Guest Post:: Climate Politics in Australia

Thanks to Dwight Towers for this very useful and comrehensive guest post on climate politics in Australia, a hot topic in more ways than one. Incidentally, a few people have told me they've not been able to leave a comment in the last few days. Apologies. Hopefully everything is back to normal now though so do give it another try.

Climate Politics in Australia seem to me, a recently returned ex-pat, both fascinating and depressing. The Labor Government, only in power with the agreement of a small band of independents and a Green, are trying to push through a carbon tax that will morph into an emissions scheme. The Opposition, led by a man whose position on the reality of climate change changes from day to day, is calling for an election on the issue. Meanwhile, the “climate movement” is punching below its weight and is – by the admission of knowledgeable participants – all at sea.

As little history as I think you'll read.

The history of White Settlement in Australia is a litany of careless extraction. Whether it was cutting down trees in, extracting the value of the soil via sheep and cattle or mining and exporting gold, the economy and mindset has always been one of pillaging natural resources and worrying about the consequences later, if at all. If you look at topsoil loss, salination and extinction of species, Australia has a record to shout about.

Australia avoided recession during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2010, partly because the thirst for Australia's mineral and energy exports in Asia seems unquenchable (though it's a myth that China burns much Australian coal – the majority is actually send to India?), and the “must export every last lump of coal or we will all starve” perception remains. Guy Pearse, a forming mining lobbyist, refers to this as Australia's “Quarry Vision.”

At the same time, water and fertile land are scarce “commodities,” and the recent floods in Queensland and parts of Victoria are only the latest indication of economic vulnerability to ecological events. A very long drought has only just broken.

Climate change politics from the 1990s to now, in two minutes

The Hawke-Keating governments of 1983-1996 (think Blair/Brown only the ambitious Treasurer, both luckier and bolder than Gordo) made some of the right noises but basically kicked climate change into the long grass. There were, as remains the case today, many votes in coal and virtually none in solar panels. Liberal Prime Minister John Howard's attitude to climate change was pretty much exactly George Bush's, and he was an eager participant in the extra-UNFCCC “spoiler” outfit known as the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (which, as of 5 April 2011, has “concluded its work”)

Howard went into the 2007 election with a proposal for a domestic cap-and-trade scheme, but at the time Australia was in the grip of a long drought, and Howard's credibility on climate change (and other issues) was not high. Labor’s Kevin Rudd came to power, signed Kyoto and went to the Bali negotiations as the great new hope. Before the election he had said “Climate change is the great moral challenge of our generation.”

He bargained intensively with the (conservative) opposition about bringing in an emissions trading scheme. Their leader, Malcolm Turnbull, was unable to convince the mix of climate skeptics and mining interests of the merits of the case and he was overthrown in December 2009 by Tony Abbott.

Months later, Rudd was faced with a choice of either dumping the attempt to bring in an emissions trading scheme or calling an election. He dumped the scheme and his poll numbers collapsed (the mining industry had also been up in arms about a proposed new tax, and spent heavily on scare-mongering). He was replaced, in an internal Labor Party coup, by Julia Gillard, the current PM. There was an election in July last year that resulted in a hung Parliament. Gillard runs a government with a very, very slender majority which is dependent on the support of the Greens (who have been eating away at the Labor Party's vote for a decade or so).

Gillard is worried about losing votes to the Greens, so has been slagging them off as “not understanding family values” (this is completely unrelated, of course, to the fact that Greens leader Bob Brown is gay).

Tony Abbott had the best comment on this “if they're so extreme, why are you in coalition with them?”

The Greens take the balance of power in the Australian Senate (which is not  at all like the House of Lords) in July.

Why do I tell you this soap opera? Well, partly because it's a soap opera. And to make the point thatthe politics of climate change in Australia have already toppled two party leaders. As I write this, the media is reporting that Turnbull has criticised Abbott's climate policies publicly. (Abbott's policies, so-called “direct action” amount to faith in technology and government subsidies for polluters, with households bearing the cost!)

Business as Usual

Meanwhile, business lobbies are split, as they are in the rest of the developed world. The most exposed sectors (the so-called “emissions-intensive trade-exposed” industries) are muttering about lost jobs and moving their businesses overseas (though they're less clear on how exactly you move a coal mine!)

Gillard is wooing the more “pro-action” sections of the Business Council of Australia (the Australian equivalent of the CBI) and asking them to speak up for her scheme

The Australian media is not doing a great job in reporting this, to put it mildly. The business press (I'm thinking specifically of the Australian Financial Review) is noticeably more partisan than the UK Financial Times which, while unabashedly pro-capitalist, eschews ideology-drench opinion dressed as news). The Murdoch press (The Australian, the (Melbourne) Sun-Herald, the (Sydney) Telegraph, the Adelaide Advertiser to name but the most embarrassing) is full of scare stories and denialist memes (which sits oddly with Newscorp’s proud boast of its carbon neutral status, and James Murdoch's much vaunted conviction that climate action is essential).

The main attention of political economic and media elites is at the moment focussed on the carbon tax, specifically on what price per tonne it would start at. (Analyses by the pro-renewables thinktank “Beyond Zero Emissions”  and the Climate Institute agree that a carbon price of anything less than 50 to 70 dollars a tonne would see at best a shift from coal to (“cleaner”) gas-fired power stations). A shift to 100% renewable energy in the next ten years is, according to BZE, both technologically and financially possible. But given the current parlous state of the climate movement in Australia, it does not seem politically possible.

Climate Movement soul-searching

The "treetops' climate outfits have banded together in a loose and issue-based coalition as the "POP Eleven"  (POP standing for Price on Pollution) to push for a carbon price.  There are, inevitably, tensions in that coalition, but for now they seem to be managing to keep their show on the road.

Meanwhile, the grassroots are pondering their place and their power. Two excellent pieces have recently been written by knowledgeable participants within the climate movement about the failures of climate activism. The first is by Holly Creenaune, a member of Friends of the Earth Sydney (much more radical and grassroots than the UK version).

In part she writes...

“Bad policy aside, it's the debate – or lack of it – that is the real problem. The public cannot participate in a discussion about a perfect price or the market that could work magic: the debate is inaccessible, ignores concerns about justice, and is not relevant to our daily lives. We've been stuck for decades in a media and policy vacuum of neoliberal market mechanisms and a contest over complex science. Real solutions, community voices, or the elephant in the room – our coal exports – are locked out. It suits government and industry to keep the debate on this limited terrain – but we desperately need to build a message and a movement that can reject false solutions like carbon trading, halt privatisation of energy infrastructure, and put forward new ideas.”

The second is by Anna Rose, one of the founders of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (a more mainstream lobbying outfit – sort of like “Stop Climate Chaos,” only effective.)

“But the time has come to be honest. We are failing because as a whole the Australian environment movement does not understand power, has not built power, and has failed to effectively exercise the power we have built.

"To win campaigns we have to make it harder for those in power to continue with business as usual than it is for them to give into our demands. Yet currently, it’s easier or politicians to continue with business as usual, and to give in to the demands of industry lobbyists from the coal, gas, mining, aluminium, cement and electricity generation industries — everyone, that is, except us.”

Meanwhile, the real elephant in the room, as Holly calls it, is the carbon in Australia's exports of coal (and liquified natural gas). These exports are set to expand rapidly in the coming decades. Legally, according to the UNFCCC, the emissions are the responsibility of the country that burns them. That argument is unsatisfactory to some, such as the direct action group Rising Tide Australia, which recently installed solar panels on the office of the Federal Climate Change Minister.

They're doing their best, but the issue is just not “thinkable” yet.

My predictions? 
 

Well, with the usual caveat that their value is extremely limited, I think that, barring accidents, some sort of tax/emissions trading scheme will come into play, but with so many loopholes and get-outs as to be useless (think the European ETS in its first phase). There will not be a shift away from coal – there is too much inertia in the political and economic and cultural systems for that.

The opposition will continue to make political capital out of it, and the denialists and culture warriors will not go away until the effects of climate change are literally undeniable.

Lastly, I don't see the climate movement reflecting and innovating and creating the forms of political and social pressure and space that make any other alternatives possible. On this last point I hope I am wrong, will act as if I am wrong, and try to act so that I make myself wrong.

See also

Guy Pearse Quarry Vision

http://www.quarterlyessay.com/issue/quarry-vision-coal-climate-change-and-end-resources-boom

Club Troppo

http://clubtroppo.com.au/category/climate-change/

Larvatus Prodeo

http://larvatusprodeo.net/category/science/

Journal of Australian Political Economy issue 66 (December 2010)

http://www.jape.org/content/view/24/1/

Guest Post: How close were the Scottish Greens to more MSPs?

Jeff from Better Nation kindly consented to write a guest post on how close the Greens were in Scotland to getting more MSPs. I think the facts, as presented here, are useful if a little depressing.

My shared home blog Better Nation is regularly pinned as a 'Green blog', something that I am certainly comfortable with and I know that my fellow Editors there were bummed at the lack of a surge in Patrick Harvie's bloc of MSPs, as I was.

As only a member of the GPEW, it's not really my place to say where, if anywhere, the Scottish Greens went wrong in this campaign, they were after all the only party other than the SNP to increase their share of the vote. So, I decided to take a dispassionate look at each of the regions and see where the Greens might have fared better with a few more votes or, perhaps, constituencies falling elsewhere.

CENTRAL (0 Green MSPs)

The SNP took the 7th regional spot here, winning its third list MSP.

The Greens were 6,395 votes away from taking that 7th regional spot and were behind Labour, the Tories, the SNP and even the Senior Citizens Party. Put another way, the Greens were miles off winning a seat in Central and it was never a likely place for a gain.

GLASGOW (1 Green MSP)

I had tipped this to be a potential region where the Greens could have picked up two spots but, alas, it wasn't to be. In what will prove to be something of a theme, it was the SNP who took the 7th spot here, their 3rd regional MSP on top of the 5 FPTP victories. Patrick Harvie took the 3rd ranking spot and the Greens were 3,193 votes away from getting a second, behind both Labour and the SNP but, interestingly, not behind the Lib Dems as the Greens successfully managed to poll more than double the yellows in Glasgow.

Changing the constituency wins between Labour and the SNP doesn't make it more likely for the Greens to get any closer either. Indeed, making Labour win every constituency would mean the SNP would take the first six ranking spots and Patrick would take the seventh.

HIGHLANDS & ISLANDS (0 Green MSPs)

Yes, you guessed it, the SNP took the 7th regional spot here too but the Green candidate, co-convener Eleanor Scott, was a slender 877 votes behind the SNP and 494 votes behind Labour in the race for that 7th spot.

If the SNP had won one of Orkney or Shetland then the Greens would have moved ahead of the SNP in the pecking order by 108 votes. Changing the Labour and SNP constituency seats does not have an impact
as any FPTP win is automatically replaced with another list seat with no impact on the calculations for that 7th spot.

This was as close as the Greens came to getting that 3rd MSP.

LOTHIANS (1 Green MSP)

Edinburgh has always been a happy hunting ground for the Greens and it was unclear to what extent that was a personal vote for Robin Harper. However, Alison Johnstone was returned easily enough this time around
despite the threat of Margo Macdonald hoovering up much of the non-mainstream vote. Alison won her seat in Round 4 of the d'hondt allocations.

The Greens were 5,757 votes away from the Conservatives who took the 7th seat in this region but were also 4,835 votes behind the Lib Dems, 3,356 votes behind Labour and 1,575 votes behind the SNP so they
really weren't getting a look in. The Lib Dems or Conservatives winning a seat here and there might have helped but in truth the SNP and Labour vote share were just too high again with the Greens falling short.

MID SCOTLAND & FIFE (0 Green MSPs)

The SNP took the 7th regional spot here, winning their only regional MSP with it too. The Greens were 2,008 votes away from taking it. Again, changing the constituency wins would have no impact here as
seats won/lost by the SNP are just replaced on the list.


NORTH EAST (0 Green MSPs)

Similar story to MSF, the SNP took their only regional MSP on the 7th allocation. The Greens were 2,388 votes short and were also behind the Tories and Labour in the queue to take an MSP. Very unfortunate to not see Dr Martin Ford at Holyrood.


SOUTH (0 Green MSPs)

The SNP again took the 7th regional spot here and the Greens were 5,627 votes short (from a total number of votes won of 8,656). The Greens were also behind Labour and the Tories in the fight for that seat so were always outsiders to win a seat in this region.

WEST (0 Green MSPs)

Labour finally take a 7th regional spot, pipping the SNP by only 185 votes. The Greens were 4,804 votes short.


So, all in all, depressing reading and it will be a painful review that the Green party will have to embark on in order to understand how a radical alternative manifesto and a collapsing Lib Dem vote did not deliver gains. It is a shame that there is not even any real opportunity of analysis on switching constituency wins to see to what
extent that may have helped the Greens win, they simply didn't have enough votes to be in the hunt.

The simple problem was that the SNP took far too much of the vote.


Under a true PR system, the Greens with their 4.4% national vote share would have been entitled to 6 MSPs, thrice what they have now. But sadly there is effectively a 6.67% de minimis limit as there are typically 16 MSP slots available in each region.

My only advice to the Greens, albeit hollow as they appear to be doing it already, is to be the main line of defence against local decisions that go against the party's ethos. From Aberdeen parks through Edinburgh trams to Glasgow University cuts, the Greens were there but regional strategies to compliment a national strategy is, for me, the way ahead.

One final thought, because I'm nothing if not ornery - Patrick Harvie said he didn't go into Politics to sit in a group of two, and yet that is what he shall be doing for the next five years. Will those words come back to haunt him? I do hope that Patrick continues to value his place in the Parliament even if he doesn't have the numbers he has been wishing for. Scotland needs a strong, vibrant Green party, even if the nation doesn't always realise it at election time!

Guest Post: Why People In Favour of PR should vote YES

This is a guest post from Cory Hazelhurst who blogs at the rather excellent Paperback Rioter. He's trying to persuade me to be less ambivalent without realising that ambivalence... well, that's my thing. Good luck to him anyway.

No2AV Yes2PR was launched by David Owen some months ago. Originally the Yes campaign decided not to challenge their arguments at all. This was decided, as I understand it, for two reasons.Firstly, it seemed like a small irrelevance at the time. Secondly, launching this group undermined all the arguments that the No camp were making: that AV would lead to more coalitions, that we need to keep FPTP etc.

Ultimately not challenging this argument has been a mistake (one of many) from the Yes campaign. It's led to many people who want electoral reform either voting No or, like Jim, have been very ambivalent about AV because it's not a proportional system.

Jim has very generously allowed me to write a piece explaining why people in favour of PR should vote Yes on Thursday.

The main argument I've heard against voting Yes on Thursday is that a Yes vote would be a roadblock to further reform. If anything, the opposite is the case.

For evidence that AV could lead to more electoral reform, people need look no further than the Political Studies Association briefing paper on the Alternative Vote. It was compiled by Dr Alan Renwick with the help of many leading political scientists, including Professors John Curtice, Simon Hix and Pippa Norris.
This is what the PSA has to say on the subject:

“It is clear that changing the electoral system is easier where change has already recently happened: the idea of reform is no longer so radical; more people are familiar with the reform options; there are fewer interests vested in the status quo. Four established democracies – France, Italy, Japan, and New Zealand – have introduced major reforms to their national electoral systems in the last thirty years. Two of these – France and Italy have subsequently instituted further major reforms, while Japan passed a further smaller reform, and New Zealand will hold a referendum creating the possibility of another major reform later this year. (p21)”

After changing the voting system in 1991, Italy changed it again two years later and again in 2005. New Zealand held a referendum to change from First Past the Post in 1992, and is holding another referendum asking voters whether they want to change the system later this year.

To say, then, that AV would be a roadblock for reform is completely missing the point. It would actually be a small but significant step towards reform in the future, and make future reform much more likely than a No vote.

Another argument I've heard on the blogosphere is that AV would hold up reform because it makes it harder to change to a proportional system:

“Truly proportional systems such as that Mixed Member, Largest Remainder or D’hont system, simply ask people to express a party preference and then use centrally controlled party lists and / or second tear ‘top-up’ constituencies to allocate seats to parties on a proportional basis. By allowing voters to rank individual candidates AV is actually a step away from these kinds of system.”

This isn't quite right though. AV would be a small but logical step towards something like Single Transferable Vote. After all, AV is STV for single member constituencies. Another logical step would be to lead to something like AV+, as recommended by the Jenkins Commission. This would be a hybrid of a list top-up system and MPs elected by, you guessed it, the Alternative Vote. So AV would still be a step forward to getting any proportional system.

I'm of the view that people should vote Yes simply because AV is a better system. However, even if you would prefer a more radical change than AV, vote Yes on Thursday, because that's the only way you're going to get it.

Banning peaceful parties - whatever next in our ‘democracy’

This a guest post from a Camden resident: Way back in January the campaigning group for an end to the British Monarchy and for ‘a democratic alternative’ started organising in earnest for a big street party for the Royal Wedding day.

It was billed as ‘providing a family friendly public space away from the hype of the Royal Wedding’ with food, games, entertainment and to celebrate democracy and people power - An alternative for those people who are not big fans of the monarchy. It seemed like a perfectly inoffensive and fun way to protest without being ‘spoil sports’

Republic supplied an event management plan to the police, and received an approval from the planning authority: Camden Council as shown here: http://bit.ly/efkqNg

And so they began publicising the event.

But there has been a very sudden and disappointing turn around as Camden Council has today withdrawn the approval.

The Cabinet Councillor for the Environment, Cllr Sue Vincent has written to those objecting and stated that local residents ‘are concerned rightly or wrongly that this event could attract people who wish to take advantage of the cover of this event’ and that the local residents bore some brunt of the recent anti-cuts anarchic bad behaviour!

This is a poor excuse and panders to the ignorant view that Republicans are Anarchists or Leftists. Many are on the left but Republic states regularly that they have members across the political spectrum and more to the point; all their demonstrations have always been legal and not disruptive in the slightest.

The Police did not consider the event to be a problem and certainly not an event with a potential to cause disorder as shown here in their emails: http://bit.ly/dTxqn3

Contact Councillor Sue Vincent at Camden Council and explain why this event should be able to take place in a street like everyone else’s street party on 29th April. Email: sue.vincent@camden.gov.uk and also Rachel Stopard, Rachel.Stopard@camden.gov.uk (Head of Camden Council Culture and Environment)

Compared to the many other ‘not the royal Wedding’ Events taking place in other parts of the country. Republic’s central event is possibly the least provocative.

Poor Camden is the odd one out. Here are some other events where celebrating republicanism is being allowed: http://yhoo.it/fwT7Qg

Republic are currently considering legal action but the event will definitely take place, if not in Covent Garden then elsewhere.


Camden Council, a Labour run Council has made a gross error of judgment, in denying a sizable community the right to hold a street party the same day that so many other street parties will be taking place. And let’s face it, the vast majority are doing it to bring people together for fun (as are Republic) rather than to celebrate a wedding of two very remote people.

Guest post for International Women's Day

This is guest post by Jessica Goldfinch for International Women's Day. Thanks Jessica.

How I wish that this 'day' didn't have to exist, sadly it does and it needs to exist.

Women still earn in the regions of 17% less (full time work) and 36% (part time work), than their male counterparts for the same job descriptions. My union, 'Unison', regularly sends out reminders to get you pay level checked.

Looking at our televisions women are depicted as superfluous and fickle. Like male characters, this might be alright for mutual comic or near true-to-life depiction purposes, but when it seeps into every pore, I get angry. Women are only good for dodging chocolate muffins in the street getting confused over which damn yogurt to eat, musing over pebble shaped air fresheners and also the most important job of all - holding "compare-your-shopping-receipts-parties" - I must do that next week!

I get angry at having to buffer my daughter at every turn: at the corner shop, supermarkets, petrol stations, newspaper stands - so-called Lads mags, Sunday Sport, pornography and fickle displays of women are everywhere. What are boys and girls supposed to make of this?

The first time my daughter exclaimed in a petrol station queue, she was 5 years old: "What are big jugs mummy?" The queue members looked at me as if I was some permissive lax parent. I found the courage to point out that it was the shop that was wrong and that my child and I should have a right to buy a pint of milk without having to have the producers of milk thrust in our faces. I now challenge and have managed to get numerous shops to consider their responsibilities and change to dust covers and appropriate displays.

Women's bodies are for consumption everyday and in every conceivable way. Increasingly, this is now becoming a problem for boys and men, but not any where near to the same extent. If we saw men depicted in the women are in local shops etc., there would be uproar.

Pornography: porneia - the lowest class of whore in ancient Greece; graphico/graphia - graphic depiction.

So, we have it: The Graphic Depiction of the lowest class of Whores, every day in every way. Think about what that means for a moment; it's truly horrible.

I am not so naive as to think that the porn industry or the depictions of women as fickle will disappear, but I do believe that each and everyone of us should consider our part in these depictions. Our daughters, our mothers, our girls, our women and increasingly boys - we should have their backs at every turn and demand a 'public' space in which we can all feel safe.

Guest Post: High Speed Rail

This is a guest post from my friend Cathryn Symons who blogs at Camden Kiwi After the debate in Cardiff on High Speed Rail I thought it would be good to get someone who knows about it to explain the problems with HSR2. (See also Caroline Lucas in the Guardian)

High Speed Rail poses a dilemma for many Greens. We are in favour of public transport, but also have concerns with the proliferation of long-distance commuting because of the impact it can have on towns and communities which become dormitory places for the mighty metropolis.

We know that rail is one of the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly modes of transport, both for people and for freight, but are also concerned at the environmental damage and carbon emissions caused by large construction projects and aware that rail can be a major energy user. Many Greens are also concerned about the impact of high speed rail on local people and their environment.

The recent government proposals to build a high speed rail link from London to the North, starting with a dedicated London-Birmingham line called HS2, have led to strong debate in the party. It is a debate which was finally resolved in Cardiff last weekend, when conference agreed the Green Party does not support the HS2 project as it stands, and will only support high speed rail when it is clearly shown to be part of an overall policy which reduces demand for travel, CO2 emissions and energy use.

So far, much of the opposition to HS2 has come from local groups who are, quite rightly, concerned about local impacts. HS2 would pass through areas of outstanding natural beauty and disrupt many attractive areas in the Chilterns. In my local area of Camden, there is concern about the loss of social housing as Euston station is expanded, and the effect of tunnelling under Primrose Hill. These are issues which could be sorted out if the project's backers wished to do so - routes can be changed, social housing replaced and even tunnelling work managed to be less disruptive. The fundamental issues of ever increasing demand for travel, high energy use and CO2 emissions are far harder to deal with.

The HS2 proposal will be, at best, neutral in terms of carbon emissions. The first London-Birmingham leg will not be available until 2026 by which time we will need to have severely reduced emissions, and for a major project like this to not contribute at all seems unreasonable. In fact, the project's backers have barely even tried to establish the carbon budget for the project.

Perhaps the most severe impact of HS2 comes from its dependence on enormous levels of growth in domestic travel over the coming years. As with building roads, there seems to be a 'predict and provide' approach, which simply indulges unnecessary and expensive travel. Birmingham will become part of the London commuter belt, in the way that Peterborough, Cambridge, Milton Keynes and Brighton already are. It is hard to see where that kind of growth will stop, or what use it is. Although claims are made that the line will reduce the North-South divide, and help to regenerate the North, there is no evidence given for this.

HS2 is not a sustainable project. It is possible that, in this small, densely populated country of ours, high speed rail will never really be sustainable. The onus should be on those promoting these projects to show that they benefit society and the environment.

So far, most of the resistance to HS2 has been local and risks being labelled 'nimbyism' and so dismissed out of hand. But there are wider issues here, which the Green Party has now acknowledged. Campaigning against this damaging, wasteful project needs to embrace both these wider environmental and social issues and the concerns of the Chilterns householder who finds a railway line planned for her living room.

Guest Post: Natalie [1] for the London Assembly

By Matty Mitford (picture from last night's protest against the cuts in Camden): In the interests of partiality Jim's asked me to talk about why I'll be voting Natalie Bennett as my first choice for the GLA list, something I won't find hard to do.

Natalie's done some amazing work for the Green Party and in Camden at least, her diplomacy and commitment is viewed with respect even by people of opposing political views, which is no mean feat in the dogfight that is local politics.

Natalie was a excellent Parliamentary candidate in Camden and her performances at hustings were always impressive, winning her support from all sides. She can debate with the heaviest of hitters, something most definitely an essential quality in an Assembly Member who has to use Mayor's Questions to hold the London executive to account.

Her background as a respected journalist is of great benefit in engaging with the media and maximising the Green voice, which we so desperately need.

Her local campaigning is impressive and committed, one example is in Somers Town where she's lead the opposition to the UKCRMI development, using her abilities as a mediator to unify many differing political interests into an effective campaign, (again attributes of real value for City Hall, where working with other parties is so key).

She's worked all the angles for Somers Town, from late night leafletting to giving evidence in front of a Parliamentary Select Committee and has significantly raised the profile and opinion of the Green Party in the area, something I know she'd do in the wider context of a London representative.

All this and I've still not mentioned her work on the national executive, her founding of Green Party Women, formulation of much Green Party policy on women's equality and her frankly frightening levels of energy and drive.

In short, Natalie is the sort of politician I'm happy to leaflet in the rain for her because she proves time and again her commitment, the thoroughness of her research and understanding on any issue on which she speaks, her political integrity and her extreme willingness to engage with the grunt work of coordinating, leafletting, stall-ing and all the other day to day organising a local party needs.

I'm voting Natalie [1], and I'd like to encourage everyone to do the same.

Sex Workers' and self organisation

In this next installment of the ABC of feminism we have a guest post from Jane Watkinson who takes a look at some of the history of how sex workers have collectively organised to protect their rights.

The sex workers’ movement really took off in the 1970s as sex workers’ within Lyon, France occupied churches in protest against police corruption and treatment against sex workers. The direct action received international coverage, propelled the French Collective of Prostitutes and the English Collective of Prostitutes to form, as well as assisting with the development of many other sex workers’ organisations and collectives around the world.

Whilst sex workers’ organisation has existed for many years, the ‘prostitutes’ right movement’ came into its own in the 1970s; as the fight for sex workers’ rights to be considered with respect and seriousness became more prominent. The 1980s AIDS’ crisis was a double edged sword, as governments provided sex workers and health officials money to help sex workers gain access to preventative treatment and services such as condoms – but it also came with a reinforcement of the negative stigma associated with sex work through legitimising the view that sex workers are the ones who require mandatory testing and health surveillance, not the clients (most likely male).

Furthermore, AIDS funding for sex workers’ organisations has often been associated with an ‘exiting’ strategy. The USA only now provide funding for these organisations on the condition that they advocate for sex workers to exit the industry. This puts a strain on resources, especially given the legal situations of countries such as France where the possession of condoms can be attributed as evidence for ‘passive soliciting’. ‘Passive soliciting’ was introduced in the Domestic Security Bill in 2003 by Sarkozy and has been seen as a human rights attack, as the police often arrest sex workers based on their attitude or dress (even though dress was removed from the legal text after an amendment).

Nevertheless, not all community health organisations have suffered from these conditions. In France, the community health organisations posed in direct conflict with the social workers who took an abolitionist line. Furthermore, in Sonagachi, Kolkata, the sex workers’ AIDS organisation has over 60,000 members, with the Durbah Mahila Samanwaya Committee that runs the project even setting up a civic bank for the sex workers.

Gregory Gall documents sex workers’ organisation. He refers to the development and sophisticated progression of the movement, as the collectives and heath organisations were later complemented by the formation of trade unions for/by sex workers. Whilst Gall refers to the disappointment of sex workers’ unionisation across the world, he states that there have been relative success stories such as in the USA where Lusty Lady’s was unionised and turned into a sex workers’ cooperative. Within the UK, we have the International Union of Sex Workers; however, whilst the union has had relative success affiliated to the GMB specifically in the context of assisting lap dancers rights, it has various controversies surrounding their membership criterion that supposedly allows related groups such as pimps to join. Furthermore, there are concessions that their level of organisation has been limited – reasons for this however are hardly uncommon in regards to the sex workers’ movement at large.

There are problems with sex workers feeling ashamed because of the strong stigma attached to their work meaning they often feel unable to show their faces at protests, covering them up with masks. The laws surrounding sex work do not help with this; our own laws in the UK are a testament to this. Whilst it is legal to have commercial sexual services, there are numerous laws surrounding the industry that make it very dangerous for the sex workers involved to work. This is largely shaped by a ‘moral’ concern for keeping the ‘public’ areas ‘safe’; in consequence sex workers are given ASBOs, pushed into dark unsafe areas and prohibited to work together outside or indoors.

Internationally there are largely calls for decriminalisation of sex work where sex work would be recognised as legitimate work to be considered under existing work laws. There is a strong movements in countries such as France against state legislated brothels, especially given France’s history re brothels and the mandatory health tests that undermine sex workers’ movement and freedom. Regardless, some sex workers’ want brothels, others want designated areas so they can work on the street (managed zones, as designed by Liverpool and as ignored by the Labour government); illustrating the diversity amongst sex workers and the need to provide them space to air their views and arguments in public.

Labour were central to moving the UK closer to a prohibitionist stance. Nevertheless, there are countries such as New Zealand who have adopted a decriminalisation position (influenced by sex workers’ organisation). However, the UK have taken their influence from Sweden and its prohibitionist legal context, as women are treated as vulnerable ‘victims’ said to be in a false consciousness unaware of their experienced ‘coercion’. Sex workers’ organisation is often isolated from the feminist movement as it is polarised by these debates surrounding choice and coercion. Regardless, most feminists and researchers into sex work come to the sensible conclusion that sex workers’ are neither forced or freely choosing sex work – there is a complex mixture of both.

Whilst the sex workers’ movement has come a long way since the Lyon sex workers’ strikes, there are still many obstacles for sex workers to be given the rightful legal, cultural, social and economic recognition they deserve. There are strong moralist forces within countries such as France and the UK that dictate their policies around sex work, making it harder for sex workers to make a living.

However, sex workers’ organisation has illustrated profound resilience. The movement has developed in sophistication and whilst unionisation may not have been as successful as hoped with many unions rejecting sex work as ‘work’; there are real building blocks that sex workers can hold on to and work in correspondence to progressive forces to counteract the negative and moralistic constructions of sex workers that undermine their rights to public space and consideration.

Kate Belgrave: Women and the cuts

Continuing my series on the ABC of feminism guest posts we have this fantastic piece from Kate Belgrave who has been interviewing women up and down the country about the impact of the cuts in their area.

There are times when I wonder if being an old woman without money will be as funny as all that. It seems likely that I'll find out first-hand in the near-ish future.

Right now, I get to watch.

I'm in a room in Gateshead with about 15 older women at a Personal Growth - Take Individual Steps session (known as PG Tips here at the Tyneside women's health centre). I wouldn't describe the group, or the session, as a touchy-feely waste of public money and focus, although I
imagine George Osborne would without looking round the door. Older and sick people aren't above criticism or suspicion in these censorious times, and hell – what would I know? Perhaps George is some kind of life-science genius. Perhaps it's unfair to give a group of unwell old girls like this a free pass for sharing a pot of tea together when they could be out on all fours in the snow cleaning something. It's not like anybody else gets to enjoy life.

These women are getting on in years, though. Two or three of them are about 40. The rest are in their 50s and 60s. Faces are lined, bodies are soft, and hair is thinning and grey.

I'm sitting with them, because I wanted to talk to Newcastle women who were likely to be affected by the coalition government's cuts. I've done well on that front, if I can put it that way. A lot of the women in this room collect incapacity benefit – a means of drawing income which the Murdoch stable would have us believe is leapfrogging politics, pimping and web paedophilia to top the list of pestilent ways to source a buck. Not that these women will be sourcing income
through incapacity for long. Their days of drawing incapacity (and perhaps any) benefit are numbered. Incapacity is being phased out, along with any notion of genuine need. Everyone who collects incapacity is being assessed for fitness for work. They're being moved to the smaller job seekers' allowance, or to the employment support allowance if they're deemed to need support to work. Some will be found ineligible for support altogether.

Nobody I've spoken to likes their chances. I've even met rightwingers who are worried about assessment. Only ten days ago, I interviewed a physically disabled woman called Mel Richards who felt that the coalition (which she generally supported) was wilfully failing to recognise people she referred to as “deserving poor.” She insisted that her good work record and national insurance contributions entitled her to support when illness struck (and was technically correct – incapacity benefit recipients must generally have paid national insurance).

She'd run a campaign called “I'm Right – but cuts are wrong.” “I still believe there is such a thing as entitlement. I paid, so I was entitled. The government is not acknowledging that.”

Most of the women in this Gateshead room worked, and paid tax and national insurance, for years – 30 years at the HMRC in one case, 20 and more years at BHS in another – before age and ill-health queered the pitch, as they do. Some say they were eased, or bullied, out of jobs and/or better places in the work hierarchy and that their problems with depression set in around then. Depression sets in for me just talking about it. I've been in the workplace long enough to know how women are rated once they've past the age of sexual attractiveness
and use. Miriam O'Reilly is, alas, not the only one. She's one of the better looking.

I wonder, too, about the likelihood of employers giving these already-discarded older women a chance.

Let's take Diana Shearer, who is 51. Her last job was in IT. She was there for about 14 years. She is incontinent and suffers from severe depression: the two problems aren't unrelated. She is furious about the pressure she's under as she waits for reassessment. “Every time there's something comes through the post, I'm wondering is it going to be that letter? It's every day for me [at the moment]. How dare these people stop my benefit? Who going to decide?”

Chris Swales is probably in her 50s, but her seamed face and thick glasses make her look elderly. She worked for 30 years the public sector before she was retired for ill health. “I got a letter and a medical assessment [when I was retired] so I rang Incapacity (the DWP) and told them that I had been ill-health retired. I still had to go for a medical (she had her assessment last week, although she struggles to recall it - the other women in the room have to remind her when I ask). I'm just concerned that I'll get a letter saying that I'm not entitled to it.”

It seems highly unlikely that employers will pick these two from Newcastle's large crop of jobless. Newcastle council is due to jettison 2000 people. There will be long queues for jobs, and old, shaky women will be at the back of them. I've worked all my life, but have never made the kind of money you need for complete security today. I look at these women and see me.

NB Names of women at the Gateshead Centre have been changed – they were concerned that publicity might affect their benefit assessments. I'll upload the audio from these interviews to my site when I get back to London next week.

ABC of Feminism: women and economics

The next in my short series on the ABC of Feminism focuses on gender and economic inequality by chair of Green Party Women Natalie Bennett. She's taken the ABC thing a bit more literally than the first two pieces - but it's all good!

The A (introduction) of "women and economics" is simple and stark: men own nearly everything, women can be certainly of very little, or to put it in statistical terms, only about 1% of the world's assets are held by women. And only about 1% of the world's women have access to land - the basic foundation of survival, while 70% of the world's people living in abject poverty, on less than $1 a day, are female.

And it's not because women are lolling around, choosing the easy life. To quote The World's Women: 2010 (PDF) (a great statistical source): "In all regions, women spend at least twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic work" and "when unpaid work is taken into account, women’s total work hours are longer than men’s in all regions".

So what of the B, before? Well it's not the sort of thing that was being recorded in many parts of the world until very recently, but where there are records, we know that the situation today has dramatically improved compared to the past. In Britain, it was the Married Women's Property Act of 1882 that allowed married women to own anything much more than the clothes they stood up in. It's a right (at least with regard to land) that women in, to take just one example, Swaziland, are still struggling towards.

Why? Well that's the $24,000 question I'd be answering definitively if only I could lay my hands on some cash. Many theorists posit some past golden age - a Paleolithic heaven of equality (yet modern studies suggest current such societies show a wide range of models for the sexual division of labour and status), shading into darker shadows of Neolithic child-rearing and farm work. Yet others see a worship of "Mother Earth" and mother goddess in the Neolithic, with repression arising only with more complex, and hierarchical societies.

A common everyday answer is that men are simply stronger than women, so in a world "naked in tooth and claw", they naturally come out with most of the goodies. As an answer to that read The Frailty Myth by Colette Dowling - the difference in at least potential power between men and women's bodies is minuscule.

Political and social power, however, are clearly a different issue. overwhelmingly in most of history they have been in the hands of men. why? Well the socialist/Marxist feminists will blame economic base, the radical feminists will blame patriarchy: I'm not going there today.
So what about C, change?

Clearly in the past century, women have made considerable advances in economic sphere. I was recently re-reading The Female Eunuch, and I was amazed to learn that up to the 1970s single women were regarded as a bad bet as rental tenants, their income simply was not seen as reliable. But as capitalism came to need the labour of educated middle-class women in particular, a space, and real economic opportunities became available for some.

But I'm reminded of the words of Sheila Rowbotham on her recent book tour, that in the 1970s she thought that victories once won were history, but now she understood this was only the start, and battles needed to be fought again and again.

To come close to home, just look at what's happening in the UK now with the government's savage cuts. Women, particularly poorer women, are going to suffer hugely disproportionately. As the Women's Budget Group's excellent report (PDF) outlines, lone parents are the single group worst hit in the budget and they’re overwhelmingly women (1,326,000 women to 130,000 men). The next worst-hit group are single pensioners – of whom 73% are women, who tend to be older and already poorer than male single pensioners.

But poverty, of course doesn't just relate to money. Remember those working-hour figures? The other side of the coalition's plans is the "Big Society". The state is going to step away from many services that it's now providing, and leave the community to pick up the slack. Already time-poor women are going to be asked to do more, a lot more.

Support for services such as childcare is being withdrawn. So remember Sheila Rowbotham: you don't just have to fight to win something, you have to fight to keep it too. Even if you personally have been lucky enough to have economic opportunities, there's no guarantee they're available in the future, for you, or future generations of women.

ABC of Feminism: Your body, your choice

This next piece in the ABC of Feminism series is by Haringey Green Sarah Cope, pictured here angry and shouting and at a recent NHS demonstration. Here Sarah looks at one key feminist battle ground - women's bodies.

If anyone, when asked whether or not they consider themselves to be a feminist or not, replies that they don’t think so as there really isn’t a ‘need’ for feminism anymore, I’d ask them to look at the issues around women and their bodies.

There are a myriad of issues, including the pressure on women to conform to certain standards when it comes to appearance, the over-medicalization of birth, attacks on abortion rights, the criminalisation of sex work, the condemnation of sexually active women, the low conviction rate for rape…the list is depressingly endless, and that, in part, is why I for one am a feminist.

I’m going to focus on just one of the issues here. Access to safe abortion is something we have had in this country since 1967, although the laws around access could be improved – for example, the need to obtain two doctors’ signatures is archaic and restrictive, and should be removed.

However, we are fortunate to have what women in other countries have to break the law to obtain. Indeed, it’s been reported that women in countries where abortion is illegal are just as likely to have an abortion, as there will be no shortage of people wanting to cash in on women’s desperation. However, they have to risk their lives and may face either death or imprisonment for having the temerity to attempt to take control of their own bodies.

I am seriously concerned that abortion rights will be under attack again soon, with Tory MP Nadine Dorries, who previously tried to get the time limit on abortion lowered from 24 weeks to 20 weeks, on the anti-abortion warpath again. In October, Dorries wrote on her blog:

‘If girls and women were offered counselling and information regarding other options such as, wait for it, yes, adoption. As strange as it may seem, some find that an easier option than having to deal with the consequences of a medical procedure which, somewhere in their deepest thoughts, they regard as the ending of a life.’

If any argument makes me angry, it’s this one. The idea being that going through a pregnancy and childbirth, the biggest physical and emotional thing a lot of women will ever experience, is no big deal. So let’s see, that might well involve puking every day for months, intense back and pelvic pain, extreme tiredness, and your body changing beyond recognition. Oh yes, and possibly life-threatening conditions such as eclampsia. And then there’s childbirth, which as you might have heard is a bit on the painful side (made more so by the NHS being far from up to scratch when it comes to maternity services). But that’s okay, you can just hand the baby over (no breastfeeding, I guess…) and forget about it. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

And that’s without even mentioning the effect being adopted will have on the child as it grows up. I’m sure that adoption is handled much more sensitively these days, but it’s never going to be entirely trauma-free.

I wouldn’t rely on the Lib Dems to be a moderating voice when it comes to abortion rights, either. My own MP, Lynne Featherstone – now the Equalities Minister – wrote to me a couple of years ago about abortion rights, in response to a letter I had written to her in which I expressed my concerns about the possible lowering of the time limit for abortion. Featherstone wrote that we must listen to the latest medical advice on the issue and that she wouldn’t like to see women using abortion as a form of birth control.

Wow – a woman would really have to hate herself to use a D&C as a form of birth control. “No, don’t bother using a condom – I’ll just have an abortion, like last month! I just love having my cervix dilated and my womb scraped and vacuumed!” Yes, I can just hear that conversation in bedrooms across the country. Sexy talk.

Whenever I think of the issue of abortion rights, I think back to when I was in Toronto, researching for my MA dissertation. I was in the Thomas Fisher library, looking through a box of letters from Margaret Atwood to fellow writer Gwendolyn MacEwen. One of the letters was written in a much shakier hand than usual, and reading the content it transpired that Atwood was heavily pregnant with her daughter, Jess.

She wrote of how it was affecting her and signed off by saying that there was a word in the English language for being made to have sex against your will, but there was no word for being pregnant against your will. She said that there should be, because having been pregnant, she couldn’t begin to imagine how traumatic that would be.

There is no reason why any woman should have to experience this trauma. The brilliant resurgence in feminism that we’ve seen over the last couple of years means that the moment access to safe abortion is threatened, we will be ready to fight hard to protect it. It’s just a pity that we still have to defend something that is so fundamental to our equality.

ABC of Feminism: Women's suffrage

In the first of this short series on the ABC of Feminism Louise Whittle, who blogs at HarpyMarx, writes on women’s suffrage, trade unions and the radical suffragists.

No cause can be won between dinner and tea, and most of us who were married had to work with one hand tied behind us. (Hannah Mitchell, The Hard Way Up).

Women do not want their political power to enable them to boast that they are on equal terms with the men. They want to use it for the same purpose as men – to get better conditions. Every woman in England is longing for her political freedom in order to make the lot of the worker pleasanter and to bring about reforms which are wanted. We do not want it as a mere plaything… (Selina Cooper, pictured, 1906 from Wigan Observer)

The history of the women’s suffrage movement during the 20th century has been overshadowed and dominated by the middle class suffragettes of the Pankhursts the select few, predominantly London-centric (even though Pankhursts started off the suffrage campaign based in Manchester).

What about working class women activists? Who were they? Many were active in Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire. Many were campaigning around pay issues and other matters. And many of these women were active in the textile unions. Women’s suffrage wasn’t just a middle class pre-occupation, for working class women it was hand in glove with the labour movement.
Working class women trade unionists included:

Selina Cooper: textile worker from age of 10. She stood up at Labour Party conferences arguing for women’s suffrage.

Helen Silcock: She took the demand for women’s suffrage into the male dominated TUC congresses.

Sarah Reddish: She was based in Bolton, union organiser and suffragist.

Sarah Dickenson: Based in Salford, another leading Trade Union organiser.

Ada Chew: worked as a tailoress and exposed the sweated labour in her local paper. She was also a Trade Union organiser.

Women looked to the Trade Union movement, vehicles like the Women’s Trade Union Council and Women’s Trade Union League (marching, right). Petitions were organised in places like Lancashire and Blackburn. During 1900, women organised open air meetings at local guilds, Labour churches and ILP branches. They got 15,000 signatures of women cotton workers.

During the summer of 1901 woolworkers, cotton and silk workers in Cheshire organised petitions for supporting women’s suffrage. In Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire around 311,000 women (217,000 men) worked in textiles yet they were disenfranchised and therefore voiceless.

Radical suffragists rejected the aim of the traditional women’s suffrage societies led by Millicent Fawcett (National Union of Women Suffrage Societies) - a property based vote. Their demand was simple: ‘womanhood suffrage’…

Due to the coming together of radical suffragists during the 1890s, support rapidly grew, there was factory meetings, women’s suffrage motions put through union branches and trade councils.
Women suffragists encountered friction and hostility within the labour movement regarding the vote. Expectation that women were there to fulfill a function – traditional gender role as woman in the background, as Hannah Mitchell observed:

Even my Sunday leisure was gone as a wife and mother for I soon found that a lot of Socialists talk about freedom was only talk and these socialist young men expected Sunday dinners and huge teas with home made cakes potted meats and pies, exactly like their reactionary fellows.

Unfortunately groups such as the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) opposed women’s suffrage: Bourgeois fad of feminism (1884).

TUC Congress was male dominated at Congress in 1901 – suffrage motion by Helen Silcock, President of the Wigan Weavers. It was defeated. Tactics were different for 1902 Congress – Silcock seconded the motion, it was proposed by Allan Gee, Huddersfield Sec. of Wool Workers’ Union, on the national executive of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). It was defeated again.

Women’s suffrage motions (1901, 1902) were defeated at Trade Union Congress in favour of adult suffrage motions. Suffragists were accused of ‘sex prejudice’ or ‘class prejudice’…. (and to be honest, from my own political perspective, I can’t understand how fighting for basic feminist demands counter poses class. It doesn’t).

These arguments put many women in a quandary. Suffragists like Selina Cooper went to speak to a group in Tunbridge Wells and was told, not to let that class hatred and bitterness come into your heart again. The Pankhursts’ (Emmeline and Christabel) started to reject their labour movement connections and especially alienated the ILP (All belonged to the aristocracy of the Suffragettes, argued Christabel Pankhurst and Emmeline: No member of the WSPU divides her attention between suffrage and other social reforms).

Undeterred, radical suffragists carried on building the women’s suffrage movement by addressing Trade Union meetings. They asked members to be balloted on women’s suffrage. Majority support – Weavers’ union in Burnley instructed committee to bring women’s suffrage before TUC and Labour candidates supported by textile unions to introduce women’s suffrage bill if elected. This started to build up support from working class women workers – suffrage group started to shoot up. The winter of 1904-1905 4,000 people attended a meeting regarding women’s suffrage at Manchester Free Trade Hall.

The popularity of our movement gives us great hope. (Esther Roper).

The LRC Conference in 1904 passed a resolution supporting women’s suffrage but the following year conference passes an ‘adult suffrage’ motion as opposed to women’s suffrage. Not the place of the LRC to place sex first; we have to put Labour first in every case… (Harry Quelch, SDF member and Trades Council delegate)

In 1907 Labour Party conference defeated a motion on women’s suffrage. Keir Hardie spoke (as ever) in favour of it. It was in 1912 when support for women’s suffrage was eventually adopted!

Friction developed between the WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union formed in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst) and the ILP. In the 1906 Cockermouth by-election, WSPU spoke but didn’t encourage the male voters to vote for Labour candidate. The Pankhursts moved to London from Manchester in 1906.

Radical suffragists didn’t support direct action of violence and arson rather they were horrified by it. They preferred, instead, to build alliances, organise within the mass organisations of the working class. While the WSPU was London-centric had no real base outside London. At peak they had 88 branches, 34 in London. Majority of membership middle-class, with no industrial base.

A procession in Feb 1907 known as the ‘Mud March’ as it saw 3-4,000 women battle and march through the mud. In June 1908, 2,000 working women marched in Manchester demanding the vote. The aims were ‘to protect their Labour, improve their wages and defend their industrial and TU interests’.

Women eventually won the vote in 1918 (and even then it was for women over 30). Why? Because of the shortage of male workers due to the First World War, therefore women were entering the job market doing traditional male jobs. It gave women more opportunities. The suffrage movement during the war was suspended though majority of the radical suffragists opposed the war. Even after women were granted the vote – it didn’t stop the radical suffragists from campaigning for other feminist demands such as equal pay, contraception, child care, child benefits (the parallels between the demands now and then!)

How will the fight for women’s suffrage be remembered?

The direct action of the Suffragettes, brought the campaign to the forefront of consciousness, along with the dogged and courageous struggles by Trade Union women activists campaigning for women’s suffrage in the labour movement. Direct action gave it public attention but was no substitute for mass organisation and building support. Direct action does have its place, and lets not forget the appalling vicious treatment women experienced while in prison (force feeding and later, the misogynistic, Cat and Mouse Act of 1913). Even though I question the tactics, I still admire the bravery and defiance of these women at a time when behaviour like this was considered ‘unladylike’ and the pressures on these women to conform to traditional gender roles were immense.

Sheila Rowbotham makes the point as well when she writes that the direct action and violence of the suffragettes was born out of despair. It must have been soul destroying and demoralising when the labour movement consistently failing (support was fragmented) to stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight for universal women’s suffrage.

Hannah Mitchell puts it in perspective when she writes: When the women began to destroy letter-boxes and set fire to churches, I could not bring myself to blame them. Those who do so, should remember the long years of peaceful propaganda, the insolence of politicians, the brutality of stewards, the indifference of the police, the prison sentences, ‘forcible feeding’ with all its horrors, The Cat and Mouse Act which repeatedly sent women back to prison, and caused many to flee from this country to some freer state.

Radical Suffragists have been written out, hidden from history of the women’s suffrage movement, no recognisable trace has been left. These anonymous and invisible women had names and political spirit, activism and courage. We remember Sylvia Pankhurst but what about Hannah Mitchell, Cissy Foley, Selina Cooper, Sarah Reddish, Sarah Dickenson and Ada Chew. It is time to remember the contribution of these committed brave working class women and to give them the lasting recognition these so deserve.

In 2011 women still have an uphill struggle for true recognition, liberation and equality.

Guest post: Islamophobia and the French Left

Recently, 12 activists in the French New Anti-Capitalist Party, including Ilham Moussaid - whose candidacy for the regional elections caused controversy both within and without the party on the basis that she wears a hijab – resigned from the NPA. John Mullen, a member of the NPA in the Paris region, spoke to the Australian left organisation Socialist Alternative about the issue of Islamophobia in France, and the debates within the NPA that led to these resignations. He's kindly allowed me to repost the discussion here.

First of all, John, could you elaborate on what caused these members to resign and the contours of the debates within the NPA about the rights of its Muslim membership?

Ilham was chosen as one of a list of candidates in the regional elections last year. This decision was made in the region - the NPA is very much a federal organization. The NPA was attacked from all sides for giving in to Islamicists, fundamentalists and for abandoning secularism. The national spokesperson Olivier Besancenot defended Ilham’s right to be a candidate, but a vocal minority inside the NPA is hostile to having members with a hijab.

For the upcoming conference, this minority has put forward a motion that hijab wearers can’t be candidates for the party. A counter-motion defends equal rights for all members to apply to be a candidate, and a third motion suggests a dreadful compromise (that hijab wearers can be candidates if approved by special commissions).

The group of comrades of which Ilham is part, near Avignon, have been running dynamic local campaigns on different issues, including the question of Islamophobia. A campaign against them inside the party has worn them out and rather than fight at the conference, they have chosen to continue their activism outside the party - it’s very sad. The very real, and slowly growing support they have had from a minority of comrades around the country has not been enough to keep them in our party.

One of the things Moussaid stated on her resignation was, "We need to concentrate on what unites us, on the fight for equality between men and women, and not to say we should all dress the same way, that you can't wear a headscarf because otherwise you're not a feminist.” What do you say to the argument so often employed in these debates, that wearing the hijab is, ‘an assault on feminism’?

The majority of the Left in France believe that the hijab is an assault on women’s rights, and this position quickly moves into the prejudice that Muslim women in France are more oppressed than non-Muslim women, that the experience of women in –say- Saudi Arabia is merely an extreme case of an oppression which is inherent in Islam, and other such ideas. Muslim and Arab men are then presented as the major source of women’s oppression and contrasted with the progressive white values of Republican France. So opposition to religious practices on the basis of progressive values can easily turn into a thinly disguised form of racism – and often does.

In fact, if Muslim women in France suffer oppression, get mostly low-paid jobs and bad housing, this is not usually because of their husbands and big brothers, but because capitalism wants cheap labour, and treating ethnic minorities badly is good for profits.

Pieces of clothing have symbolic meanings in all cultures. In many cultures, women must cover their breasts, men must not wear dresses. In Sikh culture men must not cut their hair. And in many Muslim cultures women must cover their hair. When French Muslim women cover their hair to please their God, they are not saying “treat me as an inferior”.

There is another point : in France, where anti-Arab and anti-muslim racism is at a high level (which has a lot to fo with France’s imperial past and neo-colonial present), wearing the hijab is about showing you are proud to be a Muslim, (and often proud to be an Arab) in a fairly hostile situation. Tragically the opinion of the women who wear the hijab, or the niqab, is practically never asked. “Enlightened” left antisexists speak for them and tell them how they should dress. It’s an old colonial tradition, telling oppressed groups what is good for them.

The right-wing Sarkozy Government, with the support of the Socialist Party, recently banned the wearing of the hijab in state schools and the public service, and the full veil is now illegal in the streets. How is this issue exploited by France’s politicians and how prevalent is racist abuse of Muslims in France today?

A few months ago, researchers sent out to French companies applications for jobs accompanied by CVs. They wanted to compare how a young black Catholic woman fared in comparison with a young black Muslim woman. The CVs were identical except for first names and a mention of their religion (one said she was active with a Catholic organization, the other with a Muslim one).

The “Catholic” black woman got asked to an interview 21% of the time. The “Muslim” Black woman got asked to an interview 8% of the time. That’s how bad it is. The mainstream press covered this story, the Left press almost totally ignored it. That’s how bad it is.

Meanwhile racist grafitti on mosques, and desecration of Muslim graves are becoming more common – there have been at least twenty cases of vandalizing Muslim graves this year. A mosque and a halal butchers were shot at earlier this year – 32 bullet holes were left in the mosque walls. And a number of veiled women have been attacked in the streets.

The recent law to ban women who wear the “full veil” from leaving their homes was initially a proposal of a Communist MP! And the law in 2004, banning high school students from wearing a hijab was initiated by a campaign against two young Muslim women in which Trotskyist teachers were very active! Two months ago, when the Senate was debating the law against the “full veil”, a group of Muslims and left wing supporters organized a rally outside.

We got sixty activists there : not many, but in the French context quite an achievement. Almost all of the left organizations ignored it. The NPA leadership decided to “support” the rally … seven hours before it was due to start, although it had been planned for weeks. Internal division paralyzes the NPA and many other organizations on anything to do with Islamophobia.

We understand the issue of the hijab will be debated at the NPA’s upcoming conference. How do you think socialists should respond to Islamophobia in society?

The radical Left should launch an active and dynamic campaign against Islamophobia, and not just “debate “ the issue. This means allying itself with Muslim organizations. This is a very obvious point, but highly controversial on the French Left. In Britain, the biggest Trade Union confederation, the TUC, has run a joint campaign against Islamophobia along with Muslim organizations. Islamophobia is tremendously useful to Sarkozy to divide us, to point the finger at the Muslims as a threat to “our culture” in order to divert our attention from the real enemy.

Islamophobia is a gigantic blind spot of the French Left. The NPA is better than the other organizations of the radical Left, (which is not hard). The upcoming “Conference against the Islamic domination” in December, run by groups which came from the Left but have ended up on the far right, will see sections of the NPA mobilizing against it. And at the party conference we have a good chance of winning the demand for equal rights for Muslim party members.

But tragically, the conference will debate almost exclusively about the rights of Muslim members of the NPA. Only a few isolated voices are calling for an active NPA campaign against Islamophobia. This is a tragedy. In the mass strike campaign to defend pensions, these last few months in France, NPA activists everywhere played an excellent role, in the forefront of building the strikes and building unity between different sections of the working class and different generations.

It is a party with tremendous positive potential. But old French traditions of left wingers mocking or hating those who believe in God, and more recent trends towards demonizing Muslims since 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to be blinding comrades and they are falling for old divide and rule tactics. Progress is slow, but this question will have to be faced. We have to actively fight Islamophobia both because of how hard it makes life for many of our Muslim sisters and brother, but also because working class rebellion is made harder every time workers believe that “Muslim threats to our culture” are what we need to be fighting, not the capitalists.

Guest Post: Coaltion of Resistance thoughts

I wasn't able to make the Coalition of Resistance conference on Saturday as I was in a meeting across London discussing a very different deficit. However, Natalie Bennett has kindly written up her experiences of the day for me. By the nature of these things her impressions are very much shaped by the sessions she attended;

The Coalition of Resistance national organising meeting on Saturday saw a packed Camden Centre with 1,300 registrants spilling from the main hall, a strong and determined mood, and lots of solid work in the breakout sessions...

I've written elsewhere about the Women Against the Cuts session, and I unfortunately couldn't make the morning session, when Jean Lambert reportedly gave a storming speech, but I was impressed in the afternoon plenary by the argument of Dot Gibson from the National Pensioners' Convention, who said that her generation had a responsibility to account to the youth of today - to account from "where we came in and where we got to".

In 1945, she said, there was a general determination in society not to return to the pre-war situation where everyone had to pay for education, pay for medical services, and there was widespread unemployment. Universal provision was meant to prevent poverty. "But now my grandchildren don't know if they can get a job or can get somewhere to live."

She said: "A compromise was made after the war. That compromise was the mixed economy. The private sector - the pharmaceutical industry, the rail stock manufacturers - could use the public sector for profit. That laid the foundations for what Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown have done since."

Rapper Lo Key had an interesting suggestion: MPs supporting the rise in tuition fees should retrospectively pay £9K a year for the free university education they had enjoyed.

Kate Hudson from CND put it plainly: "The redistributive state has been the liberator for millions of people."

She dismissed the argument that Britain's nuclear weapons could in any way be defended as job generators - "There are a maximum of 7,000 jobs in our nuclear weapons systems, which means it costs millions of pounds per year per job. If you invested the same money in sustainable industry you would create many thousands of jobs. Nuclear is a dead end in every respect."

For other reports on the Coalition of Resistance see: Natalie on women against the cuts, Liam's uncharacteristically positive thoughts, Derek's thoughts, Permanent Revolution, Luna17, lots of images and videos and things on the CoR site.

Guest Post: Is Sarkozy setting off a new May 68 in France?

Many socialist eyes are looking jealously across the channel to France at the moment (my photos). Here my regular correspondent on French affairs, John Mullen, the editor of Socialisme International, writes a really useful report on what's actually happening and why.

Class struggle is hitting France in a big way, as Tuesday 12th and Saturday 16th October saw the seventh and eighth day of action to defend retirement pensions. Two hundred and forty demonstrations were organized on each day across France along with mass strikes in transport, electricity, oil, airports, telecoms, education, and the civil service. The unions say there were three and a half million demonstrators Tuesday ; the government say a million and a quarter, but even one of the police staff associations said the government was fiddling the figures.

For the first time, students and school students joined the pensions struggle in large numbers, concerned both about their parents, and that later retirement for older workers means fewer jobs for the young. According to polls, eighty four per cent of 18 to 24 year olds think the strikers are right. “Sarkozy, you're screwed, the youth is on the street,” was the chant in Toulouse in the South West. Two days later the number of high schools involved in the strike had risen from 200 to 700. As young people moved into action, government ministers squealed that fifteen-year-olds were too young to demonstrate and strike, that they must be being manipulated. This from a government whose justice minister recently proposed to lower to twelve years old the age at which a young person can be imprisoned for committing a crime!

The movement is not just a series of one-day strikes controlled by union leaders. Since last Wednesday, daily striker meetings in the most active sectors vote each day on continuing the strike for 24 hours more. Already, all of the twelve oil refineries in France have taken up these “renewable strikes”, half of the country’s trains are not running, and some libraries and school canteens are closed, while in other sectors hundreds of mass meetings are being held to decide on next steps. Lorry drivers have started blocking industrial zones in solidarity with the movement despite the fact that they themselves can retire at 55. One of the leaders of the drivers pointed out that drivers care about what happens to the support and administrative workers in transport firms, who are mostly women, and don’t get early retirement like the drivers do. Dockers in Marseilles have walked out, too and another national day of strikes and demonstrations for everyone is planned for Tuesday 19th.

Union members make up under ten per cent of French workers, though many millions more vote for union representatives as staff reps on works committees, and in polls 53% of the population and 60% of manual workers say they trust unions. The result of low union density is that most workplaces are only partly unionized, so regular meetings where everyone can express themselves and vote on the strike are essential. Such meetings can also make it harder for union leaders to sell out strikes.

Public Support

Public opinion is absolutely on our side - Fully 71% of the population opposes Sarkozy’s “reform”, and that support for the movement rises to 87% among manual workers and routine office workers. A poll last week even reckoned that two thirds of the population thought the strike movement needed to get tougher on the government, while 53% of the population and 70% of manual workers wanted a general strike! This support needs to be transformed into active confidence to strike in those sectors not yet mobilized.

In France, 13 per cent of retired people are living in poverty according to a recent Eurostat survey, as against seventeen per cent in Germany, and thirty per cent in Britain, where neoliberal “reforms” have gone much further. French workers are determined not to catch up to other countries in the poverty stakes. But over the last twenty years, pensions have come gradually under attack. The official retirement age is still 60, but a few years back, despite being slowed by strikes, the government managed to force through an increase in the number of quarterly stamps needed to get a full pension. In 1990, thirty seven and a half years’ worth were enough; by 2012 you will need forty one years’ worth. If you have less than this, they chop a bit off your pension for each year “missing”, unless you retire at 65, in that case you get a full pension. Sarkozy’s new law, just being voted through parliament, adds two years both to the official retirement age (making it 62) and to the age you need to retire at to get a guaranteed full pension (making it 67).

Sarkozy, weakened by disgusting corruption scandals involving his ministers (including Eric Woerth the head of pension reform) over the summer, is desperately looking for his “Thatcher moment”, a moment which has eluded recent right wing governments in France. In 1995 a month of strikes saw off a drastic attack on pensions. And most famously, in 2006, the First Employment Contract, voted though by a right wing government to impose inferior working conditions on young adults under 26 years old, was an unmitigated disaster for the government. After the law had been voted, a massive student movement backed up by the unions forced the Prime Minister into a humiliating climbdown. This happening again is Sarkozy’s nightmare. He has been quoted recently as saying in private “As long as the young people don’t get involved, I can handle the movement against my pension reform.” Traditionally, presidents allow their prime ministers to take the main responsibility for unpopular reforms, and sack them if the movement against gets too strong, but this time Sarkozy has put himself in the forefront, a move we hope to make him regret.

Union leaders and Left parties

You might think that with such levels of public support, union leaders would pull out all the stops for a General strike, but professional negotiators don’t think like that. The main trade union confederations have so far been united about the need for one day mass strikes, which has made impossible the standard government tactic of getting one confederation on their side through minor concessions and using that fact in propaganda to reduce public support for the strikers. But they are not pushing for renewable strikes, and are calling for negotiations, not for the simple binning of Sarkozy’s pension law. The union leaders’ banner at the head of Saturday’s demonstration read “Pensions, jobs and wages are important to society” when it should have read “General strike to beat Sarkozy”! So it’s up to the rank and file to build up to a general strike, though some regional leaders are supporting the idea.

The rock bottom support for Sarkozy in the opinion polls, and the fact that there are only 18 months left till the next presidential elections, has led the Socialist Party to be more active (though far from central) in this movement. They have promised to reinstate retirement at 60 if they are elected in 2012. The Socialist Party today is like the Labour Party in Britain twenty years ago, deeply divided between a Blairite wing who would abandon even weak links with an active workers’ movement, and a left wing who see a mix of parliamentary action and movements on the streets as the best way forward to more social justice. The Blairite Dominique Strauss Kahn, one of the hopefuls for the Socialist Party presidential candidacy in 2012 is presently Director General of the International Monetary Fund, the financial gangsters who are pushing across the world for later retirement and public sector cuts!

The Left reformist “Left Party”, and the Communist Party are actively building the movement, though many activists are being diverted into campaigning for a referendum on the issue of pensions. Since Sarkozy would only grant a referendum if he was terrified by the power of the movement, and if he scare him enough he will junk his reform anyway, the referendum idea is a waste of time. Anticapitalist groups such as the New Anticapitalist Party are completely committed to building for a general strike. Olivier Besancenot, spokesperson for the NAP said “We need a twenty first century version of May 1968.”

So far Sarkozy has been forced to make minor concessions (concerning for example women who have taken time off work to raise children). He has also made concessions in other areas hoping to calm the anger of certain parts of the population - for example an announced plan to cut housing benefit for students was abandoned . And a few days ago, he announced plans to look again at a whole raft of tax cuts for the rich instituted only three years back.

But the main battle is still on. Now the attack has been voted through parliament, the stakes are high - the unions are not negotiating : the new law will stand or be broken. If it is broken, Sarkozy is unlike to survive as president beyond the next elections in 2012.

Divide and rule

All year, Sarkozy has been using classic divide and rule tactics and playing the racist card. Mass expulsions of gypsies and threats to remove French nationality from naturalized immigrants convicted of certain crimes have led to protest movements. Tragically, the passage of a law banning women wearing a “full” muslim veil from walking the streets was supported by most of the parliamentary Left, while the far left remained practically silent, afraid of islamophobic sentiments among its own supporters. These racist tactics have had some effect, and racist attacks are on the rise. A sharp defeat for Sarkozy on pensions could help build a fighting Left which could then roll back some of the Right’s racist ploys, and encourage united action on the radical Left...

The movement is still on the rise, and Friday police thugs attacked high school students in a series of towns across France. In Montreuil, where I live, a high school student is in hospital having an operation on his eye after police fired plastic bullets at students who were blockading their school. In other parts of France, police forced the blockade of oil supply depots Friday.

Only two years ago in 2008, Sarkozy could be heard to gloat “These days, when there is a strike in France, no-one notices. ” He has been made to notice now, and if a rising wave of strikes can kill his attack on pensions, it will be a major step forward in the defence of workers in France, and an encouragement for workers around the world. Already, Spain’s recent general strike and Greece’s mass strikes against austerity have shown that European workers are ready to fight.