equality for women

Iran & Midwives: On Sunday 7th March 2010 I photographed a protest marking International Women’s Day organised by Iranian women over the 31 years of repression and calling for an end to the Islamic regime who marched to a rally in Trafalgar Square. I then went south of the river to Geraldine Harmsworth Park for the start of a march back to Downing Street in support of better integrated midwifery services for all women.

Iran & Midwives - 2010 — *Of course there were Dads as well on the midwives march*

Both Iran and maternity services are now still live issues. Baroness Amos’s interim review into maternity and neonatal services in England is harrowing and two thirds of maternity services are rated either “inadequate” or “requires improvement”.

Today I will be at a protest against the illegal war by Israel and the USA on Iran. Of course few if any support the Iranian Islamic regime, certainly not among those who like me will be at the protest.

The attacks on Iran, including the assassination of Ali Khamenei, are extremely unlikely to lead to regime change – and if anything are likely to lead to even greater repression, hardship and bloodshed in a country which is being pounded into greater poverty and extreme disorder, with possibly many years of destructive multi-sided civil wars. The decision to attack now appears to have been prompted by the Israeli fears that an agreement between the US and Iran might have been imminent – and perhaps also by the US feeling that a war might improve Trump’s position in the US mid-term elections.

Support the Iranian Women’s Struggle

Iranian Embassy to Trafalgar Square

Women and men, mainly Iranians, held a rally opposite the Iranian embassy in Kensington to mark International Women’s Day and protest against the 31 years of anti-women Islamic laws and repression and calling for an end to the Islamic regime.

The protest was organised by the 8 March Women’s Organsiation (Iran-Afghanistan) and they marched from there to Trafalgar Square where there was a larger rally on the North Terrace with speeches and messages from the 8 March Women’s Organisation, the European Democratic Women Movement (Turkey), Hands off People of Iran, the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and the Million Women Rise movement.

The speches were followed by performances by a number of artists including Iranian singers and poets.

More at Support the Iranian Women’s Struggle.

Mums and Midwives Reclaim Birth

Geraldine Harmsworth Park to Downing St

The Albany Midwifery Practice in Peckham in South London – one of the most highly deprived areas of England – was widely regarded as a model of best practice and a centre of excellence in NHS midwifery, giving support to women throughout pregnancy, birth and the post-natal period, encouraging women to make informed choices about how and where they give birth.

But at the end of 2009, King’s College Hospital terminated their contract following a critical report from the Centre for Maternal and Child Enquiries (CMACE) which King’s claim showed “serious shortcomings” over one aspect of their work, forcing the centre to close down. This report was shown to be based on incorrect use of statistics.

King’s decision was seen as an attack on on alternative ways of maternity care that provide better overall outcomes and better meet the needs of women.

Their perinatal mortality rates were well below the national average and well under half those for those in its London Borough. And far fewer of their mothers gave birth by Caesarean section – just over half of the rate in King’s College Hospital. Perhaps at the root of King’s objection to Albany was that almost half of the women chose to give birth at home – compared to 1 in 16 for the area as a whole.

More than three quarters of Albany mothers also continued to breastfeed their babies, well over twice the national average.

The march and rally was supported by AIMS (Association For Improvements In The Maternity Services), NCT (National Childbirth Trust), ARM (Association of Radical Midwives), IM UK (Independent Midwives UK) and Albany Mums.

As well as calling for a public inquiry into the decision to end the Albany contract it also called for a move across the country to replace the current doctor-led hospital services , often un-supportive and even traumatic for mothers, with services following the Albany example which provide a much more comprehensive service with better information and fuller support for women at no greater cost.

Peckham has a record of innovative medical services, with the groundbreaking Peckham Experiment in community health which began 100 years ago in 1926 and was ended under the NHS in 1950. The case of the Albany model of care echoes this, and there approach was fully vindicated in a detailed analysis published in 2017 which concluded “consideration should be given to making similar models of care available to all women.”

More at Mums & Midwives Reclaim Birth.

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Occupy & Women’s Equality – On Saturday 19 November 2011 Occupy London was in full swing in St Paul’s Churchyard and elsewhere and the Fawcett Society were protesting against government cuts that were reversing the movement to greater equality for women.

Don’t Turn The Clock Back – Temple to Westminster

The Fawcett Society were angered by government’s cuts which they said were putting the clock back on the advances which women have made towards equality since the 1950s, and had organised a march in protest with a 1950s theme.

Many of the marchers, mainly women, had come dressed in 1950s styles “ranging from the most elegant of Paris fashion of the day to aprons, hairnets and curlers. Others carried brushes or brooms, wooden spoons or other kitchen implements as symbols of what they felt was the only role our government can envisage for women, the ‘good little wife’.”

Many women had been particularly angered by the sexist and patronising putdown in parliament made by then Prime Minister David Cameron, a man who a few days ago made a surprising return to a leading role in UK politics. Probably insulated as he has been from normal life by an education at Eton and Oxford and wealth he thought little about his sexist and patronising put-down ‘Calm Down Dear!’ to Labour’s Angela Eagle in the House of Commons, but it enraged at least half the nation.

On the march people chanted ‘Calm Down Dear!’ followed by the deafening response ‘No We Won’t!‘ The marchers also had some caustic comments directed at the press (though not us journalists covering the march) for their “belittlling labelling of some groups of women in public life – such as ‘Blair’s Babes‘ – as well as the general predominance of semi-pornographic imagery and demeaning attitudes to women.”

But it was the cuts that really were the focus of the march, particularly the cuts in public services. A majority of those who will lose their jobs are women, employed in the NHS and elsewhere. And women depend more on the various services that will be cut, and will also have disproportionally to provide unpaid services such as care to make up for those cut. Finally the cuts in pensions will also have a larger effect on women who were already seeing a raise in their pension age.

The Fawcett Society was founded in 1866 to campaign peacefully for votes for women and remains a powerful campaigning organisation for equal rights. It had called on a wide range of speakers for its rally including journalist Tanya Gold, Estelle Hart, NUS Women’s Officer, comedians Kate Smurthwaite and Josie Lond, Heather Wakefield of Unison, Vivienne Hayes from the Women’s Resource Centre, Chitra Nagarajan of Southall Black sisters. Aisha Mirza from UK Uncut and a spokesperson for the Turkish and Kurdish Refugee Women’s group.

More at Don’t Turn The Clock Back.

At Occupy London

I’d visited Occupy in St Paul’s Churchyard briefly before going to photograph the Fawcett Society march and returned later in the day to visit the ‘Bank of Ideas’ in Sun Street and Occupy Finsbury Circus before returning to St Pauls to hear a range of speakers on other campaigns both in London and around the world, including news of the Occupy movement from the USA and Bristol, where the occupation seems not to have attracted the opposition shown by the City authorities and sections of the church in London.

*A meeting in progress in the Bank of Ideas*

The Bank of Ideas was an empty former UBS bank building in Sun Street that was occupied and used for a wide range of meetings and discussions.

*People listen to a wide range of speakers on the steps of St Pauls*

Later a group who had taken part in the non-Stop Picket of South Africa House started by the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group on 19 April 1986 shared some of their songs and their experience.

They had defied defied the attempts of British police, the British government and the South African embassy to remove them for almost 4 years until Mandela was released in 1990. There had been around a thousand arrests, but 96% of the cases brought to court were dismissed. Before this they had organised a number of shorter non-stop protests outside the embassy, the first of which in 1981 lasted 86 days and resulted in South African political prisoners including David Kitson being moved to better conditions.

The official Anti-Apartheid Movement opposed their actions and expelled them from the movement, warned trade union and local anti-apartheid groups not to have anything to do with them and asked Westminster Council to remove them. It wanted to avoid any confrontation with the British Government and opposed the City of London group’s support for other African liberation movements as well as the African National Congress.

Tag: equality for women

Iran & Midwives – 2010

Support the Iranian Women’s Struggle

Mums and Midwives Reclaim Birth

Occupy & Women’s Equality – 2011

Don’t Turn The Clock Back – Temple to Westminster

At Occupy London