Demo2012

On the 21^st of November, students will once again march in London to protest at education cuts and reforms. Royal Holloway Feminism Society will be marching against the devastating impact of this government's education policy – and of wider austerity measures - on women.

Research has shown that women will bear the brunt of government cuts, with a report finding that 73% of the savings proposed in the 2011 budget will come from women. Education reforms will have a number specific negative effects on women students. The cutting of Educational Maintenance Allowance and the introduction of fees for further education for students over the age of 24 will negatively impact women who wish to return to education, for example after having children. The gender pay gap means that women will take longer to repay loans taken out for further and higher education. The most drastic cuts to higher education funding have been made to the arts and humanities, subjects which are studied by greater numbers of women than men. Student parents will be particularly hard hit: the increase in fees, combined with cuts to benefits, will seriously affect mothers in education – the NUS Women's Campaign found that 78% of student parents claimed some kind of benefit in order for them to be able to study. There is concern that reductions in government funding to higher education institutes may lead to institutions making savings by services, such as student welfare services and childcare facilities, which are relied upon by student parents. Wider cuts to public services will leave women “filling the gaps” in caring for children and relatives, leaving them much less able to pursue education.

We'll be marching on November 21^st – will you?

Moratorium 2012: Stop the Arrests

RHUL Feminism Society are supporting the Stop the Arrests Campaign which has been started by a coalition of sex workers and supporters of sex workers' rights. The campaign, started by x:talk, a grass roots sex worker organisation, is calling on the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and on the Metropolitan Police to implement a moratorium on the arrest, detention and deportation of sex workers in London during the Olympic Games.

The campaign was started in response to policing interventions that have aimed to “clean up” the Olympic boroughs in East London in the run up to the Games, which have included the arrest, detention and deportation of sex workers. Stop the Arrests believes that these measures put the lives of sex workers at risk, as it creates a climate of fear and shatters trust in police and other agencies (such as healthcare workers), leaving sex workers less likely to seek help when they need it. This was made starkly clear by a case last year involving sex workers in Barking & Dagenham, who were the victims of violent robberies at knife point. The sex workers approached the police, but were told that they risked arrest for brothel-keeping. Those responsible carried out several more violent attacks before the English Collective of Prostitutes was able to put pressure on the police to make an agreement not to arrest any of the women, they were able to come forward and give statements, and finally – and thankfully – the people responsible were caught. This demonstrates quite clearly that using policing strategies that create a climate of fear and distrust between sex workers and the police put sex workers' lives at risk.

It is often argued that large sporting events lead to an increase in trafficking for prostitution. However, there is no evidence that such an increase exists, and large scale research projects have in fact provided evidence against such a claim (you can see the evidence here). Whilst some women are, undoubtedly, the victims of trafficking, the claim that the Olympics will resort in an increase of trafficked sex workers in London is largely sensationalised. You can read a report by x:talk on the impact of UK anti-trafficking legislation on sex workers here. Although potentially a product of “good intentions”, the policing strategy which seems set to be put in place – largely on the basis of false claims about the rise in sex trafficking around major sporting events - will put sex workers at greater risk. Additionally, arresting and charging sex workers leads to them getting criminal records, which makes it much harder for them to be able to find other work if they want to, potentially trapping people within the sex industry. Perhaps most indicative of the Metropolitan Police's attitude towards this issue is the fact that they have developed their policing strategy in consultation with a religious group providing services to trafficked women, but without involving sex worker organisations. x:talk believes that those best placed to help other sex workers are sex workers themselves.

You can find out more information about the campaign at http://www.moratorium2012.org or by following @Moratorium2012 on Twitter.

Tory Feminism

By Jack Saffery-Rowe   

  

A recent post-Thatcher phenomenon has sprung on the right of British politics: so-called Tory Feminism. This breed of the Conservative party claim that recent icons of the Tory party such as Louise Mensch and Nadine Dorries are starting a new wave of feminism, based on the ideas of liberal feminism. Tory Feminism combines the family-centred social politics of old conservatism, but with a new twist: that women can be empowered to achieve their potential. Despite this promising start, Tory Feminists hold on to the regressive values such as anti-abortion rights and anti-contraceptive rights, and yet still claim to be feminists.

If anyone deserves the title ‘fauxminist’ is it the Tory Feminist.

The protests which Royal Holloway FemSoc took part in outside parliament during the vote on Nadine Dorries’ abstinence bill show true feminism at its best. Groups form around London, such as Feminist Fightback, preach the true value of feminism: full reproductive rights, absolute protection against rape and sexual assault, equal marriage rights for all genders and equal economic rights for all genders.

These things are under attack from the fauxminist Tory Feminist movement, who are hijacking those who have the potential to hold truly feminist values, but instead chose this fauxminist path. This is why we need to fight Tory Feminism with our brand(s) of feminism, with proper feminist values.

Historical Women - Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was an active socialist theorist and agitator from her school days until her murder following the unsuccessful Spartacist insurrection of 1919. Her theoretical work includes Die Akkumulation des Kapitals (The Accumulation of Capital) (1913), in which she analyses the role of surplus value in capitalist economies, and Die russische Revolution (The Russian Revolution) (1922), in which she critiques Lenin’s style of leadership, arguing for a revolution controlled by the masses.

In Die Akkumulation des Kapitals, Luxemburg observes that, in order to accumulate capital by the selling of surplus goods, capitalist countries rely upon those which are pre-capitalist as purchasers. (Capitalists themselves would gain nothing by buying their own surplus product, and workers could not afford to, due to the surplus value added above the cost of production and/or wages.) The reliance of capitalist economies upon these other economies results in a struggle for political control of them – imperialism. However, once everywhere has been absorbed by the capitalist economy, it will not be able to function as it will no longer be able to acquire capital.

Henry Tudor, in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, summarises the implications of this analysis  as follows:

First, it vindicated the claim that the terminal crisis of capitalism was inevitable. Second, it meant that imperialism was, not (as Lenin, for instance, would have it) the ‘final stage of capitalism’, but a structural feature of capitalism as such. Finally, it meant that war on a worldwide scale between capitalist states was unavoidable.