Women's Fightback 28, Spring 2023

The past few months have seen the biggest strikes by nurses in the history of the NHS. The RCN began its action in December, though has (at the time of writing) suspended action around negotiations. Unison, GMB and Unite have called out paramedics. Meanwhile, the BMA’s thumping victory in its national ballot has brought Junior Doctors into the dispute. As in the broader strike wave, pay is the core issue of the dispute. With inflation soaring, and after more than a decade of pay cuts, nurses were awarded a miserable £1,400 for 2022-23. This situation, combined with the wider crisis in the NHS...

“ There was no question in our minds that this was the first step to suppress us and we should stand up to it as both women and as revolutionaries.” Said Haideh Daragahi, a lecturer at Tehran University in 1979. During the Iranian Revolution of 1978-9, women stood shoulder-to-shoulder with men, and toe-to-toe against the Shah’s regime in mass demonstrations and on the barricades. The revolution stood for democracy, liberty and equality against a dictatorship that had been installed in a military coup in 1953. It was a moment of hope for progressives, the organised left, the workers’ movement...

In the days before International Women ’s Day 2015, Chinese authorities arrested five women — Wei Tingting, Zheng Churan, Li Maizi, Wu Rongrong and Wang Man — for planning to hand out stickers challenging sexual harassment on public transport across China. They were detained for 37 days. Over the course of their detainment, the five were subjected to violent interrogations, denied important medication and medical treatment, and were routinely harassed and humiliated. The women had been involved in feminist and LGBTQ rights activism for some years. While at university, Zheng Churan — known by...

A SPIRIT OF UNITY Iranian protest slogans are radical. They don’t beat about the bush. One that’s stuck with me from the current women’s movement in Iran is this: agar baa ham yekee nasheem, yekee yekee koshté meesheem. If we don't become one, one by one we will be killed. It’s a fitting mantra for a movement with remarkable longevity and global reach. The sentiment of unity has been key to the ability of protest movements to oppose the Islamic regime. In recent months, across boundaries of gender, age, class, ethnicity and border, the Iranian people have taken to the streets together. This is...

This article is based on campaign materials by Hookers Against Hardship. For more information on the campaign and ways to show support visit: decrimnow.org.uk/hookers-against-hardship • Donate to sex worker-led organisations which support sex workers in crisis: here . The cost of living crisis has hit everyone hard, and sex workers are in an especially precarious position. Many are experiencing a sharp fall in income as customers cancel appointments and workplaces close. Unlike most other workers, sex workers are denied basic labour protections, such as paid sick leave, maternity pay and...

Women ’s Fightback will be featuring women poets in every issue. Our first poet in this new feature is Laura Taylor. Laura ’s poems, including the poem featured here, are sharp commentary on the struggles of working-class, especially working-class women’s, lives. ‘Life Hacks’ lampoons the advice being given to us on how to survive the current cost-of-living crisis. Laura says, “I was born into a working-class family in the North of England in 1968. I have challenged arbitrary forms of authority all my life. Obsessed with words and language since my early childhood, I believe in the power of...

In recent months, far right mobilisations have grown alarmingly. Patriotic Alternative, which was founded in 2019, has begun to grow, setting up shop in communities around hotels being used to house refugees. Violent protests have taken place outside a number of refugee hotels, starting with a riot in Knowsley in mid February, and anti-fascist presence has been patchy. While Patriotic Alternative have primarily targeted migrants, they have also engaged in an opportunistic campaign against trans people and drag performers, making use of the toxic atmosphere on the issue. On Saturday 11 February...

Public childcare not only benefits children ’s development but acts as an equaliser for lower income families to claw their way out of ever-increasing poverty. In 2021, the UK spent less than 0.1% of GDP on it, a miserably low figure in comparison to the rest of Europe and other developed (OECD) countries. The 2022 Department for Education (DfE)’s Survey of Childcare and Early Years Providers (SCEYP) estimated that there were 60,000 providers in England with at least one child aged 0-4. The UK government provides inadequate, term-time only support schemes for all children aged 3-4 and some...

• A review of Rebel Rebel , an exhibition by Soheila Sokhanvari at the Barbican, London Three weeks after the state murder of Masha Amini in Iran, an exhibition of Soheila Sokhanvari ’s Iranian feminist icons, 'Rebel Rebel', opened at the Barbican in London. It is an outstandingly curated exhibition of exquisite work that has taken several years to put together. It memorialises the lives of the 28 women who were exiled, obstructed and passed from sight after the 1979 Islamic revolution. The Curve at the Barbican has to be one the most alluring exhibition spaces in the UK, and Eleanor Nairne...

Flora Tristan (1803-44) was a pioneer socialist feminist, whose life and politics deserve to be more widely known and discussed by contemporary activists. Early feminists and socialists took vital steps forward, while also making mistakes and omissions. Learning where our ideas came from is part of the renewal of twenty-first century socialist feminism. LIFE Flore Célestine Thérèse Henriette Tristan Moscoso was born on 7 April 1803. Her mother, Anne-Pierre Laisnay was French, while her father Mariano was Peruvian, from a family of landowners descended from Spanish aristocrats. They met in...