Guest post: Join the Women's Bloc at the Great British Street Party
Posted on Mon 7th May 2012, 2:44pm
This is a guest post by Roxanne Halsey, UK Feminista
Photo credit: Judy Gr
We’ve all heard many times the ways in which women are disproportionately affected by the cuts. The arguments are already out there, whether it’s because the majority of public sector jobs to be cut are held by women, whether it’s that we use the NHS more in our lifetimes, or whether it’s to do with the closed down SureStart centres, Rape Crisis centres, or cuts to childcare benefits.
We know the story. I’d like to tell you something different.
Yes, we are facing an attack on women’s equality. But this has led to a resurgence in feminist action, especially from younger women and men. We have seen UK Uncut activists turn an HSBC into a crèche to protest the cuts to childcare, a group of women lie down in the road to block Osborne’s budget and many more.
So let’s do it again.
On May 26th, UK Uncut are hosting their own Great British Street Parties as an alternative to all those Jubilee Lunches we are supposed to be having. When all the world’s eyes are on us and the government wants us to politely eat cake and wear a smile, I would rather talk about what’s really going on.
The parties are inspired by the year 1948, a moment in history that holds many parallels to 2012. There were parties that year to welcome the Olympics, and to celebrate a feeling of hope and pride that people felt as they looked forwards from the war and built the Welfare State and the NHS, never mind that the post-war deficit they faced was much bigger than ours today.
Of course, there are many differences between the lives of women in 1948 and now in 2012. I’m sure we all agree that we’ve come a long way! But what are our biggest achievements? Yes, it is more acceptable to be unmarried or a single mother, but these achievements now seem nominal when they're not safeguarded at all by the government’s cuts programme. Yes, it’s easier for us to work, but will this be for much longer, as we have seen women’s unemployment soar to it’s highest level in twenty five years?
Direct action is an amazing way for women to take the power back. You don’t need to have studied politics or even to have gone to a protest before. All you need is your self, and the willingness to stand up and call for change. As a volunteer for UK Feminista, I am keen to see women everywhere taking action for gender equality, and I think this is a good place to start.
So instead of having a party for the Queen or the Olympics, let’s have a party for the services we want to protect. Instead of taking the Government’s austerity measures without a fight, let’s discuss the alternatives for ourselves.
I will be attending the street party in London and joining the women’s bloc. I will stand with other women on the front line of this fight against the cuts, and then join the party and look to the future we want to see. If the government isn’t interested in giving women the power we want, then we’ll just have to take it ourselves.
Photo credit: Judy Gr
We’ve all heard many times the ways in which women are disproportionately affected by the cuts. The arguments are already out there, whether it’s because the majority of public sector jobs to be cut are held by women, whether it’s that we use the NHS more in our lifetimes, or whether it’s to do with the closed down SureStart centres, Rape Crisis centres, or cuts to childcare benefits.
We know the story. I’d like to tell you something different.
Yes, we are facing an attack on women’s equality. But this has led to a resurgence in feminist action, especially from younger women and men. We have seen UK Uncut activists turn an HSBC into a crèche to protest the cuts to childcare, a group of women lie down in the road to block Osborne’s budget and many more.
So let’s do it again.
On May 26th, UK Uncut are hosting their own Great British Street Parties as an alternative to all those Jubilee Lunches we are supposed to be having. When all the world’s eyes are on us and the government wants us to politely eat cake and wear a smile, I would rather talk about what’s really going on.
The parties are inspired by the year 1948, a moment in history that holds many parallels to 2012. There were parties that year to welcome the Olympics, and to celebrate a feeling of hope and pride that people felt as they looked forwards from the war and built the Welfare State and the NHS, never mind that the post-war deficit they faced was much bigger than ours today.
Of course, there are many differences between the lives of women in 1948 and now in 2012. I’m sure we all agree that we’ve come a long way! But what are our biggest achievements? Yes, it is more acceptable to be unmarried or a single mother, but these achievements now seem nominal when they're not safeguarded at all by the government’s cuts programme. Yes, it’s easier for us to work, but will this be for much longer, as we have seen women’s unemployment soar to it’s highest level in twenty five years?
Direct action is an amazing way for women to take the power back. You don’t need to have studied politics or even to have gone to a protest before. All you need is your self, and the willingness to stand up and call for change. As a volunteer for UK Feminista, I am keen to see women everywhere taking action for gender equality, and I think this is a good place to start.
So instead of having a party for the Queen or the Olympics, let’s have a party for the services we want to protect. Instead of taking the Government’s austerity measures without a fight, let’s discuss the alternatives for ourselves.
I will be attending the street party in London and joining the women’s bloc. I will stand with other women on the front line of this fight against the cuts, and then join the party and look to the future we want to see. If the government isn’t interested in giving women the power we want, then we’ll just have to take it ourselves.
Guest post: Unions are you and me
Posted on Tue 1st May 2012, 4:10pmThis is a guest post by Steve Turner, Executive Director of Policy, Unite
We often talk about trade unions as though they’re institutions which exist on a foreign planet somewhere. We read it in the papers: ‘the unions are thinking this, the unions are doing that,’ as though we have no control over, or relationship with, trade unions.
In fact, unions are you and me. They are part of society, like a church or a school. The union movement in this country consists of seven million working people. At Unite, we’ve just opened our membership up to the unemployed. So unions are part of everyday life: they are part of the community.
The most empowering aspect of unions is that they are controlled from the bottom up. Ordinary members at branch meetings decide what they would like the union to do, and then tell the people at the top – not the other way around. The people at the top then try to make sure that these demands are heard by politicians. Some unions form a relationship with the Labour Party (which trade unions founded in the first place), others try to influence politics through campaigns.
May Day is an important day for trade unions because of the important role they had in creating the modern working day: in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions demanded an eight-hour workday in the United States, to come in effect as of May 1, 1886. The demand was met, and May Day is our international celebration of what can be achieved when people organise together.
It’s appropriate that UK Uncut’s Great British Street Party is taking place in May – the month when collective action is remembered. UK Uncut’s newest action reminds us, as the unions of 1884 did, that a fairer future is possible. It reminds us that there is an alternative to austerity; one we can fight for together.
These cuts will affect an enormous amount of people across the country, so it’s important that the response is unified and all-encompassing. We want help the parents who are worried about changes to child benefits to stand up to the government. We want young people on workfare to realise they do have a choice. We want public sector workers losing their pensions to fight for what is rightfully theirs. Trade unions want a movement of British people to stand together for what is right and decent, and above all, we want to be there to build it, just as we’ve always been.
We often talk about trade unions as though they’re institutions which exist on a foreign planet somewhere. We read it in the papers: ‘the unions are thinking this, the unions are doing that,’ as though we have no control over, or relationship with, trade unions.
In fact, unions are you and me. They are part of society, like a church or a school. The union movement in this country consists of seven million working people. At Unite, we’ve just opened our membership up to the unemployed. So unions are part of everyday life: they are part of the community.
The most empowering aspect of unions is that they are controlled from the bottom up. Ordinary members at branch meetings decide what they would like the union to do, and then tell the people at the top – not the other way around. The people at the top then try to make sure that these demands are heard by politicians. Some unions form a relationship with the Labour Party (which trade unions founded in the first place), others try to influence politics through campaigns.
May Day is an important day for trade unions because of the important role they had in creating the modern working day: in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions demanded an eight-hour workday in the United States, to come in effect as of May 1, 1886. The demand was met, and May Day is our international celebration of what can be achieved when people organise together.
It’s appropriate that UK Uncut’s Great British Street Party is taking place in May – the month when collective action is remembered. UK Uncut’s newest action reminds us, as the unions of 1884 did, that a fairer future is possible. It reminds us that there is an alternative to austerity; one we can fight for together.
These cuts will affect an enormous amount of people across the country, so it’s important that the response is unified and all-encompassing. We want help the parents who are worried about changes to child benefits to stand up to the government. We want young people on workfare to realise they do have a choice. We want public sector workers losing their pensions to fight for what is rightfully theirs. Trade unions want a movement of British people to stand together for what is right and decent, and above all, we want to be there to build it, just as we’ve always been.
Guest post: Cuts! Climate! Action!
Posted on Mon 30th Apr 2012, 2:07pmThis is a guest post by the Climate Justice Collective
On May 3rd, executives from EON, EDF, Scottish Power, Shell and BP will be convening at the UK Energy Summit in London. Organised by The Economist magazine, the event will see CEOs and policy-makers discuss how to ‘secure a sustainable energy future’. With tickets at £1000 per head, it’s clear that only those who can afford it will get a seat at the policy-making table.
Meanwhile, household energy prices are up 15% on average from last year and the Big Six energy companies – Centrica (British Gas), EDF, EON, RWEnpower, Scottish Power and SSE – continue to hold a monopoly over 99% of our energy, determining everything from where it is sourced to how it is priced. The control that energy companies have over our lives and our environment is still the dinosaur in the living room.
At The Big Six Energy Bash, Climate Justice Collective and friends – including anti-cuts groups, anti-poverty campaigners, environmental activists and Occupy London – will be taking to the capital's streets to put a spanner in the works of the energy monopoly going on behind closed doors at the Summit.
While tackling cuts to our collective heritage of public services in the UK, we need to keep climate change on the agenda. Climate change represents the biggest global cut to our global collective heritage of an ecological commons. The slogan ‘Nature doesn’t do bailouts’ has never been more prescient. It is us and our children who will be paying for the oncoming crises. In spite of technofixes, the rush towards nuclear, and the recolonisation of Africa through biomass and solar projects, climate chaos is still on the cards, and we are not too big to fail.
The reason we’re targeting the Big Six and Big Energy is not just because of their control over how energy is sourced, accessed, and priced, but also because they’re positioning themselves as the answer to the climate crisis. These companies, with their logic of profit at any cost, are driving the marketisation of resources that should be protected- that should not be commodities at all.
Warmth, decent housing, and decisions on where we source our energy from are our democratic right. They are not privileges to be decided behind closed doors in government, boardrooms or conferences that cost thousands of pounds to attend.
Keeping climate change on the agenda means acknowledging the intersection of struggles around austerity and energy: fighting cuts and environmental destruction should go hand in hand. As the rising cost of fossil fuels (alongside Big Six profiteering and savage welfare cuts) made our energy bills bite harder than ever before last winter, the problem is clear for all to see: our energy system, and our economy, is being run for the benefit of greedy companies, who have the government sitting comfortably in their pockets.
There are alternatives to the current profit-driven fossil fuel energy system and to the methods and goals of industrial production that rely on it. We need to ask questions not just about what type of energy we use, but also about what ends our energy is being produced for. We need a contraction of industry, and the reconfiguration of work as we know it, to gear it towards needs, real development and sustainability rather than expanding markets, competition, consumption and profit.
Less work for the sake of work or a wage; more cooperation, with the right to a healthy environment, stability and family time. We need to follow the lead of people in Manchester, Brixton, Brighton and Bristol, who are reclaiming their futures by co-operatively running their own community-controlled renewable energy.
Come out on May 3rd and show the Big Six, Shell, BP and the other fossil fuel dinosaurs that they cannot keep robbing us and our planet, and that the government cannot keep cutting, privatising and leaving us to freeze. We can and will take our power back.
The Big Six Energy Bash is supported by:
Biofuelwatch, Bristol Energy Cooperative, Campaign Against Climate Change, Disabled People Against the Cuts, Fuel Poverty Action, Global Women’s Strike, Kick Nuclear, London Coalition Against Poverty, London Rising Tide, Occupy London, Rising Tide UK, Stop Nuclear Power Network, UK Tar Sands Network, UK Uncut.
climatejusticecollective.org
Twitter: @CJ_Collective
facebook.com/climatejusticecollective
On May 3rd, executives from EON, EDF, Scottish Power, Shell and BP will be convening at the UK Energy Summit in London. Organised by The Economist magazine, the event will see CEOs and policy-makers discuss how to ‘secure a sustainable energy future’. With tickets at £1000 per head, it’s clear that only those who can afford it will get a seat at the policy-making table.
Meanwhile, household energy prices are up 15% on average from last year and the Big Six energy companies – Centrica (British Gas), EDF, EON, RWEnpower, Scottish Power and SSE – continue to hold a monopoly over 99% of our energy, determining everything from where it is sourced to how it is priced. The control that energy companies have over our lives and our environment is still the dinosaur in the living room.
At The Big Six Energy Bash, Climate Justice Collective and friends – including anti-cuts groups, anti-poverty campaigners, environmental activists and Occupy London – will be taking to the capital's streets to put a spanner in the works of the energy monopoly going on behind closed doors at the Summit.
While tackling cuts to our collective heritage of public services in the UK, we need to keep climate change on the agenda. Climate change represents the biggest global cut to our global collective heritage of an ecological commons. The slogan ‘Nature doesn’t do bailouts’ has never been more prescient. It is us and our children who will be paying for the oncoming crises. In spite of technofixes, the rush towards nuclear, and the recolonisation of Africa through biomass and solar projects, climate chaos is still on the cards, and we are not too big to fail.
The reason we’re targeting the Big Six and Big Energy is not just because of their control over how energy is sourced, accessed, and priced, but also because they’re positioning themselves as the answer to the climate crisis. These companies, with their logic of profit at any cost, are driving the marketisation of resources that should be protected- that should not be commodities at all.
Warmth, decent housing, and decisions on where we source our energy from are our democratic right. They are not privileges to be decided behind closed doors in government, boardrooms or conferences that cost thousands of pounds to attend.
Keeping climate change on the agenda means acknowledging the intersection of struggles around austerity and energy: fighting cuts and environmental destruction should go hand in hand. As the rising cost of fossil fuels (alongside Big Six profiteering and savage welfare cuts) made our energy bills bite harder than ever before last winter, the problem is clear for all to see: our energy system, and our economy, is being run for the benefit of greedy companies, who have the government sitting comfortably in their pockets.
There are alternatives to the current profit-driven fossil fuel energy system and to the methods and goals of industrial production that rely on it. We need to ask questions not just about what type of energy we use, but also about what ends our energy is being produced for. We need a contraction of industry, and the reconfiguration of work as we know it, to gear it towards needs, real development and sustainability rather than expanding markets, competition, consumption and profit.
Less work for the sake of work or a wage; more cooperation, with the right to a healthy environment, stability and family time. We need to follow the lead of people in Manchester, Brixton, Brighton and Bristol, who are reclaiming their futures by co-operatively running their own community-controlled renewable energy.
Come out on May 3rd and show the Big Six, Shell, BP and the other fossil fuel dinosaurs that they cannot keep robbing us and our planet, and that the government cannot keep cutting, privatising and leaving us to freeze. We can and will take our power back.
The Big Six Energy Bash is supported by:
Biofuelwatch, Bristol Energy Cooperative, Campaign Against Climate Change, Disabled People Against the Cuts, Fuel Poverty Action, Global Women’s Strike, Kick Nuclear, London Coalition Against Poverty, London Rising Tide, Occupy London, Rising Tide UK, Stop Nuclear Power Network, UK Tar Sands Network, UK Uncut.
climatejusticecollective.org
Twitter: @CJ_Collective
facebook.com/climatejusticecollective