Julian Assange must a rapist, or whatever other radical feminist straw-woman-thinking readers here might want to accuse me of.

My issue is with the fact that once again it’s the same old same old story: the left finds itself a new poster boy, and suddenly leftie so-called feminist men are falling all over each other in their haste to defend him.

According to Band, Assange must be considered an innocent man purely on the basis that Swedish sex crimes laws are ‘deranged’ and beyond the comprehension of anyone outside of Sweden. It’s also all seemingly part of some big conspiracy, a right wing plot to discredit and bring down the founder of Wikileaks, the torch bearer for leftie libertarians and free speechers right across the globe.

Never once in all this does Band consider the possibility that actually maybe Assange isn’t the perfect hero we’d all wish him to be. That maybe, just maybe, he might actually have committed the crimes for which he stands accused. Like I said, I honestly don’t know, but for that matter neither does John Band, so why even speculate in the first place?

I said in my comment under Band’s post, and I reiterated it in a heated Twitter exchange with Sunny on Friday, that I was disappointed to see Band’s piece go up on a site like Liberal Conspiracy, and I stand by that.

I’m not saying these discussions should never be aired, but to be honest, if I wanted to read a piece in which an entire nation is written off as barking mad and in which their laws are judged not even worthy of our consideration, or if I wanted to read about how a man accused of sex crimes is nothing more than a victim of a hateful conspiracy against him, there are other places I could go to do that: the Daily Mail for instance, or any one of a number of other tabloid hysteria mongers.

But Liberal Conspiracy is a broadly left site with quite a strong feminist leaning. And that’s where my main objection lies. Because it is the very antithesis of feminism to automatically assume that a man accused of sex crimes is innocent, especially when there’s no more basis for making that assumption than the fact that actually we’d really really like it to be true.

When an article suggesting that a man accused of sex crimes is himself an innocent victim, it feeds into the prevailing misogynistic anti-woman narrative that says that all women who accuse men of rape are lying, and that there’s no such thing as rape, there is instead just bad sex, or as John Band put it “poor bedroom etiquette”.

And we join in with that ‘lying women/bad laws’ shtick, we’re just adding our name to a whole host of sites and other media organisations keen to deny women’s experiences, and that basically tell women that the men are sticking together again therefore this is a site where we really don’t belong.

That’s why I felt it important to speak out about this issue. Not because I believe Assange to be guilty, but because as a feminist I think it discredits us to just blithely assume that he’s not.

Before I get into how and why that is this though I just want to make something clear.

By 2013 none of my 4 children will be eligible for Child Benefit, so I have absolutely no vested interest in this issue. This is not about me trying to preserve something for myself; the decision to cut Child Benefit will make no difference to me personally one way or another.

Right, so now I’ve got that out of the way, here’s the problem.

Child Benefit, or Family Allowance as it used to be called, is a universal benefit, and it’s universal for a reason. As Yvonne Roberts said in the Guardian last year:

“It’s precisely because child benefit is universal and not means-tested that it lays down a marker of mutuality in society that has a value that must not be sacrificed. It says that children matter and this cash, paid to the mother, is highly likely to be spent on their welfare.”

It’s a recognition if you like that children are valued, and that society as a whole has an obligation to support its children. It’s not, as some have said, a “reward” for having children, it’s society’s (small) contribution to its children’s welfare.

More importantly though as far as I’m concerned is the fact that Child Benefit is the one state benefit that has nearly always gone to the mother, or at least it has since 1945, when Eleanor Rathbone’s amendment to the Family Allowances Bill overturned the then Government’s proposal to have Family Allowance paid to the father:

“For moral and economic reasons this would, Rathbone believed, give mothers security and rights, as well as providing better chance of the money being used for the purpose it was intended: the welfare of children. This ‘child benefit’ payment was universal and paid into the purse. Rathbone knew that mothers could be vulnerable and less able to cope with changes in circumstance; she was also aware that payment direct to mothers made a statement about women’s equal status.”

It could of course be argued that Child Benefit as it currently stands is sexist, in that by giving mothers the payment it helps feed the notion that women are somehow more caring and nurturing than men, and in an ideal world I would be more than happy to argue that men are just as capable of fulfilling that role as women therefore both parents should get the benefit and so on and so forth.

However, we don’t live in an ideal world, we are not in some post-patriarchal post-feminist sodding nirvana. The reality is that women do still bear the brunt of caring responsibilities, that women are still the ones most likely to take on the role of primary carer, and that mothers are still the ones who tend to do the shopping and cooking for their kids.

And it’s also still the case that women are the main victims of domestic violence, and that domestic violence cuts across all classes and income brackets. Rich women get beaten by their husbands too, and so do women who are married to men who pay 40% of their wages back to the taxman.

Speak to anyone who works in a domestic violence shelter, and they will tell you that often-times Child Benefit is the only source of income a woman and her children escaping from a violent partner and father will have. Speak to anyone who works in the violence against women sector and they will tell you all about how some men use money as a way to exert power and control in a relationship; how many women are denied access to the family finances, and how Child Benefit is often the only money they ever get to see.

Child Benefit is a life-line for some women, and yet this government wants to take it away from them.

Others have already pointed out the discrepancy in Osborne’s proposals that will see a family with one person earning £44,000 a year losing their Child Benefit while a family with two people earning £43,000 each a year will get to keep theirs, but so far I’ve seen little about how, once again, this ConDem Government is proposing cuts that will have a disproportionate impact on women.

The Fawcett Society has called for a judicial review of this year’s budget, arguing that “the government should have assessed whether its budget proposals would increase or reduce inequality between women and men.” I firmly believe that that legal challenge should now be extended, and that the axing of Child Benefit for higher earners should be assessed according to the same criteria. Because an attack on Child Benefit is an attack on women, it really is as simple as that.

____

Crossposted from Too Much To Say For Myself

While I still don’t agree with the ConDem’s proposal, Cameron’s response appears to be a step back from the original “We will extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants” statement that was made a couple of weeks ago.

I don’t know if this means that Cameron is now backtracking, but it certainly sounds like it.

Perhaps the outcry these plans have provoked is actually having some effect. If so, keep up the good work everyone.

To sign the petition click here

To see Fiona Mactaggart’s Early Day Motion (and get your MP to sign it) click here

And to read Vera Baird’s excellent Progress piece on why anonymity for rape defendants is an appalling idea, click here.

Episode 1
From Andrew Pierce in yesterday’s Daily Mail:

Ugly rumours may cost Cash the cutie dear

Joanne Cash, the Conservative Party Alister, has been tipped for Cabinet office if she wins the marginal seat of Westminster North.
Tatler magazine has named her as one of the ten Tories to watch and Vogue included her as one of the top 50 women of the age.
Small wonder, then, that Ms Cash is pre-eminent among the telegenic Cameron cuties whom the Tories will be hoping to wheel before the cameras in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile, here’s Jan Moir in the same paper:
War of the wives: How did Sarah Brown and SamCam compare in the fashion stakes?

Together, this trio of attractive, clever, multitasking, modern, juggling, have-it-all career women make up the political First Wives Club.
For better or worse, it is their mordant destiny to be the life partners of our great leaders, reduced to totems at their sides…
….So scramble the helicopters, here come the girls!

And joy of joys, this one even comes with some pics:

“Sarah Brown on the campaign trail yesterday”

and Samantha Cameron wearing a smart jacket combination

Blimey, you’d have thought someone would have told them they still had the tags on their clothes…..

The Telegraph meanwhile has come up with a video:
General Election 2010: The battle of the leaders’ wives.

And in a classic case of you’ve got to be fucking kidding me! Labour Party stalwarts have decided it’s a good idea to stereotype all women under the age of 40, by labelling this targeted demographic: “Take a Break women”

Gahhhhhh!

*If you see any glaring examples of sexist shite during the  General Election campaign that you think I may have missed,  feel free to email them to me at cathryne_1999 at hotmail.co.uk

—–
Crossposted from Too Much To Say for Myself

Now despite the fact that I appear to be one of the few lefties she hasn’t yet blocked on Twitter, I’m not renowned for holding Dorries in any high esteem (see here for example), so you can imagine my surprise when she tweeted this:

…and I found myself nodding along.

Yes she’s right, the political new media is dominated by men – in fact it’s something I’ve been intending to write about for a while now.

Jennie Rigg wrote a great piece about it last year: Where are all the female bloggers, where she explained how part of the reason men dominate, or at least are seen to dominate the blogosphere, is that “men link to men” on their blogs as well as “recommend posts by men to other men.”

She also argued, and this is where I think she hits the nail on the head, that part of the problem is a definitional one, that unless you’re writing about party or Westminster politics, if you’re writing about feminism for example, you’re not regarded as a political blogger. Says Jenni:

“Dan Dan the Wikio Man and I had a similar discussion about The F-Word and various other feminist blogs. Wikio had them listed under General, because feminism isn’t politics. The narrow definition of politics to include only geekery about party politics and the Westminster Bubble excludes women.”

Exactly. I regard myself as very much a political blogger, and feminism as an integral part of my politics, but I only get linked to from the big boys’ blogs when I write about party political issues. And search for my blog on Wikio and, just like the F-Word and other feminist blogs, you’ll find it categorised under the “General” heading.

Liberal Conspiracy on the other hand, is firmly listed there under ‘Politics’. So does that mean that when I write at my place I’m just a feminist blogger and when I write for LC I’m a political blogger? Even though often-times it’s the same blog post in both places? Hmmm, perhaps someone from Wikio could explain to me how that works…

Laurie Penny has also written about this recently, and I have to say I completely agree with her criticism of the What Difference Does Political Blogging Make? debate, hosted by the Westminster Skeptics, in which the panellists, Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale, Nick Cohen, Sunny Hundal and Mick Fealty, were all men.

In fact I had actually planned on going to the debate to make exactly that point, that having an all male panel at an event like that really doesn’t help, especially when we’re all busy bemoaning the invisibility of women in both politics and political blogging. But in the end I had to pass, ‘cos I was off that day doing other, more girly, less political things, like presenting a workshop on trafficking and prostitution at the National Rape Crisis conference. And yes that is a snark, because if anyone really does think there’s nothing political about that, then sorry, but I beg to differ.

But anyway, back to Nadine and me, and our momentary, all too brief, meeting of minds. It wasn’t long after posting her tweet that some Tory came back to her with this:

And her response?

No, dear me no. I mean Jeez, God forbid no, perish the thought. Nadine’s not a feminist, there’s not an ounce of feminism in her body, no no no. Not even a hint of it. But….

Why do women do this? Why? And, let’s be more specific in this case, why do women in politics do this?

Nadine, just on the off chance you’re reading this. I don’t mean to shout or anything, but

You’re a woman ffs! A woman MP! You wouldn’t even be in Westminster if it wasn’t for feminism and the feminists who fought bloody hard for your right to be there! Now go and learn some sodding history!

Still, I may have retreated back to the other side of the barricades, but at least Marshal still loves her:

Awwww.

But apart from her odious assertion that “we do women an injustice when we say that rape is the worst thing that can happen to a woman. It is, after all, just a penis.” top of the list was her claim, repeated in the Independent, that in some contexts so-called rape ‘jokes’ can not only be deemed to be acceptable, but they can also in fact be funny.

Because they’re not. Ever. They never have been and they never will be. They’re not funny when Ricky Gervais tells them, and they’re not funny when a Tory Councillor tells them either.

Here for example is Eddie Wake, a charming man who, up until Monday evening, was a Conservative councillor at Sunderland City Council (and who’s still a school governor at Oxclose Community School):

Wake was expelled from the Conservative party on Monday after word got out that a few weeks ago, at the end of a meeting where councillors had been discussing rape prevention measures with police, he decided to crack a rape ‘joke’, to a  senior police inspector no less. A rape joke that was so cutting-edge and side-splittingly fucking hilarious that it led to a female councillor leaving the room in tears.

Interestingly, actually no, not interestingly, more like boringly soddingly predictably, Wake refused to apologise at the time. Instead, when he was challenged about his comments by Labour Councillor Dianne Snowdon,  he whined “Come on, Dianne, you can’t joke about anything these days” and proceeded to tick off the list of oh-so-funny subjects the pc gawn maaad brigade have banned him from pointing and laughing at: like women and black people for instance.

It’s only now, now that he’s suddenly found his name splashed all over the papers and his fellow Conservatives treating him like he’s just stepped in something really really noxious, that Wake’s decided to come over all repentant.

Except that he hasn’t, not really, not when you look at the actual content of his pathetic apology:

“I made the remark when the meeting had closed, to a colleague.”

That’s not an excuse, as anyone who holds public office should know.

“It was an old joke and not a very good one and I bitterly regret the offence it has caused.”

This just comes across as an apology for telling a crap joke, not an apology for the offensive subject matter of the joke. And if he was really sorry for causing offence, then why didn’t he apologise at the time to the person who clearly was offended, instead of justifying it with all that pc gawn maaad Daily Mail shite?

“I am an effective councillor who asks awkward questions and I am not politically correct in any way but this time I have allowed that to cloud my judgment”

Translation: “I’m a bit of a  tosser and I don’t intend to change, but in future I’ll try to be more careful about who I tell my sexist racist little anecdotes to. Maybe a council meeting where I’m likely to be overheard by a humourless femnazi isn’t the best place, but I bet the lads down the pub’ll still appreciate them.”

Or in other words “I’m sorry I was caught out this time” not “I’m sorry to any rape survivors out there who may have been upset by my crassness and complete insensitivity”

So anyway, to get back to Ellie Levenson and her view that so-called rape ‘jokes’ help break down the “rape taboo”, and that “humour is one of the natural ways humans work through their thoughts and feelings about difficult issues”: as I made clear at the beginning of this piece, I fundamentally disagree. After all, people like Eddie Wake aren’t interested in breaking down taboos, they’re only interested in demeaning and insulting women: rape jokes to men like them are just another weapon in an already vast arsenal.

As any survivor of sexual violence will tell you, there’s nothing funny about being raped. There’s also nothing funny about listening to yet another sexist bore trying to make light of it. And one of the last things we need in this context is alleged feminists giving the green light to such twisted misogynist bullshit.

But anyway, I’ve got a joke now, stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a man walks into a council meeting and spouts a load of sexist tripe. Next thing he knows he’s been expelled from his party and is being investigated by the council’s standards committee.

What? What do you mean that’s not funny? Personally I think it’s fucking hilarious!

Predictably, a good proportion of the commenters over at the Daily Mail have got their knickers in a twist about all this, as has Norman Wells, the director of the Family Education Trust, a group which believes that “behind the plausible-sounding arguments and innocuous-sounding words there is a specific agenda at work to undermine the role of parents and to tear down traditional moral standards” and that “Sex education is an ideological battlefield on which a war is being waged for the hearts and minds of our children.”

And equally as predictably, I wholeheartedly disagree. In fact I think sex education, or PSHE (or is it PSHEE now?) should be compulsory for all pupils, including those still at primary school.

That’s not to say that I think children as young as five should be learning about sex, but I do believe that even the very youngest children have a right to know some basics, like the correct terminology for parts of the human anatomy for instance, or the fact that it’s perfectly normal for both boys and girls to feel emotions and to cry. (I also believe it’s tantamount to neglect that in this day and age a girl of 16 can find herself pregnant because she “only did it the once and everyone told me I couldn’t get pregnant the first time,” as happened to a friend’s daughter.)

But it seems that even these basics are too much for the self-appointed protectors of our nation’s morality, who reacted with outrage last year when a completely innocent pamphlet: Let’s grow with Nisha and Joe, was introduced into primary schools. The Mail described it as a “sex guide for six year olds” when all it does in reality is talk about friendships and invite children to correctly label different parts of the human body. “Disgraceful” and “sick” frothed the Mail’s child-centred readership when told of the plans to teach little girls that their vaginas are called vaginas and not “front bottoms” or “girly bits,” while at the same time lamenting that the fascist ZaNuLabour government wouldn’t let parents birch their kids anymore.

As ever, those who always shout the loudest about our teen pregnancy rates are now the ones objecting the most strongly to young people being taught about contraception and about taking responsibility. And as ever, the best we can do is ignore them. For much as the family values brigade would like to perpetuate the fantasy, most young people already know that babies don’t miraculously grow under gooseberry bushes or get delivered by storks bearing gifts: and thankfully now, the ones that don’t soon will.

During a recent discussion over there about the Norwich North by-election one of its more evolved members, that is, a Nazi who can not only use a keyboard to spout bile on the Internet but who can even add links and shit too, decided to post my piece about the lies the BNP had been printing in their election leaflets: The BNP’s lies in Norwich North. On top of that, said Nazi also decided to post a piccie of my good self to illustrate the article, one that he nabbed off my Facebook profile.

Now after a minor panic about how the hell he’d got hold of a photo I’ve only ever used on Facebook, and after taking some advice from friends about Internet security (cheers Sunny), I decided to remove my FB profile from public view.

I hadn’t actually realised that doing that would have a knock-on effect anywhere else, but I’m delighted and amused to report that this action has led to my photo on the Stormfront forum being replaced by a generic faceless avatar.

Why am I amused by this?

Because my threatened deportation appears to be based on my appearance alone. More specifically, the Nazi fascist scum want me booted off this sceptred isle because I look like I might be a lesbian.

I’m not linking (if you want to find the discussion yourself it’s headed Norwich north parliamentary by-election – Thursday 23rd July), but here’s a selection from the comments:

Nazi no. 1: “As for the BNP in Norwich – They seem to have upset the hairy armpit brigade“  (Followed by my photo and article with a link to LibCon.)

Nazi no. 2: “Is that a Lesbian? (no, it’s a generic faceless avatar you numpty)

Whatever it is, it looks like a real nasty piece of work. The sort that would get all “offended” and then start abusing you if you told her you were voting BNP. People like her will have to be deported too when nationalists gain power.…..I would bet a lot of money that this bitch doesn’t live anywhere near the invaders yet continues to brag about how wonderful they are.”

Nazi no. 3: “Isn’t it always the lonely white middle class woman or the lesbian or those liberal elite clergymen with nothing but time on their hands who shout loudest for the poor trampled on African who has had to travel thousands of miles across different countries to get their nice new house and benefits in madhouse UK ?“

So, the questions are: 1) apart from Lesbos of course, where on Dawkin’s good earth are the Nazi fascist scum planning to deport me once they gain power? And 2) if the deportation selection criteria is going to be based on people looking like nasty pieces of work, how many skinhead fascists do they think will be left here after the grand cull? I mean seriously, the BNP and their acolytes are hardly what you’d call top totty themselves are they?

What I did find interesting was the attitude expressed on the forum of so-called English nationalists towards their fellow country men and women. Bearing in mind these are the people who allegedly want to preserve England for the English ‘cos the English are the greatest race and all the rest of that crap, this is what they actually think of the rest of the great British public:

Nazi no. 4: (talking about the BNP candidate the Rev Robert West) “Its time to drop the reverend. Having a fake vicar puts us down with the crank candidates and thats where our vote has ended up.

People aren`t stupid ( well actually they are on the whole) but they have seen through this fake Reverend gimmick.”

Nazi no. 5: “The point is he is not a fake Reverend. And most of the people are incredibly stupid.“

Nazi no. 5 again: “The general public are dumb and can be led to believe anything.”

Genius Nazi no. 6 who can even do anagrams: “Are these people really worth trying to save ? I’m beginning to wonder. The brave few left standing will save this place , not these bunch of tnucs , feck em .”

I make no comment on the irony of BNP and Stormfront thugs questioning other people’s intellectual capabilities…..

The rest of the debate then veers off into a discussion about the BNP’s failure to get anywhere in the Norwich North election. Interestingly, the consensus seems to be that the BNP is becoming too cuddly and multi-cultural, and that if only they’d go back to their roots and start looking and sounding like the National Front and Combat 18 which spawned them again, they might stand some chance of success:

Nazi no 7: “What these results should underscore to everybody is that bleating “I’m not a racist”, publicising that you have jewish members and support the bandit state of israel, telling the world you have members with non-White wives and mixed race kids, making unlikely claims that Sikhs and blacks form part of your vote – none of that will earn you one extra vote and will take you not one step nearer winning a parliamentary seat, Parliament being the only place, as the Lancaster site points out, worth winning election to.

I hope, but doubt, that the Norwich result and the terrible post June results will be the catalyst for returning the BNP to the course from which it strayed in 1999 and that it can become again the party that unites White Nationalists who aren’t afraid to be called “racist” and who aren’t going to blame everybody and everything in sight when the going gets tough.”

By everybody and everything in sight I take it he means other white nationalists, because if the debate on that forum is anything to go by, the only people BNP-voting white nationalist Englishmen don’t hate is other BNP-voting white nationalist Englishmen: it’s open season on everyone else.

But anyway, the white nationalists needn’t worry about finding somewhere to dump me. I’ve already started making plans for my escape from Blighty following this brilliant suggestion from a Men’s Right’s Activist (MRA) troll over on my site:

“If you despise men so much, why don’t you all pool resources, buy an island, name it “Menfuckoffland” and take your hate with you to die out when the last of you croaks.”

Anyone care to join me?

I think its the same layout as the one they used for the Euro elections a couple of months ago: it’s got the Battle of Britain spitfire picture which caused some hilarity last time round when it was revealed to be a Polish (in BNP speak: dirty-foreigner-Eastern-Europeans-coming-over-here-and-taking-all-our-jobs) squadron plane, and it’s got four numpties, I mean ordinary British working people, trying to make excuses for their decision to embrace fascism.

“I’m voting BNP because I’m sick of immigration. Asylum seekers come here and get everything handed to them on a plate whilst hard working local people struggle with a recession and rising unemployment”

spouts a woman who has obviously never had the misfortune of trying to negotiate her way through our barbaric asylum system, while an old soldier who claims to have fought against the Nazis in WWII fails to be struck by the irony of his appearance in a British Nazi Party propaganda sheet.

But it was the second leaflet that really caught my eye:

More specifically, it was that little yellow box at the top right-hand side that made me sit bolt upright and yell “You lying fascist scum!” at the top of my lungs.

Here it is again, this time in close-up:

Okay. For the record, I had some peripheral involvement with the Gateway Protection Programme that the BNP is trying to discredit here. For a couple of years I represented Norfolk Library and Information Service on the multi-agency Norwich Asylum Seeker and Refugee Forum (NASREF), and I was a member of it when the decision was taken to sign Norwich up to the Gateway Programme: I also had the pleasure of meeting the first tranche of refugees and showing them around the City library as part of their initial orientation programme. In other words, I know a bit about this issue, unlike whichever BNP hatemonger came up with the mendacious piece of crap above.

And I can quite categorically state that no local people lost out on housing to the Congolese refugees who settled here in December 2006/January 2007 and in January 2008, because in order to prevent exactly the kind of resentment that the BNP leaflet is trying to stir up, a decision was taken right at the very start of the process to house the families through private accommodation rather than through the City Council’s housing stock.

Furthermore, the Gateway Protection Programme was funded in its entirety by the Home Office, so no local resources were spent on housing and supporting the refugees either on their arrival, or during their first year here. The expectation was that after that first year the refugees would be fully integrated into their local schools and communities, and that the adults would be in employment and thus able to provide for themselves. Support was also provided by the Red Cross and by the Refugee Council.

Contrary to the assertion in the BNP’s first paragraph that housing priority was given to “African Asylum seekers” the refugees were housed through private sector leased homes. As one of the initial proposals read:

“The emphasis on private sector homes is due to the fact that Norwich is a very high demand area for social housing and we want to avoid any perception of new arrivals taking resources away from people who are in need in the local area.”

So to reiterate, no council-allocated accommodation went to the Gateway refugees, and no local people were pushed to the back of any housing queue as a result of either Norwich City Council or Broadland Council signing up to the Gateway Protection Programme.

As for the constant references to the Gateway Programme refugees being asylum seekers, we’re talking here about people who had fled the fighting in the Congo, who were living in refugee camps in Zaire (and in some cases who had been in those camps for as long as 10 years), and who had been accepted as refugees by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) while they were still in the camps: in other words prior to their arrival in Britain. They did not come here seeking asylum, because they’d already been granted it: it had already been acknowledged that they were unable to return to their own country of origin or settle in the country where they living at the time their refugee status was approved.

As one of the refugees has said:

“We have witnessed many heinous atrocities. Because of this most of us left our homes and took refuge in Zambia and other neighbouring countries. We were in refugee camps for about 9 years and we made camps ourselves by changing a forest into a village by the help of UNHCR.

Thankfully to the UNHCR and the UK government we were selected and given the opportunity to come over here. We are welcomed by the UK government and the people of Norwich. We are grateful for the hospitality we have been receiving. We are grateful for all the agencies that have been helping us to resettle in this community. Thank you very much for everything you did for us. We are now in a safe haven because of everyone’s contribution.”

And he’s right. The Congolese refugees who settled here through the Gateway Protection Programme are now in a safe haven and have been welcomed with open arms by the people of Norwich. As always, the BNP is simply intent on stirring up hate and resentment where none exists.

Thankfully I’m fairly sure that this Thursday, July 23rd, when the constituents of Norwich North go to the polls the BNP will get the message loud and clear, just as they did in the Euro elections: if anyone’s not welcome here it’s them. Because if local people are sick of anyone, it’s of those who want to come into our communities and spread hate; it’s of those who have nothing to offer but cynicism and lies.

The lead up to election day
As most people are probably aware by now, I live and work in Norwich. More specifically, I live and work in the constituency of Norwich North, which, thanks to the disgraceful and hypocritical behaviour of Gordon Brown’s so-called Star Chamber, is about to have a by-election following the resignation of one of the best constituency MPs in the country, Dr Ian Gibson.

The election is due to take place in a couple of weeks time, on July 23rd, and naturally, as a local resident and a political activist, I’ve been taking a very keen interest in things.

I haven’t got involved in or lent my support to any particular campaign, because to be honest I’m still unsure as to which way I’m actually going to vote come the big day. Instead, as a bit of an experiment, I’ve been sitting back and trying to approach the whole thing from the position of a “typical,” politically inactive, undecided voter, ready to be persuaded by the force of the candidates’ arguments and policies.

And I have to say I’m totally unimpressed with nearly all of them.

So far I’ve had election leaflets through my door from the Conservative candidate Chloe Smith, from the independent candidate Craig Murray, from Labour’s Chris Ostrowski, and from UKIP candidate Glenn Tingle. From the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and the other 8 candidates I’ve heard nothing. Nada. Rien.

I’ve used Twitter to try and engage with them all, posing the question “Why should I vote for you? Answer in 140 characters”, and as of this morning, only Craig Murray and the Green Party’s Rupert Read have bothered to respond.

Today in desperation I sent a message to the Liberal Democrats on Twitter, asking “Why have I had no election leaflets from the LDs, and no one knocking on my door? Don’t you want people’s votes?” They haven’t replied.

And yesterday was the first day that anyone from any of the different campaigns involved actually made the effort to come down my road and speak to the local residents personally. It’s not even as if I live out in the unreachable woolly wilds of Norfolk down a dirt track somewhere, in which case I could understand why no-one’s come-a-calling: I live in the burbs.

So, with two weeks to go in this hugely important by-election, if I really was a totally undecided floating voter, my conclusion is I’d be voting Tory by now.

But I’m not, and aside from my political differences with the Conservative Party nationally, aside from the fact that I’m old enough to remember life under a Conservative government, and even forgetting the naff and sexist letter my 17 year old daughter (who’s too young to vote in this election) received from David Cameron in which he referred to his fully grown adult female candidate as a “girl,” there’s a reason for that.

I’ve had swathes of literature from the Conservative candidate’s campaign, some of it in the form of general election leaflets just posted through my door, and some of it in letter form addressed to me personally. Yesterday evening I stood at my front door and chatted to Chloe Smith herself, and a really nice and personable young woman she is too.

But, and there has to be a but, no matter how pleasant the candidate is, and no matter how good on paper her policies for local improvements appear to be, I have some bitter past experience with how Norfolk Tories really operate: I know exactly how flimsy their claims to care about preserving and supporting local communities truly are, and it’s because of this experience that I would never ever vote for Chloe Smith or her party.

And now for some local history

In December 2002 I was working as a library manager at Lazar House Library, a small branch library in the Mousehold area of Norwich.

Now despite it’s close proximity to stunning heathland and outstanding countryside, Mousehold was at the time among the 10% of the most deprived wards in the East of England, and among the 20% most deprived nationally. In other words it was the kind of area that desperately needed investment in community services, not cuts.

I’d been managing the library for just over a year, having started in the role in September 2001. It was my first (and last!) management job, and with only 4 staff to line-manage, and working in the oldest library building in the country (built sometime between 1101 and 1119, Lazar House originally began life as a leper hospital. After several centuries during which it served as a dovecote, a barn and a dwelling, it was finally gifted in 1921 to the City of Norwich by Sir Eustace Gurney for use as a public library), I was loving every minute of it.

I was also a trade union steward, but as library managers are way down the local government management scales, there was no conflict between doing that and doing my job (plus, if there had been any issues between the staff and myself, there were other library stewards available to represent them).

So anyway, it was the evening of December 16th 2002, and I was just about to leave the house to do some Xmas food shopping, when the phone rang. It was my area manager. Phoning to warn me that the local press were going to be reporting the next day on the county council’s decision to investigate what savings could be made from closing 5 branch libraries and 3 museums: “I’m afraid Lazar House is going to be named as one of the libraries under review,” she said, “You need to let the rest of your staff know before they read about it in tomorrow’s papers.”

Just as she’d warned, the next day there it was: a report in the local press announcing a council review of the potential savings that could be made from closing “a few” local museums and libraries. And my library was named as one of those under review.

Over the next few days as all this started to sink in both the council and libraries management started to vacillate. At first they told us that the naming of specific libraries had been a mistake, and that those particular ones had only been used in the initial report as examples. They’d needed to do costings to illustrate the case for library closures, they said, and the 5 libraries involved had simply been picked at random, they weren’t necessarily the ones they were going to be looking at.

This proved to be a lie, as the names of the 5 libraries under threat, Plumstead Road, Lazar House, Bradwell, Brundall and Hingham, never changed.

Over the next few weeks a campaign to save both libraries and museums swung into action, and naturally I was one of those involved. We stood for hours in Norwich city centre collecting thousands of signatures for a petition; we wrote letters to the local press, did media interviews, demonstrated both outside of the libraries themselves and on the steps of County Hall. And we joined forces with the local Evening News newspaper, who launched their own high-profile “Hands off our libraries” campaign.

And yes, that’s Ian Gibson in the left of the picture. A constituency MP doing exactly what he should be doing and fighting against cuts to local services.

And here’s me, the one and only time I’ve ever been splashed across the front page of any newspaper.

The then Poet Laureate Andrew Motion was one of hundreds who wrote to both the council and the local press calling on councillors to save the city’s cultural services, and for a while we genuinely thought the council was going to back down.

But then, in early February 2003, during a packed county council meeting, at the start of which we presented a 21,000 name petition against closures to the Conservative leader Alison King, the Tory administration announced that it had reviewed it’s original proposals, and was now proposing to close just 2 of the original 5 libraries: all 3 museums were to be spared the axe.

Lazar House was one of the two.

Unsurprisingly we didn’t give up. More letters to the press followed, this time with me sticking my neck well above the parapet and challenging claims made by my council employers:

I did more interviews:

Local schoolchildren made posters:

Norwich City Council, who actually own the Lazar House building, offered to waive all rent on the place for a year, to help keep County Council costs down and the library open.

And my UNISON branch, in conjunction with local Labour councillors, organised a public meeting at a local high school, which was attended by over 200 local residents, as well as teachers, county councillors, senior members of the libraries management team, and the Council Cabinet Member for Libraries, Heather Bolt.

Word has it that after that meeting, where locals explained both passionately and movingly why the small branch library meant so much to them, Heather Bolt changed her mind. Apparently the next day she went to Alison King and expressed her view that Lazar House should remain open: a few days later there was a cabinet reshuffle, and Heather Bolt was replaced.

Finally, on February 24th 2003, at another packed council meeting, the vote was due to be taken on whether or not to close both Lazar House and Bradwell libraries. But before that, in a last-ditch bid to save the libraries, Labour councillors submitted an amendment that called for a proposed increase of some £60,000 in the Council Chair’s hospitality budget to be slashed down to £8,000, and the £52,000 thus saved to be used to keep the libraries open.

The amendment was lost by one vote.

The following day the local headlines said it all: “Booze over Books” “Entertainment cash closes two libraries” “Contempt for the People” and so on.

And I received a letter, which I’ve always treasured, from a local family who used the library and who had been stalwarts during the campaign:

“No words of comfort – but I’ll try anyway

Dear Cath

I know we are gutted, and you must be absolutely shattered. We won all the arguments, but they did not want to be seen to have climbed down totally from their original position. It is now on record that this administration values its buffets and booze more than our books and libraries. I hope they choke on their corporate entertainment!!

All the Lazar House staff have been fantastic to our family over the years and I can’t thank you enough for being excellent. There are no magic wands, but I do think that we fought a good fight and I don’t know that we could have done much more.

Look after yourself Cath

Love…”

Local residents kept up their campaign, even staging a sit-in at Lazar House during its final week of business, and refusing to leave until the camera crews arrived. But eventually, just four months after the original announcement of a review of library services, on Saturday 3rd May 2003, Lazar House Library closed its doors for the last time.

And the Conservative run County Council from then on became known as the council that valued corporate entertainment more highly than it valued local services for local people.

Now

So, when I read Chloe Smith’s election literature telling me how the Conservatives don’t believe in cuts to local services, and telling me how they intend to clean up parliament, I can’t help but be reminded of what happened here just a few years ago: I can’t help but remember just how importantly local Conservatives then viewed local services, so much so that they prioritised their corporate entertainment budget over vital public services.

And I think no. You won’t be getting my vote. Not now, and not ever.

But this story turned out to be a bit different from the normal, everyday reminiscences the family was used to hearing: this one was about the time Bob was out in Libya doing his National Service, more specifically about the time he witnessed 6 or more of his colleagues line up and rape a young woman.

Apparently the soldiers had been given a night off and so had gone out to a small town close to where they were billeted. There, they’d come upon a local couple, and after a brief discussion among themselves about how they hadn’t seen a woman in ages, one of the group went over to the man and asked him how much he’d be prepared to take to let them have sex with his wife The two men negotiated, and eventually the husband settled on a price.

According to Bob’s version of events, he then looked on as the rest of the group took it in turns to rape the woman.

When the soldiers had all had a go and were content they were finished, the husband asked them for the money they’d promised him. The soldiers gave him nothing, instead they beat him to the ground, and ran away laughing.

My friend sat in stunned silence as she listened to this story, and not just because of her horror over what these men had done: but because in his telling of it, her uncle gave no indication that he found the tale in any way problematic. Because in his telling of it, he recounted it in the same way he’d recounted all of his other old stories: and because when he finished, he sat back smiling as if he expected the assembled guests to find it as entertaining as he did.

I wonder how many other old soldiers have similar stories to tell.

My guess is it’s far more than many of us would care to imagine.

It’s long been recognised that rape is and always has been used as a weapon of war, and as a weapon of ethnic cleansing and genocide, as detailed here by Katharine MacKinnon in her account of the systematic rape that took place during the Bosnian/Serbian conflict:

Like all rapes, these rapes are particular as well as generic, and the particularity matters. This is ethnic rape as an official policy of war: not only a policy to defile, torture, humiliate, degrade, and demoralise the other side; not only a policy of men posturing to gain advantage and ground over other men. It is rape under orders: not out of control, under control. It is rape unto death, rape as massacre, rape to kill or make the victims wish they were dead. It is rape as an instrument of forced exile, to make you leave your home and never come back. It is rape to be seen and heard by others, rape as spectacle. It is rape to shatter a people, to drive a wedge through a particular community. It is the rape of misogyny liberated by xenophobia and unleashed by official command. It is rape as genocide.

It is rape made sexy for the perpetrators by the defencelessness and youth of many of the victims and the rapists’ absolute power to select victims at will….It is rape made exciting by knowing that there are no limits on what can be done, that the women can be raped to death. Most of all, it is rape made sexually irresistible by the fact that the women are about to be sacrificed, by the ultimate power of reducing a person to a corpse, by the powerlessness of the women and children in the face of their imminent murder at the hands of their rapist. It is murder as the ultimate sex act. Do not say it is not sex for the men. When the men are told to take the women away and not bring them back, they rape them, then kill them, then sometimes they rape them again, cut off their breasts, and rip out their wombs….This is rape as torture and rape as extermination.”
– From MacKinnon, “Crimes of war, crimes of peace” in Are Women Human.

Even in areas where there is no longer conflict, rapes and other forms of sexual violence continue to be perpetrated for months and often years afterwards. It seems that wherever conflict arises, and wherever armies march, increases in sex crimes against women, both in local populations and more recently within the forces themselves, will follow close behind.

And these aren’t ancient crimes; these aren’t long-forgotten narratives filched from the pages of history to provide evidence of the barbarity of our forefathers. No, these atrocities are modern and completely of our time. From the Red Army and the rape of Berlin, to Vietnam, Darfur, Bosnia, Iraq and Rwanda, the 20th and early 21st centuries have been littered with the bodies of the victims of this abuse. Indeed, only in the past few weeks it’s come to light that there’s now photographic evidence of the rape and sexual abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib by American armed forces.

And the one common thread running through it all is the silence. Because far too often and for far too many people these are the stories they don’t want to hear told, the truths they don’t want to acknowledge. These are the victims in far off lands, the others, not like us and not of us, and their suffering isn’t ours.

Well it’s time for that silence to end.

As a follow-up to this NY Times article on the continuing mass rape of women in Liberia, Isis the Scientist, along with other US bloggers, has decided to launch an online initiative aimed at raising awareness of sexual violence, not just in Liberia but globally. They’re calling it Silence is the Enemy, and those involved are now donating all of their June blogging revenues to Medecins Sans Frontieres for the treatment and relief of victims of mass rape and other systematic sexual assaults.

Obviously the blogs need as many hits as possible over the next few weeks to generate that income, so spread the word and get clicking:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/
http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/
http://scienceblogs.com/bioephemera/
http://scienceblogs.com/neurotopia/
http://scienceblogs.com/authority/
http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/
http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/

The list is likely to grow, so keep checking here for updates.

Hat-tip to theOlady.

Whenever those of us who are opposed to legalisation or across the board decriminalisation air our views, we’re invariably shouted down and accused of not listening to what prostitutes themselves want: “Go and talk to the IUSW” we’re told: “they represent prostitutes: they know what they’re talking about.”

The IUSW in particular seems to be working hard just lately to raise its profile, and has managed to garner support from Feminist Fightback among others. But then, as the IUSW is a recognised branch of the GMB, one of Britain’s biggest trade unions, it’s not hard to see why a left-wing, rights-orientated group like Feminist Fightback would be drawn to them.

After all, there’s no doubt that women working in prostitution suffer some of the worst abuses and are some of the most vulnerable women in society, so if there’s a trade union group out there that can offer them support and representation, then what could be wrong with that?

But as this discussion over at the F Word showed recently, the reality is more complicated.

Are the IUSW really the authentic voice of prostituted women, or indeed the voice of those working in the industry, as they claim? Who are they? Let’s look at the evidence.

1) Douglas Fox, who posted comments on the F Word thread, and signed himself off as “D Fox sex worker and IUSW activist” is the founder of and a business-partner in one of the country’s biggest escort agencies, Christony Companions. The agency was set up by Fox in 1999 in the Newcastle Upon Tyne area, and has now apparently established itself as “the market leader in the North East.”

Fox and his business partner John Dockerty also run agencies in Edinburgh, York and Carlisle, and have plans to expand into Leeds and West Yorkshire; they’ve also “franchised the name into Essex and Surrey with other areas coming soon.”

2) But while all this expansion and promotion of the company “brand” has been going on, Douglas Fox has also been busy setting himself up as a IUSW activist: he’s drawn up template letters for the pro-prostitution lobby to sign in opposition to the government’s latest prostitution proposals; he’s put his name about all over the net as a representative of sex workers and their rights, and he’s generally done whatever he can to ensure that he’s being recognised and cited as an authentic voice in the prostitution debate, and a spokesperson for disenfranchised prostituted men and women everywhere.

So a man who makes his living managing escorts is genuinely more interested in securing them their rights than he is in his own profit margins?

3) In a discussion forum on the Christony Companions website, Fox recently put out a plea for funding for a new, campaigning arm of the IUSW GMB branch:

We need money to campaign however so if you do not want to join the union but can donate to the IUSW campaign then please do. I will keep everyone informed when the changes are finally agreed but if we can have some sugar daddies and mummies and agencies prepared to donate monthly funds then boy do we need them.

That’s right, a plea for punters and other escort agencies to help fund a branch of the GMB that was set up to provide union representation for those employed in the sex trade.

4) And it gets worse. In another recent discussion forum, this time over at Punterlink International, a contributor named Elrond posted this suggestion when discussing threats to the sex industry:

I would again suggest all write and complain to your MP. You all should either donate and join the IUSW as an escort or a friend if you are a punter.

And it’s as simple as that.

5) If you look at the GMB IUSW membership application form it’s easy to see how anyone claiming to be an escort or claiming to work in any area of the sex industry can take up membership. Confidentiality is obviously at a premium when signing workers up from such a sensitive industry, but as the comment on Punterlink shows, this also means that membership of IUSW branch is open to abuse: anyone can join.

If the the IUSW is populated with pimps, agency owners, and punters, then it shouldn’t have any credibility in the prostitution debate.

6) No trade union can represent the interests of both workers and employers at the same time, and by appointing themselves as spokespeople for the women they employ, Douglas Fox and others like him are going against the basic principles of trade unionism itself.

To quote one of the comments on the F Word thread:

A union that invites and accepts pimps and punters into its membership to inflate the figures, decide its direction, be its spokespeople, and then influence law and policy, that is a corrupt union and I dont give a shit what anyone else tries to sell it as – its time people recognised whats going on here.

The GMB clearly needs to have a rethink about both the running of and the membership of its IUSW branch. And Feminist Fighback and others need to look more closely as those they have chosen to align themselves with.

In a complete misinterpretation of the Race Relations Act, Ealing Council’s Conservative-run council furthermore proposed that in the interests of “community cohesion”, domestic violence services in the borough should henceforth be generic.

Specific services to vulnerable women were then in serious danger of being lost, and one of the women’s sector’s most powerful and influential campaigning organisations was under threat of closure. That all ended on Friday, when Ealing Council conceded defeat in the High Court.

After two days of listening to the evidence from the other side, including from a third-party intervention by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Ealing was forced to acknowledge that their interpretation of Race Relations probably left something to be desired.

As the court heard, generic services do not ensure equal access for all, and indeed, as the SBS barrister made clear, more often than not they lead to inequality, as those with language difficulties or those facing cultural pressures are less likely to feel able to access such non-specific services.

The legal action brought by SBS service users against Ealing Council ended in jubilant scenes on Friday when it announced its decision to withdraw from the case.

I turned up for the protest outside the High Court on Friday expecting to spend yet another day in the cold and the rain after two days spent picketing for the Local Government workers’ strike. It was with relief then that I learned that the SBS supporters were all indoors in the warm, packing out the courtroom, and so I went inside and joined them.

Even though I’d arrived quite late on in the hearing, it soon became clear from listening to the proceedings that Ealing Council were on a hiding to nothing. When you hear a judge making remarks like “perverse statistics” and “blood-curdling submissions” in relation to your evidence, it’s probably a pretty big hint that things aren’t going your way.

And when the case resumed after lunch and the Ealing barrister announced their withdrawal, it seems the message had finally gotten through.

Although the case could have ended there, with no ruling needed from the judge, the SBS barrister went on to argue that it was in the public interest for there to be a judgement, to provide guidance for other local authorities who might be thinking about going down the same generic route as Ealing. Lord Justice Moses, who was presiding over the case, agreed, and his judgement is expected to be announced soon.

Ealing Council then agreed to foot the bill, and are paying not only SBS’s costs for the case, but part of the costs incurred by the EHRC.

Southall Black Sisters have once again shown that their tradition of “struggle not submission” is the right way to go. Let’s hope that other women’s sector organisations take heart from this case, and realise that the best thing any of us can do when faced with those who want to see us silenced or shut down is not to give in, but to fight back against any and every threat that comes our way.

[Picture from Helen's photostream under a CC license]
More pictures at Harpymarx.