Taking Action Against Workfare

Over the past few weeks, Feminist Fightback activists have joined members of the North London Solidarity Federation in picketing against workfare.

On 22 March, as part of the Boycott Workfare campiagn’s week of action, we spent a snowy afternoon in Leytonstone picketing Argos. Argos is one of the many companies who use workfare - where those who are in receipt of welfare are forced to work unapaid or will see their benefits cut. Most shoppers were unaware of Argos’s involvement in the scheme – and many were keen to find out more.

On 10 April, the picket was at Home for Haringey, the council housing provider. They claim participation in the scheme is voluntary – yet claimants are sanctioned by the Job Centre for not turning up to workfare placements.

More pickets set to follow – watch this space!

Justice for Cleaners at Thompsons Reuters!

Mass protest at Thompson Reuters

FRIDAY 16 MARCH, 5:00 PM

33 Aldgate High Street London EC3N 1DL, next to Aldgate tube station

Speakers include
JOHN MCDONNELL MP
STEVE HEDLEY RMT London Regional Organiser,
JOHN MALONEY – PCS DfT Group Secretary

Further protests at Thompson Reuters in Canary Wharf on Friday 30th March

Feminist Fightback hosts AK-Feminismus [a feminist group from Berlin]

Feminist Fightback will be hosting AK-Feminismus, a feminist group from Berlin, from 29^th March-4^th April, following the visit of a group of us to Berlin earlier this year. More info on the group is at the bottom of this email.

While they are here, we are hoping that they can meet lots of other anti-capitalist feminist groups and individuals to allow them to get a bit of an idea of what people in London are working on at the moment and to discuss some points of intersection.

About AK-Feminismus…

“We are a work group of the naturfreundejugend berlin. since our first meeting 2008 we have discussed theories and political strategies that link feminist and queer issues and struggles with critics of capitalism and related struggles. Starting from Marx, Engels and some of the first marxist feminists like Clara Zetkin, we have taken a closer look to later feminist movements and theories that followed a materialistic approach. For instance we discussed feminist struggles and demands during the 70s in Germany which focused on reproductive labour and ‘housework’ (Hausarbeit). We discussed and questioned their demand for paid housework and their attempts to find other definitions of Marx’s critical terms as productive and unproductive work, reproduction and exportation in order to politicise domination and exploration at home. This included the idea of unavailing emotional and affective labour of women which is usually invisible and unpaid – also when part of wage labour. In this regard we have been talking about utopian ideas of a better organisation of work/labour and
society. It seemed to us that – from a feminist point of view – socialist utopia and ideas on possible future modes of labour and production have been rather blind to gender issues e.g. by using a very narrow notions of exploitation (exclusively in ‘productive’ labour).

Apart from our discussions on labour in order to intersect feminist, queer and anti-capitalist struggles and debates, we also tried to figure out common epistemological and ontological groundings of marxist and feminist theories and analyses of history, capitalist societies, and gender oppression. We read and discussed some newer materialist and post-postmodernist feminist philosophical writing on epistemological and ontological ideas e.g. from Donna Haraway and Karen Baret.

Looking more to the developments and massive political changes on the labour marked and elsewhere since the 70s, we have tried to consider
changing modes of labour and working conditions for women. Especially regarding a growing sector of care work and a tendency of the inclusion of emotional and affective skills of the work force in the post-fordist era.

Since 2010 we wanted to have a wider attention and started thinking about getting more connected to different feminist and anti-capitalist struggles. We started working on and carrying out a militant research about the question of being constantly overloaded. Especially as women due to expectations and necessities to do additional care and affective work in your workspace as well as in your family, social context and relationships. Apart from the very different living and working conditions and experience of women of with different racial or class backgrounds and identities, we thought that this might be a common experience and as so a good common point of departure for a more unified feminist and anti-capitalist struggle against different
kinds of domination deeply interlinked with systems of sex-gender domination and acted out though different ways of exploitation and power over the labour force of others.

At the moment we are planning a poster campaign, that can be seen as an amplification to the former project and has the goal to unveil reproductive and unpaid work. The campaign aims for the recognition and against the denial of invisible labour which is often done by women. The campaign is also planned as a means to fight together and collective rather than individualising the problem. By pointing outexperience of overload is not a singular or personal one, but results from certain structural problems, division of labour and the capitalist mode of production, which cannot be solved individually but only collectively. We also want to point out that people are affected differently by neoliberal invocations – depending on “gender“, “race”, “class” and other structure categories.”

Sex Work, Trafficking and the Olympics: The Case for a Moratorium

By Stop the Arrests Campaign

Stop the Arrests Campaign, a coalition of sex worker rights activists and supporters, is calling for a moratorium on arrests, detention and deportation of sex workers in London with immediate effect until the end of the Olympic Games.

Prior to the Olympics run up anti-trafficking laws and policies were resulting in brothel raids, closures and arbitrary arrests, detention and deportation of people working in the sex industry. For many sex workers these laws have dire consequences. Such policing creates a climate of fear among workers, leaving them less likely to report crimes against them – including violence and exploitation in the industry  and more vulnerable to abuse.1

A series of violent robberies on brothels in Barking & Dagenham by a gang in December 2011 demonstrates the effect that this climate of fear can have on the safety of sex workers. After the robberies, carried out at knifepoint, sex workers were deterred from pursuing the attacks because police threatened them with prosecution. There were many more  subsequent attacks and one woman was raped. But once the police agreed to an amnesty from arrest, sex workers were able to come forward.2

After 2006 a meme emerged suggesting that with every major sporting event comes a huge increase in trafficking of women for sexual slavery. The government, charity organisations and campaign groups have gone along with this. Such claims, often repeated by the media, are usually based on misinformation, poor data and a tendency to sensationalise.

Pressure groups cite the football World Cups in Germany and South Africa as evidence. Yet the claim that 40,000 women were trafficked into Germany in 2006 has been refuted by reports by the International Organisation for Migration, as well as by the Global Alliance Against Trafficking of Women. South African sex workers even noted a slump in demand during the World Cup, stating that they were disappointed that customers were “more concerned about football than in sex.”

Lobbying groups, including charities and non-governmental organisations have sprung up in London – many of which have no prior knowledge of the sex industry or experience of working with sex workers – citing this purported link and demanding measures such as increased law enforcement (policing) of sex work and a ban on advertising sexual services.

Nonetheless, there is no evidence that large sporting events cause an increase in trafficking for prostitution.3 This myth has reverberated throughout the media, activist circles and it now shaping policing policy in London.

We are aware of “clean up efforts” underway in London, particularly east London, in the run up to the Olympics. These include multiple raids and closure of premises. We anticipate that until the end of the Olympic games there will be a continued rise in the numbers of raids, arrests, deportations and level of harassment of sex workers.

Police have intensified raids on sex work premises, which have been ten times higher in the five Olympic boroughs than the rest of the city’s boroughs. This, the claim goes, is unrelated to the Olympics. But there have been 80 brothels shut down in Newham in 18 months and over seventy arrests in Tower Hamlets and Newham since the beginning of 2012. These arrest levels already exceed the total number for 2011.

The closure of brothels and flats leaves sex workers without premises from which to work, often forcing them onto the street, where they are more likely to be heavily policed, attacked or assaulted.

This is militarised spatial and social cleansing in the shadow of the Olympic stadium. Yet it is women’s safety and the desire to eliminate trafficking that is the narrative through which this aggressive agenda is being played out!

It is in this context that the Stop the Arrests Campaign is calling for a moratorium on arrests, detention and deportation of sex workers in London with immediate effect until the end of the Olympic Games. What this means is that we want the Mayor of London and London Metropolitan police, in co-operation with the UK Border Agency to,

1. Suspend offences that refer directly to sex workers: soliciting and prosecution for working collectively under brothel keeping laws
2. Suspend arrests of sex workers, administrative detainment and / or deportation, during the enforcement of offences relating to third parties, namely causing, inciting or controlling for gain.
3. Suspend the closure of premises through the use of closure orders and notices.

Go to http://www.moratorium2012.org to learn more about the campaign, read the open letter that will shortly be sent to the Mayor and sign the petition.

Notes: 1. x:talk (2010), Human rights, Sex Work and the Challenge of Trafficking
2. Owen Bowcott, “Call for change in law to protect prostitutes from violent crime”, Guardian  6/01/12, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/16/change-law-prostitutes-crime-violent
3. Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), (2011) What’s the Cost of a Rumour? A Guide to Sorting Out the Myths and Facts about Sporting Events and Trafficking. http://www.gaatw.org/publications/What’s_the_Cost_of_a_Rumour-GAATW2011.pd

 

 

Organise This! – a day of workshops on workplace organising as part of the struggle against austerity

Pamphlet February 11, 2012Saturday 11th February, 10.30am-4pm 11th February 2012 at Oxford House, Derbyshire Street, London E2. 5 minutes walk from Bethnal Green tube station.

Many of us work in the public sector and took strike action on June and November 30th, or played a role in supporting this action in our communities. This experience threw up many of the above questions, as well as practical issues about the nuts and bolts of workplace organising. We have started to discuss these questions in our collective, and now are keen to work with others who have found themselves facing similar challenges – to share skills, ideas and experiences.

All genders welcome.

The venue is accessible and a volunteer-run creche will be provided. Suggested donation of £4 low/ unwaged, £8 waged, includes lunch. Please register in advance so we know how much lunch to make!

For workshop booklet click here.

Please contact us if you want to come so we have an idea of numbers, and if you have any requirements that we can help with or if you can do a slot in the creche, at feminist.fightback@gmail.com.

East London Radical History Walk Sunday 18th December 2011

‘Human Rights, Sex Work and the Challenge of Trafficking: Human rights impact assessment of anti-trafficking policy in the UK’.

Fightback has welcomed the report launched this month by the x:talk project ‘Human Rights, Sex Work and the Challenge of Trafficking: Human rights impact assessment of anti-trafficking policy in the UK’. Download a copy of the report.

The Original Sexist – Justice for Zara

On Saturday 23 April between 10am and 1pm supporters of Zara Senkan leafleted customers of , boarding at Victoria Bus Station. They highlighted a serious issue of sex discrimination and victimisation at the company.

Zara worked for the company for five years until the end of 2010 when she was sacked. During that time she was on the receiving end of bullying, sexism and unfair treatment by managers and co-workers. Zara was sacked shortly after she submitted a grievance to the company about some of these issues.

Zara started working for The Original Tour as a driver. In 2006, when she also began working as a controller, her problems began.

Supported by her union, the RMT, Zara is pursuing a case for sex discrimination through an employment tribunal.

All Zara wants is to set the record straight and prove that Original Tour was guilty of condoning and worse, perpetrating, clear sexist and unfair treatment that should have no place in any company. It is especially shocking that these bullying working practices took place at such long-standing, large company that claims to be “family friendly”.

Zara sums it up:

“They wanted me to have a nervous breakdown and leave the job, but they couldn’t break me so they sacked me”.

Andrew Lansley, greedy Andrew Lansley

Pre-election promises made by the Tories to protect the NHS from the devastating cuts being made to public services, have recently been exposed as farcical. The coalition government’s proposed reform threatens to completely remove the NHS from its founding principles of free comprehensive care based on the population’s needs, and is set to open the door even wider to private profit-making companies. Meanwhile, the imposed ‘productivity targets’ and ‘efficiency savings’ (£20 billion to be squeezed out over 4 years) are beginning to bite.

Cuts to frontline staff, ward closures and diminished services are now a serious concern across the whole spectrum of health care services. Barts and the London  hospital made the headlines last week with their plans to reduce nursing staff on the wards, cutting 10% of nurses. 630 jobs are estimated to be lost overall. London Ambulance service has also just announced their plans to cut 890 jobs, including 560 frontline workers.

The pressure on frontline staff is, as always, keenly felt in maternity care where the shortage of midwives is a chronic problem. And nowhere have the Tories more unashamedly reneged on their promises. Their pre-election promise to increase the number of midwives by 3000 was swiftly dumped by the coalition government. UK maternity wards are now at crisis point, and fears over the stillbirth and maternal death rates continue to make headlines. Despite this midwifery services are being pared back and training budgets disappearing. On top of this CEMACE, a body that investigates and reports on all deaths related to childbirth to improve the quality of maternity care, has just been scrapped.

This government’s agenda of cuts is set to cause irreparable damage to our NHS and must be resisted. The Royal College of Nurses voted 99% in favour of a vote of no confidence in health secretary Andrew Landsley, and the coalition have since announced a ‘pause’ in the program of reform.  This is a purely cynical attempt to soften the blow, and plans are going full steam ahead as the NHS chief of staff has himself admitted. Health workers and users of the NHS have been joining forces to fight for the NHS in their local areas and various groups will be attending a demonstration on the 17^th May.

Click here for more details

Also, check out the Andrew Lansley Rap!

Bringing together a community in solidarity

Almost every school in the borough  closed either partially or entirely on 30 March due to joint action by local Unison and the NUT.  After picket lines were held, several hundred people assembled at Weavers Fields for a march to a rally at the London Muslim Centre.   I’d walked some of the way with my school through our neighbourhood.   Kids were on our megaphone all the way, other kids leaned out of windows to cheer us, cars beeped, and we got escorted off the premises of Canary Wharf to one of my kids leading a chant of “you’ve got loads of money”.

We were en route to support workers at another school where the head had been leading a campaign of intimidation against strikers. We met the workers of a Sure Start children’s centre holding a formidable picket line — this was one of many highlights, as we all cheered in riotous solidarity.  Before we knew it, about 2,000 people had taken to the streets, the majority of them women, many of whom had never struck or demonstrated before.  The demonstration, full of school bands and workers with their kids marching as service users as well as providers, felt massive, was incredibly loud and lively, and got loads of public support. Another of my kids appeared out of nowhere, clutched my hand and said in an awestruck whisper “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The rally consisted of a top-table speaker panel made up of male union big-wigs.  There was lots of fighting talk from the bureaucracy.  Hundreds of people made it to the rally. There was lots of chanting demanding a general strike, a big vote in favour of combined public sector union action over pensions, and, I hope, a sense that we need to hold our tub-thumping “leaders” to account and demand action.

Obviously a one-day strike by itself is going to win nothing, but this was a necessary experience for us.  It gave us practice at organising, arguing, mobilising and demonstrating. It was a massive confidence boost to lots of us who are feeling our way for the first time with this stuff.  Perhaps most important, it allowed us to have solidarity with workers of different unions, in different schools, with parents and children — in short, our community.

Opportunities to build this solidarity are in themselves vital if we are going to be able to go on to fight a battle with a chance of winning. One opportunity may be soon as the NUT plans to ballot over national strike action on cuts in pensions.

By a Tower Hamlets teacher and member of Feminist Fightback Collective

Sexist Pigs Cut our Pensions!

In March 2011 University lecturers went on strike against significant cuts to their pension scheme which included forcing employees to pay more while their employers pay less, and ending the final salary scheme for anyone new to the workforce.

Picket lines went up in every college and university across Britain totalling five strike days. Pensions are now political. Many students were also clear that these seemingly bureaucratic changes were part of a broader attack on higher education which affected them too. This is an attack that seeks to create divisions between baby boomers and those of us under 35, erasing the memory and sense of entitlement to something as basic as the right to retire without fear of poverty. Many students supported the strike, and at Goldsmiths College, University of London they took over management’s offices for 4 days – an interesting tactic whereby an occupation was used to enforce a picket line and prevent bosses from coming to work.

But the sexist nature of these attacks on pensions needs to be more strongly highlighted. For the proposed changes discriminate especially against any employee whose wishes to take a career break or to return to work part-time. They are therefore most likely to affect women with children – further limiting any choice we might have about how to combine work with family life. They will reinforce conservative and nuclear family arrangements, deterring fathers or non-biological family members from taking an equal part in childcare.

Less than one hundred years ago women were still fighting to study at universities on an equal basis with men. Until the Second World War, female lecturers at most universities were required to resign their posts on marriage. It is ironic (if it were not so predictable) that, just at the moment in which women have begun to enter a relatively prestigious profession in equal numbers to men, that profession becomes devalued and degraded. Academia today is still a comparatively welcoming space for feminists: but right now our feminism needs to extend beyond the words we write in books to struggling in our own workplaces against retrograde practices which divide and exploit in highly gendered ways.

By a member of Feminist Fightback

Why are cuts are a feminist issue?

Report back from workshop at ‘Women At the Cutting Edge’ regarding how public sector cuts relate to feminism.
Overview of the cuts

Women (along with disabled people and migrants) will be hit disproportionately by the cuts to services.

Ideological attacks on none nuclear families, while the reality is that more than ever “families” need two adults just to survive.

Legal Aid cuts compound difficulties that people face with the benefits system. Home repossession will be a big feature of the next period.

Employers will use whatever leverage they can against low paid and public sector workers (=women workers). They will attack wages (including pensions) but also be bullies. Use of sickness records. Disciplining workers and giving them the boot just before retirement. Voluntary redundancy process will be used to bully people.

Moreover, there seems to be a lot of bullying going on in many areas. E.g. at the when people are “signing on”. Vulnerable people are going to feel most under attack (disabled, long-term sick, people with caring responsibilities). There may be a return to the assumption that a man is the “head of household” is the breadwinner. The bullying is compounded by the contradiction that it is going to be increasingly difficult to “go back to work”. It is difficult to see how the government/state is going to manage this contradiction. There are big implications for how we struggle against public sector cuts.

For more information:

‘Cuts Are a Feminist Issue’ FF Article Soundings 2011

FF Workshop Cuts

‘Women and the Cuts Fact Sheet’ Women’s Resource Centre

TUC Women and the Cuts Tool Kit

Women Against Cuts

Women and Capitalism

The ‘double’ exploitation of women under capitalism – as low paid waged workers and as unwaged carers / domestic workers.

The intersectional exploitation of people – race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, nationality etc…

The role of the family unit in reproducing capitalism.

Cuts will mean that women will not only loose their jobs (given they make up the majority of as precarious workers & public sectors workers) but that a reduction in reproductive and welfare services will place greater burdens on women in terms of their unpaid work.

How does the law help us? Equality legislation only obliges Local Authority to do an assessment on the gender impact – we not have to do anything beyond that…

We are stronger than we think. We genuinely are, all in it together. They are packaging cuts, we can do “packaging” too.

Privatisation/restructuring is complex. Really compels us to bring together service users and workers.

Changes are structural. They are creating new divisions or revamping old ones e.g. between the deserving and undeserving poor. They are now talking about benefits as a privelege, not a means to help out vulnerable in society.

Cuts and privatisation are piecemeal. We need to get a grip on the areas and points at which we can mount a challenge.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MOLCSCArDRE#!

In, Against (and Beyond?) the State

Report back from workshop at ‘Women At the Cutting Edge’ and suggestions for how to further pursue the questions it raised.

Aims of the workshop

What the workshop came up with…;

Many people did not have time to use public services because they had to work full time – a teacher said she hadn’t been to the dentist for years, a civil servant never got to her local library, a charity worker couldn’t take time off to visit her GP.

They were all public sector workers and public service users, but these two different roles were completely separated. People also suggested that their own stresses and work pressures as public service workers made them more demanding about the service provision they received from other public sector workers.

People spoke positively about their experiences of the NHS – a life saving service. They also commented on the long waiting lists, and sometimes grumpy and over-worked staff that came with this, though this did not stop them from strongly endorsing the service. One participant felt strongly as a result that our first and foremost position had to be to defend these services, not to critique them.

This connected to a point about there being great potential in all our public service institutions which was often stifled because workers were prevented from doing the job properly. One positive arising from this was that the fury and frustration that it provoked might be effectively channelled into fighting management.

Going on strike might be seen (and argued for) as the ultimate experience of workers taking control of these services.

Guilt of state workers providing essential services such as education or public transport when they either had to limit their work in order to protect their own health or withdraw their labour during strikes. In this context it was useful to point out to service users that management, who force workers into these positions, are NOT running the service for the benefit of the public.

This was a clear example of the paradoxical/ dual nature of these services – in whose interests they are run and how they are run depends on who runs them?

Higher education provided another useful example of the multiple ways in which the state operated in this context. On the one hand higher education could be a liberating and transformative experience for working class people. Yet the higher education establishment is currently structured to operate as a border, benefitting a chosen few and deliberately excluding the majority, and it is upon this exclusion that it derives its prestige. So now higher education, or lack of it, is also a way of ensuring that people who don’t have a degree will be trapped in minimum wage jobs. One participant felt strongly that as a result is was not possible to simply defend higher education (despite his positive experience of it), we need to imagine a different system altogether[?].

Important to ask who is empowered to access state services and who is not.

State services and the housing system were even more explicit examples of ‘gate-keeping’ public resources – dividing working class people and making them see each other as the enemy.

Case Study: Taking over the local library

What would happen if we took over a local library earmarked for closure? Would we just be providing this service for free?

Case Study: ESOL Classes

Free ESOL classes provided by volunteers in a migrant resource centre are being used to fill in the gap in provision created by under-funded FE college and closure of ESOL courses there.

Questions/ Issues to Pursue Further…

Do we need to go back to basics? To ask why these services exist in the first place? What is their function? What are people’s needs? Why do people need them?

How can we challenge fragmentation between workers and services users as well as breaking up of these services themselves?

Women at the Cutting Edge…Saturday 30th October 2010

11am – 5pm, Saturday 30 October 2010

The Arbout, 100 Shandy Street, E1 4ST

(nearest tube Stepney Green)

Join Friends of Hackney Nurseries to hand in our petition

Friends of Hackney Nurseries will be meeting outside the Town Hall, Mare St, E8, Wednesday 21st July 2010 at 6pm, to hand in our petition to the council.

We have invited Rita Krishna, member of Cabinet with responsibility for Children and Young People (and member of the board of the Learning Trust), to receive the petition from us before the Full Council meeting, which starts at 7 p.m.
Thanks to vigorous campaigning by Friends of Hackney Nurseries, some of the 13 nurseries who had their commissioning grants arbitrarily removed in April have had most of their money restored. However, several have not, and have had to cut wages, number of childcare places, and are still in danger of closure.

There are still many unanswered questions about the future of our nurseries, especially in the light of proposed cuts to all public services.  And the Learning Trust is still not making itself transparent and accountable to the people of Hackney.

Everyone who cares about nurseries, and indeed all the children of our borough, is welcome to join us – come and show the council and the Learning Trust that we will not be fobbed off.

report from the struggle continues… women’s liberation 40 years on

In 1970, 560 women came together at Ruskin College, Oxford for the first UK women’s liberation conference. The activist network Feminist Fightback met in London on 2nd May to look at how far we have come 40 years on, inviting all genders to “consider what feminism looks like today, how the struggle continues, and put the battles women fight today in the context of the history of the women’s movement.”

To aid comparisons of the women’s movement then and now the programme included two films: A Woman’s Place (Journeyman Pictures, 1970) and an episode of the BBC series on women, Activists (broadcast, March, 2010). Post introductions, the Feminist Fightback meeting continued with screening the 1970 film, which included footage of the Ruskin conference and The International Women’s Day March held in London in 1971.

A great sense of urgency surrounded the Ruskin conference. Many more women than the organisers expected showed up for the event. Whilst women across the class spectrum were enlivened by each other’s speeches and debate men were presiding over a crèche in the wings. Even long dead men honourably remembered by other men with head and shoulder busts in their image were not privy, women having covered them with shawls and scarves.

All aspects of women’s lives were considered in the context of British society in 1970 – Women in prison, trade unions, housework, childrearing, for instances. One woman spoke of the need for “our children to be liberated from us”, implying a suffocating atmosphere presided over family living, women isolated and confined by the mother role. Women questioned whether the so-called “maternal instinct” was a real or imposed thing. They talked of possible alternative family structures where other adults and not the mother alone have childcare responsibilities such as communes. One middle-aged working class woman, wholly unused to speaking before a large audience, grew in confidence as she spoke of her life as a housewife and mother of four children as a life of missed opportunities. Another woman said she would like not to be thought a freak because she had no interest in children whatsoever. Women discussed the thorough injustice of their economic dependence on men, their work as mothers going unacknowledged and unpaid and the political implications of that – reproducing a workforce for capitalism whilst simultaneously being disenfranchised by that system.

Some months later 4,000 women took to the streets of London for the International Women’s Day March with placards and banners demanding these basic rights. They presented their petition in writing to 10 Downing Street. The seriousness of their demands to tackle the inequalities imposed on them by virtue of their biology did not stop these women’s enjoyment of the march. There was a carnival atmosphere. A needlework dummy bound to a crucifix was held aloft by some women while others dance-exercised ironically to Eddie Cantor’s ‘Keep young and beautiful, its your duty to be beautiful’. One woman mocked beauty pageants, her sash reading, ‘Ms Stress’. Clearly the Ruskin conference had been a resounding success, women politicised and adamantly seeking immediate changes to an unjust system.

So how are things looking in 2010?

The sad answer is, not very good at all. In spite of the Equal Pay Act implemented in 1970 and the various adjustments made to it since women are still lagging behind men in financial status. They are far more likely than men to work in part-time employment as they are more usually the primary carers of either children and/or disabled or elderly relatives. Part-time work such as care-work or cleaning is given low status and is extremely poorly paid. The model of ‘superwoman’ is held as the ideal. Women are urged ‘to have it all’ – both the children and the career. This can effectively mean that you either pay – usually another woman – a low wage for childcare, or if lowly paid yourself, childcare will take up a disproportionate amount of your income.

Feminist Fightback are currently involved in a campaign to save Hackney nurseries, “cuts … being handed out in a piecemeal fashion, with no warning to nurseries all over Hackney.” Thus nursery fees go up and living standards go down making rubbish of Labour’s insistence that they were fighting to reduce child poverty. And Britain with a Tory prime minister is sure to make matters far worse, a part of the Tory/Liberal pact being to immediately put into operation Tory’s plans to severely cut funds to all public services so to appease the IMF (America’s chief say-so).

And so to the BBC4 documentary, where the feminist activists concentrated on made all these social conditions notable by not mentioning any of them. Finn Mackay is the founder of the London Feminist Network and Co-founder of the Feminist Coalition Against Prostitution and it was these movements that the documentary wholly centred around. Mackay is described on her blog, “She is a well-practiced public speaker with particular emphasis on violence against women, prostitution and feminism in the UK.” Indeed, she appeared a charismatic leader in the film as with a raised fist she delivered her speech at The London Feminist Network’s Conference to an all women audience, many of whom were in floods of tears.

The interviewer asked woman after woman what her chief concerns were regarding feminism. Cited were just these: male violence against women, prostitution, pornography and sexual objectification. There was much belittling of these women by the programme makers. They were mostly young, middle-class women living at home with their parents. Parents were also interviewed and rather geed along when showing prejudice against their daughter’s activism, one mother saying she could not understand her daughter’s penchant for dressing up while protesting against objectification.

Feminist Fightback rightly cut a huge swathe from this film that concentrated on food preparation for the LFN conference – veganism read as joyless Puritanism by the film-maker, and the viewer impelled to think likewise. Campaigns by LFN include Reclaim The Night, ‘Bin the Bunny’ (referring to the cynical use of the Playboy bunny emblazoned across children’s clothes etc.) One woman spoke of the horrific event that had made her become an activist in the movement: recounting that after her daughter’s friend had been gang raped, the police later made charges against her saying that she had perverted the course of justice, citing mobile phone footage her attackers had filmed. They eventually succeeded in getting the charges dropped but were further shocked to learn that there were no rape crisis centres in the whole of London.

There was some extremely disturbing footage of women from the LFN shouting “shame, shame” at people entering a lap-dancing club. They were shouting this as much at the female employees as at the male audience, creating divisions between those women and themselves.

After the film showings the mostly women crowd present at the Feminist Fightback event came together to discuss the films, make comparisons and consider the feminist movement today. In the lively discussion, personal experiences were used as much as the historical perspectives raised by the films.

Much noted was the absolute absence of considerations surrounding class or indeed any other political analysis in the BBC4 film. Women spoke of their concerns about others considering feminism an outmoded if not dirty word. There was consensus that we should openly and unashamedly say that we are feminists to other women and men. How this consciousness raising is exercised was another problem discussed – not wanting to come across preachy, for instance.

We discussed the issue of objectification so concentrated upon by the women from LFN. Participants articulated the belief that the media perpetuated women’s concern with their bodies by constantly documenting this apparent all consuming concern, anorexia, for instance, being a favourite topic of documentary makers. We discussed society placing such high value on being in a couple. One woman quoted a bride’s speech, “I was nothing till I met you”, “now I am complete”. People expressed concern over feeling that you had to do your best to feign interest in wedding preparations – cooing over the dress for instance, women feeling that they would otherwise endanger friendships, though they are not allowed the space to say, “this is shit”.

Many considered that LFN’s demand to have porn banned by the state was not a progressive argument, and indeed a simplification of matters, particularly demeaning porn being a symptom that needs to be attacked via its root causes and likewise the LFN’s attitude to prostitution; Feminist Fightback are demanding that sex-workers be decriminalised.

There was consensus that the BBC4 programme was horribly malicious and a farcical comparison with the 1970 Journeyman film. And what of women’s own sexuality and their enjoyment of sex, should this not be talked about?

Many other subjects were touched upon at this meeting. In fact all of the grass-root feminist concerns the women from the 1970 Ruskin conference were talking about then are still very much the concern of Feminist Fightback now. It is a terrible shame that the media present body image and objectification issues above all else as grass-roots feminism, when you only need to watch A Woman’s Place to know that that is absolutely not the case. Feminism must be bound with political activism.

by Sharon Borthwick

And the Struggle Continues: Women’s Liberation 40 Years On…

• Sunday 2nd May, 2pm – 6pm
• Marchmont Community Centre, 62 Marchmont St, London WC1N 1AB
• £3 suggested donation waged/ £1 low/unwaged
• Creche provided, please contact us in advance if you will be bringing your child(ren)
• This venue is accessible.
• Tubes: Russell Square, Kings Cross, Euston, Euston Square.  Rail: Kings Cross, St Pancras, Euston.
• All genders very welcome.

In 1970 hundreds of women gathered for a free conference at Ruskin College that would launch the Second Wave of feminism. As men provided the childcare, women discussed and debated ideas and experiences, and identified what the aims of the Women’s Liberation Movement as they saw it, should be.

Feminist Fightback invite you to an afternoon of film showings and discussions as we think about how far we have come, what feminism looks like today, how the struggle continues, and put the battles women fight today in the context of the history of the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Films will include:

Journeyman Picture’s A Woman’s Place (1970)
Excerpts from the BBC’s Women series (2010)

Another Valentine’s Day Special…

Protest: Bring Tube Cleaning Inhouse!

Join cleaners and their Trade Union, RMT, in protesting at the offices of LU Metronet, Templar House, 81-87 High Holborn.  Bring placards, banners and friends!

Wednesday 18th November 12-2pm

With GMB’s contract being transferred to Initial, who are to further sub-contract it to ICS, Tube cleaners are angry that they are being treated like parcels to be passed around.  Multiple subcontracting means sackings, and the driving down of wages.  The only solution is to kick out the contractors and bring Tube cleaning back into an integrated, publicly-owned London Underground.

www.rmtlondoncalling.org.uk

Tube cleaners challenge Boris Johnson

On Wednesday, tube cleaners and supporters, including Feminist Fightback, Campaign Against Immigration Controls and John McDonnell MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP demonstrated outside City Hall to demand that Boris keeps his promise of a living wage for all tube cleaners.

Boris has been in the press this week with the publishing of the study he commissioned into an amnesty. Yet his real approach to migrant labour can be found in how he has dealt with the tube cleaners’ campaign: promise a living wage, fail to deliver and preside over cleaning contractors who targeted union reps with immigration checks to break the RMT’s organisation. His idea of an amnesty would deny even those who met its hurdles access to the public services their taxes pay for, and would further delegitimise the thousands who wouldn’t meet its strict criteria.

Feminist Fightback is proud to stand by tube cleaners as they demand a living wage for all. It’s time Boris coughs up, brings the cleaners in house and starts talking about regularisation for all migrant workers.

Fighting ESOL cuts in Tower Hamlets

Friday 12 June saw hundreds of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students, staff and supporters march in East London in protest at major cuts to ESOL announced at Tower Hamlets College.

The march followed a week of action since the cuts were announced on 5 June, including an unofficial walkout on 8 June, a lobby of the principal on 9 June (with staff joined by 50 students who pushed past security after being denied entry for having the wrong pass), protests at the college’s awards ceremony and joint UCU and Unison meetings on 12 June proposing a vote of no confidence in newly-appointed Principal Michael Farley. After the meetings, ESOL learners marched with their teachers, other college staff and supporters from the college’s adult education site at Arbour Square to a rally outside the 14-19 site at Poplar. Students and staff are angry and worried about the future, but there was a sense of hope as this anger was channelled into action to protect jobs and courses, and a real feeling of solidarity as students, staff and representatives of other unions addressed those assembled at Poplar.

The document Michael Farley circulated to college staff on Friday 5 June laid outproposed cuts of £2 million, which will see 50% of all ESOL courses offered by Tower Hamlets College cut from September. The document, ironically titled ‘Securing the Future’ detailed the loss of over 1,500 ESOL places alongside 60 job losses. There is now a one month ‘consultation period’ on the document, with staff being told on 6^th July if they are at risk of ‘dismissal’ (the language used in the document). Those who are going to be dismissed will be told on 10^th July, just before the end of the college term. Teaching staff, support staff and learning centre staff will all be affected. Staff have been consoled with the fact that new posts are being created, but unsurprisingly these are not teaching posts and the majority are business positions.

The ESOL classes most affected by the cuts will be at entry levels, those in the college’s community outreach centres, those not expressly for work. They therefore affect the most vulnerable and historically excluded students, and will affect the wider community as well as current and potential learners. The attack is gendered as well as racist– the vast majority of those attending courses are women. Some are recently arrived in the country, others have been here many years but never had the opportunity to attend a course before. Reasons for this include the incredible lack of ESOL provision in the decades prior to this one, time constraints because of their long hours of labour (particularly unpaid labour in the home), needing to travel outside their local area, and the fear of entering a classroom after negative experience or no prior experience of formal learning. Community-based provision is essential in helping to break down some of these barriers.

The 12 June demonstration itself was a testament to the role that ESOL has played in the lives of the (overwhelmingly female) student protesters. There were women leading chants on megaphones, women carrying placards with their own powerful slogans, and women speaking eloquently and emphatically to the national press about what ESOL means to them. Key messages were the need for English to allow them to support their children’s learning, so they can be a part of their communities and (contrary to the views many hold of these learners) so they can work.

These women have developed not only language skills, but increased confidence, self-esteem and above all a critical engagement with the world around them. And it is this which underlies this fight. The fight is for jobs, for student places, but also for the principle of education itself.

For more information on the struggle, go to  http://defendjobsandeducation.posterous.com or see http://www.uculeft.devisland.net/tower-hamlets-college-dispute.html

National call for action – defend SOAS cleaners

Students and allies at the University of London’s School of School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) have occupied the university to protest against managers’ attacks on migrant workers, when nine cleaners from the university were taken into detention after a dawn raid by immigration police on Friday. Five have already been deported and the two remaining are in Yarl’s Wood detention centre.

We see this raid as indicative of a current political climate, which sees not only corporatisation of universities but the extension of surveillance and border processing to its institutions, affecting both staff and students. We need to form a national strategy uniting workers, staff, students and the wider community against racist immigration controls and erosion of workers rights.

***SUs contact your UNISON branch and speak to your cleaners. Find out which company they are contracted to, and identify individuals at risk. Contact us to receive translated booklets to help your cleaners prepare, and give them emergency contacts.
***As a long term more sustainable measure, campaign to unionise workers and bring them in house for equal protection of university staff.
***Take action against ISS (the company our cleaners are contracted to) and the Home Office.
***Follow us on http://freesoascleaners.blogspot.com. Join our occupation, send messages of support, sign our online petition and keep watch for upcoming demonstrations.

BACKGROUND

The cleaners won the London Living Wage and trade union representation after a successful “Justice for Cleaners” campaign. Activists believe the raid is managers’ “revenge” for the campaign.

John McDonnell MP said: “As living wage campaigns are building in strength, we are increasingly seeing the use of immigration statuses to attack workers fighting against poverty wages and break trade union
organising.

Immigration officers were called in by cleaning contractor ISS, even though it has employed many of the cleaners for years. Cleaning staff were told to attend an ‘emergency staff meeting’ at 6.30am on Friday (June 12); a false pretext to lure the cleaners into a closed space from which the immigration officers in full riot gear were hiding to interrogate and arrest them, before escorting them to the detention
centre. They were allowed no legal or trade union representation, or even a translator (many are native Spanish speakers).

Five of the SOAS cleaners have already been deported, and the others could face deportation within days. One has had a suspected heart attack and was denied access to medical assistance and even water. One was over 6 months pregnant. Many have families who have no idea of their whereabouts.

The management of SOAS, a university that prides itself on its global outlooks and left wing politics were complicit in the immigration raid by enabling the officers to hide in the meeting room beforehand and giving no warning to them. Cleaning contractor ISS used the same tactics against tube cleaners that went on strike with the result that key activists were deported.

Ken Loach says “Recent action by Unison to secure better wages and conditions at SOAS was good news. Now we wonder if the SOAS cleaners are being targeted because they dared to organise as trade unionists.”

Watch this space for news of demonstrations and other actions!

Take Action with Tubecleaners on Wed 17 June

At the end of May, the London Mayor increased the London Living Wage to £7.60 an hour. Tubecleaners know they won’t see this increase without a fight. Despite the Mayor’s commitments to a living wage for cleaners on the underground last summer, it took months for the increase to kick in, and some contractors are still refusing to pay even this.

The Tubecleaners’ struggle highlights the way that gender and class intersect to heighten oppression – cleaning is undervalued because it is seen as women’s work; the majority of cleaners are migrant workers. We need to stand with the cleaners to demand an end to sexist, racist and capitalist exploitation.

Join the RMT picket of City Hall to call for this living wage for all tube cleaners, as well as for free travel to work / sick pay / decent pensions / 28 days’ annual leave / an end to third party sackings.

Wednesday 19 June 9.30am outside City Hall to coincide with Mayor’s Question Time (on the south of the river between Tower Bridge and London Bridge) – http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/locationmap.jsp

Bring banners, placards and noisemakers!

The demo has been postponed from 1 June but if you still have time on Monday 1 June, show solidarity with the people of Niger Delta. Many tubecleaners are from Nigeria, where multinational interests in natural resources have devastating consequences for communities….

THE NIGER DELTA SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN IS ORGANISING A PUBLIC DEMONSTRATION IN LONDON AGAINST THE MASSACRES IN THE NIGER DELTA BY THE NIGERIAN ARMY

The people of the Niger Delta under the umbrella of the Niger Delta Solidarity campaign will be holding a public demonstration in London to protest against the invasion and bombing of several Niger Delta
communities by the Nigerian Military. These atrocious acts of brutality  have led to an estimated death toll of over 1000 people and more than 20,0000 displaced people. Several towns and villages have been
completely razed and many others are under occupation by the military. These military attacks are still continuing today.

What the Other Feminists Look Like…

What: An evening of making trouble, sharing ideas and planning ways for women to fight back against the crisis, hosted by Feminist Fightback.

When: Tuesday 30^th June, 5pm, and 6.30pm

Where: Paying a visit to Harriet Harman, Southwark Townhall (5pm), followed by film showing (6.30pm) at Studio 96, The Galleria, Pennack Road, SE16 6PW

All genders welcome!

This is a fundraiser for Lambeth Women’s Project www.lambethwomen.wordpress.com

Harriet Harman, Minister for Women, thinks that a ‘feminist’ response to the recession would be to place more women in top city jobs, putting them ‘in charge of the banks’. Meanwhile Harman supports the Welfare Reform Bill, which proposes to introduce US-style ‘workfare’ practices, forcing mothers of young children into minimum wage jobs or risk losing their benefits.

Harriet Harman likes to talk up her feminist credentials, but what kind of feminist only looks out for the interests of rich women during times of economic crisis? In fact, Harman has a long track record of selling out the majority of women she claims to represent – most recently playing a key role in blocking a Bill to legalise abortion in Northern Ireland. If this is how the Minister for Women is going to act on our behalf, then we can do without her!

Fortunately, Harriet Harman’s feminism isn’t the only kind on offer. Many women in London are organising to resist the iniquities of capitalism – from the parents occupying Lewisham Bridge Primary School to protest against its privatisation; to hostel residents demanding decent housing in Hackney; to the Visteon workers who occupied their factory and finally won their redundancy.

Feminist Fightback has also been organising grass roots resistance to some of Harman’s biggest sell-outs during her time as Minister for Women – occupying the Department for Work and Pensions in protest against the Welfare Reform Bill, and taking direct action in solidarity with Northern Irish women who continue to be denied the right to control their own bodies.

Feminist Fightback invites you to join us outside Southwark Town Hall to show Harriet Harman that women have been fighting back in ways very different to those she proposes. We’ll be ‘decorating’ the Town Hall, sending messages to Ms Harman in a variety of ‘creative’ ways, and inviting our Minister for Women to come out and take a look!

This will be followed by a film showing introducing a number of women-led struggles taking place at the moment. We want this to be an opportunity to find out what’s going on in London; to make links with other women’s groups; and to find inspiration for how we can act collectively to take control of our workplaces, our communities and our lives.

Sex workers stopped the traffick!

On Tuesday 31 April, sex workers and our allies held a successful SPEAK OUT at the Eros Fountain, Piccadilly Circus against criminalisation and for labour rights for everyone who works in the sex industry. At 2.30pm, we took over one of the streets, bringing traffic to a standstill at Piccadilly Circus and unveiled a banner which read ‘SEX WORKERS ARE STOPPING THE TRAFFICK’.

Sex workers took direct action to highlight our opposition to the Policing and Crime Bill.

Speakers at the SPEAK OUT included representatives from the x:talk project, English Collective of Prostitutes, Sex Worker Open University, academics and sex worker rights activists from across Europe.

The issue of human trafficking in the sex industry has been used by the Government and those intent on abolishing the sex industry to justify the further criminalisation of the sex industry. The existing criminalisation of sex work effectively excludes workers in the sex industry from the full protection of the law. Increased criminalisation will further exacerbate this exclusion. All trafficked workers, regardless of the industry in which they work, face gross violations of their rights. Women in the sex industry should not be defined by the area in which they work.

“The Policing and Crime Bill will make it less, not more, safe for us to work, whether as strippers, escorts, working girls, maids or models. It is crucial that sex workers speak out about the current climate in the sex industry of fear, raids, deportation and arrests“ said Ava Caradonna from x:talk.

Ava Caradonna continued, “We also want to highlight the hypocrisy of the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.  Purchases from our industry can find their way into her expense claims, while at the same time she has been leading the Government’s attack on the sex industry.”

The Policing and Crime Bill has passed through the committee stage following two readings in the House of Commons.  If passed, this Bill will further criminalise people in the sex industry in the UK, whether they work by CHOICE, CIRCUMSTANCE or COERCION. It criminalises clients, increases penalties for soliciting and imposes measures for forced rehabilitation. It is based on a lack of evidence about the sex industry and has been drafted without taking the views of sex workers and their organisations into account.

This event was been called by x:talk in partnership with the Sex Worker Open University and supported by Feminist Fightback.

photo’s from the action are available on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xtalk_project.

More info: xtalk.classes@gmail.com

Subway sacks migrant workers

Join a picket of Subway in London on 4 April in solidarity with Natalia Szymanska, a 19 year old Polish migrant worker employed by a Subway in Belfast, who was sacked in her fifth month of pregnancy on a dubious charge of being in breach of the company’s health and safety policy. She was sacked one month after telling her employers she was pregnant.

Meet 9.30 at 358 Oxford St for a rolling picket of three Subways

Feminist Fightback are also supporting a No Sweat picket of Primark on the same day. Meet at 11.30 near Primark on Oxford Street. More details www.nosweat.org.uk

Both actions open to all genders.

 

Do something different this Valentine’s Day- make a date with feminists!

Discussing and organising our fight for women’s liberation – open to all those who want to learn, think and plan for grassroots feminist activism… Join us for workshops which identify the interconnections between oppressions and our struggles against them. Work together with other feminists to find ways to actually change the material conditions of women’s lives.

Workshops include: learning from feminist history/ sex workers’ rights/ challenging domestic violence/ international solidarity/ a woman’s place is in her union?/ reproductive freedoms/ rape and asylum/ community organising/ queer and trans politics/ prison abolition/ self-defence workshop/ feminists and the capitalist crisis/ films, stalls and campaign planning

Organised by a coalition of groups and individuals. Groups involved so far include: Anarcha-Fem Kollective, All African Women’s Group, Black Women’s Rape Action Project, English Collective of Prostitutes, Education Not for Sale Women, Feminist Activist Forum, Feminist Fightback, Left Women’s Network, London Coalition Against Poverty, Permanent Revolution, RMT Women’s Committee, Women Asylum Seekers Together, Women Against Rape, Workers’ Liberty.

RMT Cleaners Secretary avoids the sack. Fight for Mary’s reinstatement continues

This week ISS, one of the largest cleaning contractors on the Underground, attempted to break the strength of the cleaners on the Underground by picking off two reps. Clara Osagiede, the RMT Cleaners Grade Secretary for the underground was called into a disciplinary on trumped up charges of “gross misconduct”. Mary, another cleaners’ rep fought for reinstatement after bosses got rid of her. Both of these women have been courageous in their efforts to organise some of the most poorly paid, overworked, and exploited workers in this city, a group that even some in the RMT considered ‘too difficult to organise.’

On Thursday 8 January, 40 solidarity and RMT activists including members of Feminist Fightback picketed the ISS offices while the hearings took place. Chants were kept up for the two and a half hours that the women were in their hearings. Shouts of “Reinstate Mary! Don’t sack Clara!” brought some life to the cold January morning in one of the smartest areas in Greenwich.

Reply to Cath Elliot’s The Great IUSW Con

Having been mentioned several times in Cath Elliot’s “The Great IUSW Con”, Feminist Fightback would like to reply to the accusations levelled at both the IUSW and Fightback’s support for sex workers’ rights. We have been saddened to read yet another abolitionist article which, rather than engage in thoughtful and honest debate, seeks to obscure the issues through factual inaccuracies and faulty logic.

Feminist Fightback supports the right of sex workers to organise amongst themselves to fight exploitation in the sex industry and transform the conditions under which they work. The International Union of Sex Workers is the only such organisation in the UK, as a result Fightback has supported this union and worked alongside it, just as it has a number of other trade unions on various different issues. Some of us have attended London IUSW meetings that are open to allies, while a few other Fightback members are themselves sex workers and members of the IUSW. Cath Elliot’s supposed ‘exposé’ hardly strikes us, then, as a piece of biting investigative journalism. We have no need of her advice to be careful of who we make alliances with for we are perfectly capable of investigating, analysing and making judgements about the political issues on which Feminist Fightback campaigns.

It is no secret that Douglas Fox, a male escort who also runs an agency, is a member of the IUSW. But Cath Elliot seems to think that by ‘uncovering’ this single fact she has discredited not only the entire union but also all arguments in favour of sex workers’ self organisation and decriminalisation. Through an absurd leap in logic Elliot moves from a discussion of Fox to conclude that the IUSW is ‘populated with pimps, agency owners and punters’. Unfortunately no other evidence for this is offered. Nor does Elliot offer any further arguments against sex workers’ right to unionise. In the absence of more sophisticated debate, we’d like to address Elliot’s accusations one by one.

It bears re-stating that because one member of the union runs an escort agency this does not mean that all members are ‘pimps’ and punters. In working with the IUSW we have met members in a variety of jobs in the sex industry including strippers, maids and men and women selling sex in brothels and working independently. Unlike other trade unions the IUSW finds itself in the position of seeking to organise workers who are effectively illegal, denied the right to work by laws which criminalise the conditions under which sex is sold. Decrimalisation is deemed a pre-condition to transforming working conditions and challenging the exploitation which takes place within the sex industry. For this reason union membership is open to others working for decriminalisation, including academics and researchers in this field.

Moreover, the GMB membership ensures confidentiality, for how else could a union seek to recruit illegal workers? It also seeks to challenge the fetishisation of ‘prostitution’ by actively recruiting from a variety of jobs within the sex industry, including, for example, security staff in strip clubs or receptionists in brothels. This is a common trade union approach – to organise all workers in a particular industry collectively rather than pick out a particular trade or role in isolation. (A comparison is the RMT union whose members include drivers, platform staff and cleaners on the London Underground.) We ask Cath Eliott what she would like the union to do? Demand that each individual out themselves? Specify exactly how much cock they suck, whether the do or do not do penetration in order to confirm for her whether they can truly be considered ‘authentic’ sex workers?

This concern for so-called authenticity is worrying. By implication it equates suffering with legitimacy. Does a woman who sells sex have to be addicted to drugs, working on the street and regularly beaten and raped in order to qualify to speak on behalf of sex workers? Can we not accept that a variety of experience exists in the sex industry? Can we not recognise that trade unionism is often about better off workers working alongside those experiencing the worst conditions, in order to improve the lives of all? In fact, we suggest that for Cath Elliot and other opponents of sex workers’ rights, the only ‘authentic’ sex worker is the sex worker who agrees with them.

Since Cath Elliot raised the issue of who, as feminists, we make alliances with, we would like to question the company she keeps by supporting the proposed government legislation to further criminalise sex work. The Policing and Crime Bill proposes to convict clients buying sex from anyone who is ‘controlled for gain’, strengthens police and local government powers to close down brothels, and further criminalises women working on the streets. (See the Safety First Coalition website for why this will make conditions more dangerous for sex workers). This legislation has been vocally supported by Cabinet ministers Harriet Harman and Jacqui Smith, politicians who Feminist Fightback would likewise urge Cath Elliot to think twice about allying herself with. Among the numerous attacks on working-class women that these supposed champions of women’s rights have voted through include Harman’s drastic cuts to single parent benefit in 1997 and Jacqui Smith’s support for a draconian immigration system which regularly deports women who have been the victims of sexual violence back to the very countries from which they have fled. If Cath Elliot wants to purge the feminist movement of women’s real enemies then she might do well to start with Smith and Harman.

Finally, we would like to raise the wider question of why so many wish to block open debate on the subject of sex work – be this through refusing to speak on platforms where the voices of those they disagree with will be heard, through misinformed smear campaigns against sex workers’ organisations, or through mythologising and false claims regarding trafficking (for the government’s almost total lack of actual information on sex trafficking see here). Why does such a fundamentalist attitude persist around feminist responses to sex work? Why can we not think through the complex issues? Why can we not try to deal with the messy reality of the situation rather than resort to myth-making and scare mongering?

Those who want to decide whether they support the IUSW can find out what this union is and stands for for themselves – by reading IUSW materials and website, talking to the GMB or listening to IUSW representatives when they speak at events. We in Feminist Fightback continue to discuss and debate with each other what we think about the multifaceted issue of sex work, We do not claim to agree with every individual member of the IUSW, any more than we agree with all the policies of the other trade unions whose members we work with. We do, however, believe that anyone who is serious about fighting violence and exploitation in the sex industry needs to side with the workers organising within it, rather than seeking to criminalise or deny such workers a voice.

Government clampdown threatens safety and rights of sex workers

In September Jacqui Smith announced at the Labour Party Conference that from October the government will be taking steps to clamp down on the sex industry in the UK. The new measures will give police new powers to prosecute those paying for sex, to shut down ‘brothels’ and force sex workers into compulsory rehabiliation.

She announced that the government would ‘start work to outlaw paying for sex with someone forced into prostitution at another’s will, or controlled for another’s gain’.

Of course, Feminist Fightback and Sex Workers’ Rights Activists also object to coerced labour and coerced sex, whether in the sex industry or otherwise. But Feminist Fightback views these proposals as an attack on the rights and safety of sex workers. Criminalising the clients of sex workers is dangerous for sex workers themselves. It means that male, female and trans-sex workers are forced underground and into clandestine work. This results in more reliance on third parties in order to arrange work, giving such third parties greater power, control and ability to exploit workers, reducing their safety and independence.

For street sex workers, already the most vulnerable group of sex workers, it can have even more serious consequences. Women are forced to take more risks. They have less time to decide whether or not to get into cars, are forced to work alone rather than in pairs or small groups and pushed into darker more isolated areas. Just two years ago in Ipswich we all witnessed the tragic consequences of zero tolerance policies on sex work.

Clients are an important source of information about exploitation and trafficking. The Poppy Project – a Home Office organisation working with victims of trafficking – estimate that 2% of their referrals come from clients. By criminalising clients further, this important source of ensuring safety for victims of trafficking comes under attack.

The Home Secretary further stated that, as part of the new policy, labour would ‘give councils and the police new powers to close down brothels and clamp down on exploitation’. There is extensive academic research that indicates that indoor sex work is much safer than selling sex outdoors. Current legislation states that more than one woman working in a property constitutes a brothel. Clamping down on ‘brothels’ will often attack women working independently in a safer environment where they are in control of their work and working safely.

There are many reasons that women choose to work in the sex industry. Often because women’s work is underpaid and undervalued, sometimes because it is the best possible alternative in a limited scope of choices or because it allows freedom and independence relative to other jobs available. Frequently it is a combination of these. Pushing sex work underground endangers all sex workers and obscures from view the very women these policies profess to help.

These measures are not about protecting women. They are likely to have the opposite effect. They are however wholly in line with a history of attempts to regulate sex workers’ bodies and women’s sexuality more generally. They avoid difficult questions about why, in a world of huge global disparities of wealth, women may come to the UK to work in sex work and how current immigration and border controls surrender some sex workers, and workers in many other industries, to exploitative and dangerous working practices.

Activists disrupt Mayor’s Question Time to express anger at Boris’ betrayal of tube cleaners

Mayor’s Question Time had to be adjourned twice on Wednesday 16 October as activists protested Boris Johnson’s failure to follow up on his promise of a Living Wage for tube cleaners. The cleaners’ demands were shouted from the public gallery while more than thirty people demonstrated outside City Hall for the demands to be met.

Milkshakes the tube!

Hundreds of commuter’s journeys were disrupted this morning as activists from Feminist Fightback added to the pressure of the strike by 800 RMT cleaners on the underground by ‘milkshaking’ escalators at key stations on the network.

Cleaners have been on strike since Tuesday evening after Transport for London failed to grant any concessions during the cleaners’ one day strike last week.  London Underground cleaners – the majority of whom are women and people from ethnic minorities – have to struggle with low wages, no pension schemes or proper sick pay, contracts which offer as little as 12 days annual leave and the indignities of on-the-spot third party sackings.

Activists from Feminist Fightback planned the action to cause chaos in order to highlight the crucial role that London Underground cleaners – the majority of whom are women and migrant workers – play in keeping the underground running.

Clara Osagiede, RMT Cleaner’s Grade Secretary explains the situations cleaners have to deal with:

‘We have a member whose normal shift is 11pm-5am, he was thirsty on his shift, and so went to the kitchens to get some water. A representative of his contracting firms accosted him, asked what he was doing there, demanded his pass and then put it in his pocket and ordered him to get out. With no further explanation, the man was fired the next day.’

‘Sexual harassment of female cleaners by their managers is rife. Because their immigration status is uncertain they are unable to complain or they will face being sacked. Many of these women get very depressed.’

Laura Schwartz, member of NUS women’s committee and Feminist Fightback activist, states:

‘Keeping the underground clean is an essential task. As feminists we want to highlight the extent to which what is traditionally seen as ‘women’s work’ is so undervalued and are willing to take direct action to do so. Cleaning is vital work and women workers deserve fair pay and decent conditions.’

Last Friday the group invaded London Underground Headquarters. Armed with feather dusters, brooms and mops, they set about helping Transport for London ‘clean up their act’ until they were forcibly removed. Activists are targeting Transport for London to ensure that they do not pass the buck and instead take responsibility for the working conditions of the underground cleaners.

Fightback Statement for Million Women Rise March 2008

Today, we march alongside women on the Million Women Rise March with solidarity and respect. We are energised and excited to be a part of a rising tide of feminist activism. We are here to march and to show our resistance to the continued oppression and exploitation that the majority of women the world over continue to experience. We therefore think it is more important than ever to build a movement and develop a feminist politics that can fight for liberation and equality. Because of this, we think it is crucial for us to think hard about the kind of feminism that we want to work for…

We are feminists who want to link our fight for women rights with other movements for social justice and all struggles against capitalism and exploitation. We think as feminists it is crucial that we build alliances between these different struggles and to focus on the ways in which they interconnect. We do not think it is useful to prioritise one form of oppression over another, or to focus simply on women’s rights as separate from a wider system of exploitation. The privileging of gender (above race, sexuality or class) leads to the idea of women as eternal victims; to an ahistorical and static concept of patriarchy or male power; and to fruitless competition over who is ‘more oppressed’ according to different identity categories. This approach has been heavily criticised for taking the experience of white middle class women as standard and ignoring the experience of BME and working class women.

We understand all oppressions to be rooted within capitalism and the racist and patriarchal ideologies it produces. For this reason we do not think that real liberation for women can be achieved without also fighting capitalism. By capitalism we mean a system of power and control, which relies upon the exploitation of the working class and that puts profit before the needs people and the planet.

Violence and exploitation take many forms. It is of course crucial to oppose rape and sexual abuse but equally it must be understood that violence is not just perpetrated by individuals, but also by the state and in the name of big business. Immigration controls, sweatshop labour, poverty, police brutality, military imperialism and the denial of reproductive freedom are all forms of violence and must be named as such and opposed by all.

We support all women organising in their workplaces and against their bosses, be they sex workers, sweatshop workers or supermarket workers, teachers or train drivers, and we stand in solidarity with all women fighting for their rights- wherever they are in the world. For this reason we oppose the Million Women’s Rise definition of prostitution which links domestic abuse, rape and commercial sexual exploitation. For the thousands of women who work in the sex industry this demand is not only offensive but dangerous. To deny women the ability to choose to work in the sex industry is to deny their fight for better wages and working conditions. The demand to criminalise sex workers and the sex industry only serves to further the marginalisation and exploitation that sex workers currently face.

We want our campaigns and politics to empower women to fight their own exploitation rather than to depend on others for protection. We do not think a feminist movement should look to charitable organisations or ‘experts’ to bestow our rights upon us, but that we should build a movement involving as many women and men as possible to bring about liberation from below.

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