Six articles about Brexit
This work of John Harris gives a sense of 2017 as one of the most complicated, strange moments in modern UK history.
Whatever happened to the left-behind?
It seems more unlikely than ever that deprived Brexit-voting areas will see any economic revival
It was not much more than a year ago. The result of the EU referendum was still being pored over, and the political moment seemed to be all about two things: a view of much of the leave vote as a cry of pain and resentment from parts of the country beyond London, and the urgent need to do something. Journalists were still being dispatched to the supposed Brexit heartlands; among politicians, the idea was that now that such places as south Wales, the east of England, the Midlands and the non-urban north had spoken so loudly that their deep problems were finally going to be addressed.
If you want a taste of what was briefly afoot, have a look at the text of Theresa May’s Conservative conference speech from October 2016 , delivered in the days when she was still in the business of strong and stable leadership and her backdrops did not collapse , both literally and metaphorically. She used the word “revolution” four times. “In June people voted for change,” she said. “And a change is going to come … this is a turning point for our country.”
She did not mean this only in terms of our exit from the EU: the referendum, she said, was nothing less than a “call for a change in the way our country works – and the people for whom it works – forever ”. Among other things, there was to be “an economic and cultural revival of all of our great regional cities”, while the power of government would be placed “squarely at the service of ordinary working-class people”, and the gap between “the wealth of London and the rest of the country” would be narrowed.
Now, as her government decays, most of her words read like the founding statement of a project that never was. Clearly, even if most of the people who voted for Brexit still seem convinced that it was the right thing to do, there are few signs of any changes to the places where they live. Quite the reverse, in fact. Though the creation of the capital’s beloved £15bn Crossrail continues apace, plans to modernise railway lines in Wales, Yorkshire, the Midlands and Cumbria have all been shelved. Philip Hammond has promised train services in the north a derisory extra £300m (by way of comparison, the cost of HS2 is put at £400m per mile ).
Meanwhile, the austerity imposed on city and local government carries on, and the loudest sound coming from the most neglected parts of the country is the great howl of pain arising from the government’s cruel changes to the benefi ts system. The Welsh town of Merthyr Tydfi l became something of a byword for Brexit , and it seems just as symbolic of what has happened since: universal credit will arrive there next March, and the council is facing at least another two years of cuts. Not far away in Newport, Gwent, where 56% of people voted to leave the EU, the council leader also happens to be the head of the Welsh Local Government Association.
“Services are wearing down to the point of collapse, and the public are rightly growing frustrated in terms of paying council tax and yet seeing key community functions cut or closed,” Debbie Wilcox says. “The whole position is unsustainable.”
At the heart of all this is the political irony that defi nes our times: that the very thing so many places voted for makes any attempt at their area’s revival even less likely. The only economic rebalancing that looks set to arise from Brexit will be London becoming a bit less rich thanks to the downsizing of the City. The Herculean effort needed to even begin meaningful negotiations is so consuming to the machinery of government that it clearly has no capacity for anything else.
And just look at this week’s Brexit headlines: news that £500m has already been spent on preparing to leave the EU , that next year’s outlays will be about £1m a day, and that the number of extra civil servants who will be needed to deal with our departure is now put at 8,000. Imagine if all that money and effort were devoted to a policy aimed at reversing the country’s long decline and thinking creatively about the future.
That mess of contradictions might look like good news for the people who think Brexit has to be overturned. But in the context of the places that ensured that leave had a majority, they have their own set of problems.
Whenever I spend time in Brexitsupporting areas, a few questions usually rattle through my mind. In the 17 months since the vote, has the coalition of forces – Labour and Tory remainers, Liberal Democrats, Greens – that now demands it is nullified given any serious thought to why so much of the country failed to heed its warnings, and continues to ignore them, even as promises go unmet, and Brexit grows dangerous and ever more complex? Do they have any kind of offer to leave voters in neglected places, beyond a second referendum and a return to the pre- 2016 status quo?
Even if the prime minister has failed to make good on her promises of a rebalanced country, the Brexit moment embodies one aspect of her vision: the fact that, for the fi rst time in decades, people and places that were long overlooked – sneered at, even – now sit at the core of our national politics. Though the Labour party’s acceptance of Brexit and its failure to come up with much of an alternative might seem maddening, its position on the EU is not just down to the Eurosceptic instincts of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Clearly, it is also locked into its position by the fact that most of the constituencies it holds – seven out of 10, according to credible estimates – voted to leave Europe, and the assumption that a critical number of the people who live in them are still of the opinion that Brexit has to happen, no matter what.
If you want to be patronising about it, you could take the view that all this is down to the lies of the leave campaign and a mess of nastiness surrounding immigration. But from a more enlightened perspective, it might be more instructive to understand a lot of support for leave as the climax of years of decline, neglect and condescension – and something that is hardly going to be abandoned in a hurry.
Forget, for a moment, all that noise about the fine details of the negotiations or whatever trade secretary Liam Fox has said about chicken, and think about how the politics of Brexit will actually play out. If the government’s weak grip on power offers the chance of renewed questioning of where the country is headed, some of the answer will arise from those remain-supporting MPs who now reluctantly back leaving the EU out of fear of their leave-voting constituents.
Will those voters change their minds? If there is a contrast between the promises of national revival made only a year ago and the lack of action since, a lot will hang on whether that discrepancy has any traction, or collides with people’s ingrained fatalism and fades away. Just as much will depend on the trade-off between economic damage and a deep belief in national sovereignty that runs much deeper among workingclass leave supporters than some people would like to think. The future suddenly pivots on Merthyr and Mansfield, Walsall and Blackburn: symbolic of these unexpected, upturned times.
05/11/2017
Brexit won’t punish bankers. But it will harm voters
With a balanced economy we could relax when financiers shut up shop. As it is, we need their taxes
The reasons why 17.4 million British people put their crosses in the leave box last summer have been endlessly analysed, and often crudely carved in half – as if some Brexit supporters were angry about immigration and others fixated on questions of sovereignty, and that was pretty much that.
But 10 years after the French bank BNP Paribas heralded the coming financial crisis by suspend ing two hedge funds that had effectively proved worthless, it’s worth reprising a pretty basic point: among the furies that exploded on 23 June last year were lingering grievances about the crash of 2007-8. The years since the cashpoints almost ran out had seen simmering anger about the endless billions pumped into the big banks and the lack of any obvious reckoning – not to mention exasperation with politicians chained to the demands of high finance, and not nearly interested enough in the millions of people whose only acquaintance with the City lay in the mess it had made.
Clearly, the vote for Brexit represented a kind of misdirected, flailing revenge. As big banks lined up with the UK’s largest corporations to warn the public that Brexit would be disastrous , the sense of an instantaneous backlash was obvious. Former City insider Nigel Farage well knew Brexit’s basic populist plotlines, and when he made his victory speech in the small hours of 24 June , he said that the leave campaign had knocked down three adversaries in particular: “multinationals”, “big politics”, and “merchant banks”.
Having got up off the floor, some of the City of London’s biggest players are now taking big decisions. They have contracts that extend way beyond 2019, but what Brexit negotiations might mean for them remains chronically unclear. Plans for their future European operations need to be made now. So plenty are starting to shift parts of their business outside London, to a surprisingly muted response. Philip Hammond, the chancellor, seems to know roughly what is at stake, but swaths of the Conservative party – that historic redoubt of traders, brokers and high-rollers – seem surprisingly unconcerned. After all, what have bankers – bankers – ever done for us? Part of the answer lies in the £70 bn-ish of tax revenue paid by financial services in 2015/16 – about twothirds of our annual spend on the NHS .
What is pushing banks away from London is obvious enough. In the wake of the referendum, there was a lot of talk about the City somehow retaining its “passporting” rights, which allow banks and fund managers to do business freely across Europe. Those hopes now look forlorn: indeed, the City ’s biggest lobby group, TheCityUK, served notice that it was giving up the fi ght for such privileges back in January.
Given that Britain has said that it wants to leave the single market, the EU was hardly likely to allow the UK to retain one of that market’s lucrative elements, and the search for a possible substitute has now focused on so-called “equivalence” : arrangements for certain kinds of fi nancial trading to continue, if the EU agrees that Britain’s regulations are in line with its own.
This may be all that the City has to cling to, but there are no end of drawbacks, not least the fact that such arrangements are unilaterally granted by Brussels, and can be revoked at a month’s notice . Small wonder, perhaps, that there is all that talk about possible transition periods. But even if we actually get to postpone the worst of Brexit, what happens in 2022, or 2025, or whenever we fi nally leave? And what of the big City interests who are already reshaping their operations?
To the audible delight of Irish estate agents, tailors and wine merchants, the authorities there say they have finalised deals with more than a dozen banks and finance houses for some of their business to be shifted from London to Dublin. JP Morgan – which warned during the referendum campaign that Brexit might mean losing a quarter of its 16,000 UK staff – has started building a 22-storey tower on the banks of the Liff ey. Morgan Stanley is likely to shed jobs in London by expanding operations in Frankfurt; CitiGroup, Standard Chartered and Nomura Holdings are reportedly opening new offices Brexit won’t punish bankers. But it will harm voters John Harris in the same city . That much-loved public favourite the Royal Bank of Scotland apparently has its sights set on Amsterdam, which is nice.
“To the joy of Irish estate agents, tailors and wine merchants, more than a dozen banks will shift business to Dublin”
When I called round a few City insiders this week and asked them how much of London’s financial business Brexit might cost, one put the figure at 25%. An LSE study reckons the potential loss of business revenue is around 15%; one Brussels-based thinktank says the value of assets about to be transferred to mainland Europe may total € 1.8tn , equivalent to 17% of the UK’s banking assets. To state the blindingly obvious, in an economy as financialised as ours, that’s a lot.
Meanwhile, even bigger anxieties swirl around. Some relate to the disastrous possibilities of a cliff -edge Brexit, glimpsed this week in the letter written to the House of Commons Treasury select committee by the deputy governor of the Bank of England in charge of the Prudential Regulation Authority, which essentially exists to prevent financial crises.
He warned of threats to both the financial sector and the UK economy as a whole, as well as holding out a particularly chilling prospect: that just as personal debt reaches a critical point and warnings of financial fragility are once again heard, British regulators might be prevented from doing their usual work by the new responsibility of regulating the British operations of European companies hitherto overseen by other EU governments. He calls this a “material extra burden”; the rest of us might think of it in terms of accidents waiting to happen.
This may be the first column I have ever written in defence of banks. If we had any kind of solid, dependable, balanced economy, we all might be much more relaxed . But there are no signs of that; indeed, leaving the EU looks likely to make the gaping inequalities the City symboli ses even worse. The next time you are in a hospital or school, you might want to consider two things: that bankers foot a siz able share of the costs; and , in the midst of Brexit’s mix of anger, delusion and indiff erence, they may soon be paying their taxes somewhere else.
11/08/2017
Fear there’ll be food rotting in the fi elds after Brexit? It’s already starting
Our farms rely on EU fruit and veg pickers. But they are staying away, and it’ll hit this summer’s harvest
In the wake of an ocean of writing linking Brexit to the zeitgeisty Dunkirk spirit , here’s one more martial metaphor. Self-evidently, this is the phoney war stage of the process. Negotiations have barely started; the prime minister is on holiday. Meanwhile, ministers – and Labour politicians – talk about the fundamentals of leaving the European Union as if we can push Brussels in any direction we fancy and freely choose no end of measures to ease our passage out.
The recent noise about freedom of movement is a case in point. If the government has a coherent position, it seems to be that migration from the EU under current rules will end in 2019 , but also carry on, with – according to the home secretary, anyway – the proviso that during an “implementation phase” of up to four years, people from the EU will simply have to add their names to a national register. Thus, a great human army which keeps so much of Britain’s economy ticking over will still be available, just as long as the right arrangements are put in place.
This is, of course, somewhat less than credible, as evidenced by a mounting crisis that has yet to turn critical but is bubbling away across the country. At the least, we are fundamentally changing the basis on which people can live and work in the UK, swapping residence as a right for a much more uncertain system dependent on political caprice.
If you wanted to be more dramatic, you might say that the 2016 European referendum in effect put a huge neon sign over Britain, saying, “ Foreigners not welcome ”. And to make matters worse, the value of sterling is making coming here even less attractive. “
The perception from overseas is we are xenophobic, we’re racist, and the pound has plummeted too. We’ve gone with Brexit and that makes us look unfriendly.” Those are the words of John Hardman, director of Hops Labour Solutions, which supplies about 12,000 workers a year to food-grow ers. He reckons that when it comes to “foodpicking jobs in agriculture – which means everything from strawberries to brussels sprouts” , there is currently a Brexit-related shortfall of about 20% , which chimes with recent surveys by the National Farmers Union.
What of the much-discussed prospect of food rotting in the fields? “We’re not far off . I suspect that’ll definitely happen next year,” he says. Hardman reckons that growers are beginning to question their investment plans for 2018, fearing crops going unpicked, and says that large-scale growers might soon consider moving into central and eastern Europe, at which point those much-fetishised union jacks will start to disappear from strawberry punnets.
According to a study by the GMB union sourced from official figures , nearly half the workers employed in the UK’s fruit and vegetable “processing and preserving sector” are from countries within the EU. In meat processing, the figure is 44%. But among seasonal businesses that use fruit and veg pickers, the number usually rockets to more than 90%. Such figures denote thousands of people who are often poorly paid and prepared to do monotonous, frequently back-breaking work, thereby keeping a large swath of Britain’s food economy ticking over.
But not for much longer, perhaps. In the latest survey by the Association of Labour Providers , 30% of agencies who supply workers to British food and agriculture businesses say they don’t expect to be able to source sufficient workers for the remainder of this summer’s peak picking period, and almost half say they will have problems in the busiest period before Christmas.
Whenever the subject of free movement and the UK’s food industry comes up, many people envisage a Brexit in which wages will leap up, British workers will return to the fields , and all will be well. Superficially, the fact that 40% of labour providers in agriculture and food say the businesses they service have recently had to increase wages makes it look like things might be pointing in that direction. But the food sector is just as complex and fragile as the rest of the economy, and it may not take much to tip it into chaos.
“The jobs are poorly paid, boring and backbreaking. Most UK-born people wouldn’t be interested”
Supermarkets can sell cheap food to people who haven’t had a pay rise in years thanks to an industry partly built around growing and packing businesses that tend to run on unbelievably tight margins (half of British fruit farms are reckoned to turn profi ts of less than 2% of turnover). But in the main food-growing areas of England – the East Anglian fens, for instance – unemployment rates tend to be low. And even leave-voting locals acknowledge that, whatever the wage rates (if you’re up for the work, you can turn £10 to £15 an hour picking strawberries), most UK-born people wouldn’t be interested in the kind of jobs that might soon be available.
Besides, seeing Brexit as any kind of cure for low-wage work is surely a political category error. The project that Britain is embroiled in is not a great progressive drive to right social wrongs: it is an emotion-driven revolution led by people on the political right who have no idea what they are doing . And sooner or later, thanks to a combination of reduced domestic production and insuffi cient workers, Brexit may well explode into further increases in food prices – a prospect which takes us back into the fragilities of Britain’s teetering economic model: limited household budgets, rising debt, and the fact that what separates millions on limited incomes from borderline starvation is the availability of cut-price food.
Meanwhile, the most zealous Brexiteers look forward to a supremely unlikely future in which we spurn the huge amount of food we import from Europe and somehow either produce our own, or fly in stuff from around the globe. Beyond the prospect of stupidly increased food miles and basic fruit and veg suddenly refrigerated to within an inch of its life , such half-baked visions may well bump up against one big problem: the effects of Brexit (including the loss of farming subsidies , which is a whole other mess) meaning we may not have much of a British food industry left – a strange thing to be embraced by selfstyled patriots, but there we are.
Who knows? We could turn the suddenly vacated fields into nostalgic theme parks, where people could watch re-enactments of the second world war while eating imported strawberries: it would be the perfect Brexit day out, should anyone be able to afford it.
05/08/2017
They came to live a British dream. Is it all over?
Europeans moved to the UK to get ahead. But tough talk on immigration makes them fear for the future
On the southern edge of Peterborough is a new residential development called Cardea – a huge expanse of housing served by a solitary Morrison s supermarket and a self-styled “clean, modern pub” called the Apple Cart – which has become a byword for the more affl uent elements of the city’s Polish population.
On roads called Jupiter Avenue, Hercules Way and Neptune Close, newly built homes extend into the distance. A three-bedroom detached will give you change out of £250,000, and put you in close proximity to the expanse of warehouses, distribution centres and retail outlets which power a big part of the local economy. The openings such places offer tend to fall one of two ways: management positions and tech roles for people who have either worked their way up or arrived with the right qualifications; or, at what the modern vernacular calls entry level, more uncertain roles for people who are prepared to put in the graft, and who often shoulder the burden of mindbending shift patterns and low wages.
From a leftie perspective, all this might suggest some awful neoliberal dystopia. But to many people from EU countries, Peterborough has off ered the prospect of self-improvement and hardwon comfort. Individual career histories often defy not only the more doomy critiques of the modern job market, but the idea that human beings can be neatly divided into “low-skilled” and “highskilled” . They instead present a picture of people who have determinedly moved from one category to another.
One of my most reliable contacts is a fortysomething man who arrived in 2005, began stacking shelves for Marks & Spencer, and now runs his own photography business. In the recent past, I have met people who started packing crates for Ikea and became middlemanagers, or initially found low-grade work in supermarkets, only to eventually open their own shops.
Such stories are built around a set of aspirations: property ownership, relative affluence, and as much stability and security as the modern economy can deliver. Hearing them first-hand, I have felt at least some of my ingrained scepticism melt away: it might be easy to scoff at such an idea, but at least some people in this part of England have lived out a kind of British dream.
But no more, perhaps. Since 24 June last year, the signals emanating from Whitehall and Westminster have been clear. If the United Kingdom once offered an open door and an array of opportunities, such things are now almost completely obscured by mistrust, bad faith, and the sense that a majority of people in England and Wales (including the 61% of voters in Peterborough who supported Brexit) have had enough.
Such is the upshot of those leaked proposals from the Home Office, reportedly reflective of the views of Theresa May herself, and loudly endorsed by the right wing press. In symbolic terms, this is just one more burst of nastiness and delusion to add to an ever-expanding pile. But in the sense of practical policy, what has been proposed represents something quite remarkable: confirmation that post-Brexit Britain will put the demands of economics – or, put another way, national prosperity – well below the emotional stuff of belonging and nationhood, with no end of consequences.
Certainly, if it all comes to pass, there will be no more Cardeas. For any wouldbe migrant from mainland Europe, the kind of career ladder scaled by people in Peterborough will be snapped in two.
Supposedly low-skilled workers will only be able to stay for up to two years; even the high-skilled will have their stays capped at five. In that sense, the British dream will be over: migration from the EU will be subject to the kind of guest worker system that institutionalises prejudice and mistrust, and puts up huge barriers to some of the most basic elements of human existence.
Britain will be no place to start a family, or buy a home; as with people from outside the EU, anyone wanting to come and work here will be subject to an almost incomprehensible regime of income requirements, residency permits and immigration checks.
As far as I can tell, the mood among many people from EU countries remains stoical and hard-headed, perhaps reflective of a sensibility ingrained under communism, when the people in power regularly lost their minds but life had somehow to continue. “You are leaving the EU, so I guess some sort of restriction is inevitable,” said one of my Polish acquaintances this week.
But at the same time, there is a sense of a collective anxiety that has been slowly growing since last summer. On that score, I think of a woman I met in a Peterborough delicatessen back in February, who told me that her Facebook feed had recently filled with rumours that after the triggering of article 50, people from EU countries would be barred from re-entering Britain. “There are fears that they might chase us out of here, fears of deportations,” she said. Then she shrugged. “But life goes on.”
What all this says about the state of British Conservatism is very revealing. Post-Thatcher, the Tories have never resolved the tensions between the politics of nationalism and base prejudice, and the most basic principles of freemarket economics . But if May has her way, the fi rst will decisively trump (a good word, that) the second.
In that sense, the fate of a lot of people from mainland Europe will be hugely symbolic. Most of the EU citizens I have spoken to in Peterborough do not have a left wing thought in their heads; they believe in a credo of self-reliance, hard work and home ownership. In a British context, these ideas are as Tory as they come. So how come so many Conservatives now want to slam the door on their most devout adherents?
And what of the economy? Peterborough is one of the largest urban centres of a region of England in which unemployment is below the national average ; and in a city of nearly 300,000, a mere 1,770 people are currently claiming outof-work benefi ts. Its successive waves of migration from the EU – first Poles, Latvians and Lithuanians, then Bulgarians and Romanians – have fed a job market in which most British people are barely interested. Nonetheless, all of us have come to expect the benefi ts: cutprice food ; consumerism-on-tap ; the confidence of knowing that an online click today means a delivery tomorrow ; the idea that if the worst comes to the worst, some or other army of care workers will be there to look after us.
No more, perhaps: if a good deal of the explanation for Brexit is about a denial of the future and some misplaced vision of the past, we may be about to fi nd out what all that means in practice.
Terrified of the more irate elements of its core vote, the Labour party currently seems little interested in loudly raising the alarm. Whether Tory unease will boil over is uncertain, at best. But what we could be about to lose is obvious. Frozen into the brickwork of those newly built houses in Peterborough is a whole host of stuff – hard work, persistence, ambition, stoicism – that has played a huge role in keeping an increasingly fragile country in business. To throw all that away would be madness. But amid the general lunacy of Brexit, will that be enough to stop it?
07/09/2017
Revolutions are for zealots and fools – as the Tory Bolsheviks will find out
Leaving the EU was meant to be Thatcherism’s fi nale, but could turn out to be its death instead
The centenary year of the Russian revolutions of 2017 highlights an accidentally topical question: what do revolutionaries do when they actually get their revolution? The immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik takeover of October 1917, wrote Leon Trotsky, often boiled down to “legislative improvisation”. In his auto biography, My Life , he explained the general idea as follows: “Everything had to proceed from the beginning. There were no ‘precedents’, since history had none to offer … As a rule, matters were brought up for consideration without previous preparation, and almost always as urgent business.”
Does this remind you of anything? Swap St Petersburg for a Brussels conference room a century later, and you perhaps get a comparable sense of slightly unhinged ideals colliding with reality (albeit without the rattle of gunfire and the looming prospect of civil war). “The Bolsheviks came to power without a detailed template for the new state order,” wrote the anti-communist historian Robert Service in his 2007 book Comrades. “They did their inventing almost as an afterthought.”
Reading those words again this week, my mind settled on three things: Theresa May’s claim last year that Brexit was nothing less than a “revolution” , that image of David Davis facing the EU’s negotiating teams sans notes , and an essential difference between Bolsheviks and Tory Brexiteers – the fact that whereas the former’s revolutionary project survived its most besieged and confused period, the latter’s seems to be crumpling before it has even got started.
Which brings us to the dire state of the Conservative party. Most political commentary frames mounting Tory chaos in terms of May’s spectacularly illadvised decision to call a general election, runners and riders for the leadership, and the implicit idea that a change at the top might make a signifi cant diff erence. But there is a much deeper story at play, about 2017 as the denouement of a Conservative story that dates back 40 years, and what might turn out to be the most piquant of ironies: that if Brexit marks the Tory right’s apogee of influence, it could also prove to be their moment of eclipse, in which they take even the more enlightened elements of their party down with them.
We all know where leaving the EU sits in the romantic imaginations of such Tories as Davis, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox . They have their differences, but 40 years after the first of the great changes authored by Margaret Thatcher they tend to see Brexit as the ultimate stride into the free-market utopia her followers have always dreamed about, with the added bonus of huge patriotic symbolism. In this vision – of, as Fox puts it , “a low regulation and low taxation environment which is only likely to improve outside the EU” – Brussels is not the liberalising, pro-business force that reality suggests, but an eternal brake on enterprise and initiative that has to be comprehensively left behind.
Very often this is the reasoning behind the “no deal is better than a bad deal” position, and the most out-there Conservative vision of post-Brexit Britain, in which the only way to survive will be as a kind of northern European Singapore, fully in keeping with the ideals of the blessed Margaret.
Prior to the election, even if May’s brand of Toryism was turning out to be a lot less laissez-faire and anti-state than these people would have liked, there may have been some mileage in the idea that enough of the electorate would approve of these visions or meekly put up with them to make such turboThatcherism a goer. After all, after seven years of austerity and state-shrinking, the Conservatives were apparently heading for a landslide. But now? Austerity goes on, but its rationale is in retreat. Signal events, from the Grenfell Tower disaster to this week’s figures showing stalling rises in life expectancy and a big surge in crime , only underline the sense of a governing philosophy hitting the skids. The idea of Britain as some indulged, state-dependent place in dire need of further liberation now looks more like the stuff of political suicide than the basis of any renewal.
“The idea of Britain as in dire need of further liberation now looks like the stuff of political suicide”
And then there are the economic factors . In the wake of the 2008 crash we have seen the slowest recovery in modern history. Wages continue to lag behind prices; poor pay feeds into the weak demand that seems to rule out any hint of strong growth. Household debt, not surprisingly, is forecast to exceed even the catastrophic levels to which it soared before the crash of 2008. Such, self-evidently, is where the kind of capitalism long embraced and encouraged by British Conservatism has taken us. Rather than what May is like on television, this is the most fundamental reason for the Tories’ poor showing at national elections. And clearly, the economic convulsions of Brexit will make things much, much worse.
What can the Tories do? Well away from the Brexit Bolsheviks, there is a strand of Conservatism that is at least aware of the depth and breadth of these problems. That applies to May herself, though beyond fuzzy talk of a new social contract and the imperative of “government stepping up”, very little flesh has been put on the rhetorical bones. Many of the people who have advocated some kind of Tory reformation are still full-throated Brexiteers, still seemingly oblivious to the basic fact that the society they want and the historic disaster they support are mutually incompatible. But even more problematic is the rising sense that for as long as Conservatism is defined by abstract economic beliefs that increasingly fi nd no reflection in reality (question: which “markets” do Google and Facebook operate in?), and attached to the idea that people have to mostly help themselves, it will founder.
There is – or rather was – another Conservatism, always hostile to grand schemes, accepting of the idea that people can look to the state for help, and well aware that one person’s buccaneering capitalism is often many people’s misery. Sixty years after its post war peak, it may now be so far-fl ung as to be beyond the Tories’ reach – though if they lose power to a Jeremy Corbyn-led government, or the current administration quickly fi nds itself surrounded by the rubble of Brexit, it may once again find its voice. If that happens, the reconstructed Tory view of the party’s recent history will surely centre on one key understanding: that revolutions are largely for zealots and fools, and if Conservatism is the author of uncontrollable chaos, the game is usually up.
20/07/2017
It is clearly a terrible idea, but Brexit has to happen
Those who still hope to stop us leaving the EU need to think harder about the likely repercussions
Social media is awash with it. In a certain kind of company, conversation inevitably turns to it. Now, even senior broadcast journalists hint that it might be possible, triggering great surges of online excitement. Barely a year after the EU referendum and only three months since the Daily Mail’s triumphal “Crush the saboteurs” front page, you can almost smell it: a rising expectation that the nightmare of leaving the EU might somehow be averted, allowing the country to return to some kind of normal.
“ Brexit may never happen ,” says Vince Cable.
“ I know in my heart that Brexit can be stopped,” offers Alastair Campbell.
“ We’ll stop Brexit,” insists the venerable AC Grayling .
On Tuesday Manuel Cortes , the general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staff s Association and an enthusiastic supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, wrote an eloquent article for the LabourList website encouraging the party to bow to the supposedly inevitable. “The folly of the Brexit vote is becoming clearer and its economic consequences look dire,” he said. “Staying put won’t even cost us a penny.”
Fair play to these people: with ministers evidently making it up as they go along, dire economic forecasts, and big EU figures warning that negotiations might quickly break down, there is clearly a prima facie case for what they suggest. And calling time on Brexit fits the guarded optimism embraced by thousands of people since the start of June. A combination of Labour’s election surge, Theresa May’s crumpling, and the joys of a half-decent summer seem to have embedded one belief above all others: that if enough of us make sufficient noise, we can somehow pretend 23 June 2016 never happened.
The problem is that it did. More over, as far as I can tell from the many conversations I had with leave voters during the election campaign, the vast majority of people who voted to leave the EU are still convinced that it is the right thing to do. In whole swath s of the country, the bitterly anti-establishment mood that boiled over last summer is still there. In places long since laid waste by the malign eff ects of globali sation, predictions of economic doom do not cut much ice. And as well as holding fast to their beliefs about free movement and the necessity of Britain taking power back from Brussels, some now express an opinion that irate remainers might not even understand: that if leaving the EU is turning out to be so diffi cult, this only underlines how much of an off ence to sovereignty and democracy it probably is.
For pro-EU people who support Labour, all this highlights some very uncomfortable tensions. Though it is hardly his fault, it is part of Jeremy Corbyn’s transformation into the Princess Diana de nos jours that he has in some way become the sentimentalised focus of many remainers’ hopes while actually tilting in precisely the opposite direction: reverting to his lifelong Euroscepticism and embracing Brexit (albeit with the strong caveats highlighted by Labour’s stance on the “great repeal bill”), and thereby ensuring that leave supporters are an equally important part of Labour’s delicate electoral coalition. This was the key reason why Labour held on to many pro-Brexit seats they were predicted to lose – something plenty of non-Corbynite, instinctively proEuropean Labour MPs well understand.
Yet still the predictions of Brexit interrupted pile up. Thanks to the kind of long transition arrangement proposed by the Confederation of British Industry, some think the process might fi zzle out. Perhaps a second referendum will kill it. This week, a talented Tweeter wrote an imagined speech for May, conceding “the Brexit process would inflict much unsalvageable damage on our country”, and announcing the U-turn to end all U-turns.
But there is always something missing : any sense of the backlash that would be sparked, the myth of betrayal that would sit at the heart of our politics, and the great gift likely to be handed to ugly and opportunistic forces that are still out there, waiting for their chance. Ukip is in abeyance partly because its current leadership could not run a bath, but also because the process of Brexit is under way. Immigration did not much figure in the general election because the prospect of ending free movement was in sight. Nix those things – which, in the latter case, applies as much to staying in the single market – and the grim politics of the pre-referendum period could well come roaring back.
“By the time everything is resolved a lot of us will be very old or dead. But that may be the price we have to pay”
At which point, a few simple facts. To understand why people support Brexit is not to agree with them. Clearly, leaving the EU remains a terrible idea. It will almost certainly be economically calamitous, and it sends out a terrible signal about the kind of country Britain has become.
The big question, though, centres on where Brexit came from, and what sustains it. A large part of the answer is about an ingrained English exceptionalism, partly traceable to geography but equally bound up with a puff edup interpretation of our national past, which has bubbled away in our politics and culture for decades. The likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson have used it for their own ideological ends; in the kind of post-industrial places long ignored by Westminster politicians it turned out to be the one bit of pride and identity many people had left. It runs deep: even if the economy takes a vertiginous plunge, it will take a lot longer than two years to shift it.
The only way such delusions will fade is if they are finally tested in the real world and found wanting, whereupon this country may at last be ready to humbly engage with modernity. And in that sense, to paraphrase a faded politician, Brexit probably has to mean Brexit. That may result in a long spell of relative penury, and an atmosphere of recrimination and resentment. By the time everything is resolved a lot of us will either be very old or dead. But that may be the price we have to pay to belatedly put all our imperial baggage in the glass case where it belongs, and to edge our way back into the European family, if they will have us.
In the meantime, this messiest of national dramas grinds on, and not for the fi rst time the story suggests the priceless words of the American writer and satirist HL Mencken : “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
14/07/2017
Everyday sexism, sexual harassment and the need for a new feminism
“New feminism carries along the vision of a democratic reconstructing of our societies that are under attack by the forces of patriarchy and oppression.”
Everyday sexism
10/05/2017
It’s now been over eight years since I was first employed as a journalist. The intervening years of relentless output of quite frankly bleak news have blurred memories of my very first news reports and editorial news spots. However, what I do remember very vividly in those early days is how overwhelmed and stressed I felt upon entering an 80% male dominated newsroom. My day would start with a nervous breakdown ritual – reminiscent of Woody Allen films – in front of my wardrobe. My main concern was to be “appropriately” dressed, to avoid generating misunderstandings or misinterpreted signals on the part of my male colleagues. During my shift, my objective was to render myself quasi-invisible whilst keeping as productive as possible, not to react to the verbal or non-verbal brotherly code of communication, not to take a cigarette break, not to let my thoughts drift whilst looking out of the window, and to conceal any signs of menstrual discomfort. This was my way of dealing with the situation and proving that I was worthy to be in their midst. That is not to say that I was unaware of modern feminist theory.
Au contraire. I had already absorbed a large amount of Butler and Kristeva, I had protested against gender-based violence, I wasn’t one for ignoring women crying out in pain behind closed doors and had called the police every time I suspected domestic violence. However, I hadn’t managed to shake off my insecurity or my internal default setting of guilt at being a woman, both legated to womanhood by a resolutely patriarchal society. I responded inadequately to the daily, inferred and diffuse versions of sexism which are so deeply-ingrained in our collective subconscious, that they have become second nature pervading our universe. Many years, elections and memoranda later I managed to establish a more equal relationship with my male peers. Certain “bastions” of inclusivity however could never be conquered; it was never accepted that I comprehended how the offside rule worked.
This is one of my many personal experiences of everyday sexism, and the manner in which it penetrates subjectivity itself, methodically, silently maiming its autonomy. In his book “Racism without Racists”, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva explains how racism stifles the well-being of the black population in the USA and is an obstacle to equality, despite the fact that nobody would freely describe themselves as racist. Conversely, we could apply this principle to the phenomenon of “sexism without sexists”, albeit that in recent times men overwhelmingly repudiate sexism, the phenomenon however subliminally escapes from “pledges of faith” to women’s rights and takes off in all directions. It’s in school text books, it sits next to you during university lectures, it is reflected in the gaze of your employer and colleagues at work, it honks at you as you walk down the road, it squeezes you on the underground, it unashamedly and cynically pops out at you from the TV screen during an evenings’ viewing.
The predominant conceptualization of sexism may have several manifestations and become mainly apparent through the ugly face of gender-based violence; violated bodies and minds, as accounted for in police reports. However, gender-based manifestations of violence are exoteric, and no longer constitute isolated or uncommon derivatives of a sexist culture. There is an entire web of relationships, mechanisms, perceptions and behaviours which collectively form an iron fist serving at the altar of sexism where it prays devoutly, and its devotions relegate women to positions of servitude or inferiority. This belief system albeit taciturn generates and immortalizes gender stereotyping with disarming clarity.
“We have learned to consider certain behaviours as acceptable; this however does not render them less sexist: looks or comments – not necessarily vulgar – in public, references to household chores as being female, phrases like what’s wrong with her, is she on her period? or didn’t she get some last night? The problem with non violent sexism is that it manifests in a way that is difficult to explain. You feel that trust and allegiances are divided, or that you are being spoken to in a different tone, with less respect than when addressing a man”, says Anna Sigalou, student and member of the feminist initiatives ‘No Tolerance’ and ‘Fig Leaf’.
She continues cherry-picking from her personal experiences: “Let’s say I have been lucky, because I haven’t felt that sexism has been hard-hitting in my family life or social circle. This of course does not exclude me from sexism, in the general sense. I have had some bad experiences from men whose advances I rejected; one of them called me for two months, and was very abusive, whilst the other bullied me because I supposedly hurt his feelings. On an outing, a male friend would offer the keys of his car to other males but not to me – at least not without an argument – despite the fact that we were both equally good (or bad) drivers. You will often find that you don’t have an audience if you’re talking about a violent event that doesn’t involve bruising or which merely left you emotionally scarred. Being stared at on public transport or squashed isn’t considered to be serious, because it happens to all women. There is a permanent quashing of womankind in public life”.
Sexism is as endemic as reality and an integral component of power, not only in its oppressive and prohibitive dimension but as an everyday, socialised and embodied phenomenon, as per Foucauldian theory. Gender is by no means a fixed or unchangeable category. It is an arena in which power struggles are fought and it is socially constructed through performativity, in other words during the fulfilment of normative, cultural and largely surreptitious rules. You become female or male through the dynamic re-enactment of the norm for femininity and masculinity. However these social roles do not transition with painless parity to social equality. They are the fundamental vestiges of a patriarchal society. Therefore sexism penetrates our lives at inception and creates a cloud to accompany us on all strata of social life. It becomes normalised.
This image becomes a familiar, albeit distorted and innately worrying, representation of ourselves. We hate it and we feel uncomfortable, it either incites embarrassing coexistence or disciplined assimilation of humiliating behaviour. We are no longer shocked by it because we have simply learned how to live with it. We are programmed, on the road, no matter how sound our driving skills may be, to put up with endless hooting, the menacing winding down of windows, or the barely muffled laments “alas, female drivers!” We know that we are going to have fight for professional advancement. We have trained for this at Olympic speed whilst walking home on an evening. We are fully aware, that for us, the passage of time, getting older, or diverging from stereotypical beauty, is simply unforgivable. Once we hit 40, we become the wrinkled disdained, whilst they become “the cute baldie” or “the sexy grey haired guy”. Our sexual malfunctions are put down to us being unsexy or lacklustre, and of course, their sexual malfunctions are entirely our fault. These are the lessons we are taught as adolescents, enhancing the development of strategic defence and repeal tactics to handle these situations when the time comes. Heaven forbid we should choose to discuss these issues, for we would surely fall into the pit of incomprehension or be exposed to full scale mockery.
“I find it terribly uncomfortable when we are out in a crowd and I am expected to express unqualified approval by showing signs of smiling when somebody is about to make a sexist comment. At that point I have two choices: To act indifferently (i.e. accept oppression) or to start a conversation expressing my discomfort. The first typical one-liners that I will generate as a response are “Don’t be OTT!”, or from the deep thinkers “Political correctness has shut down all conversations”. I work in a testosterone fuelled environment, i.e. with men who want their manliness to be felt. A female journalist must prove herself worthy of the profession and adopt a traditionally male reporting approach. Topics have a default gender setting. It is rare for a male colleague to write on e.g. cultural affairs. It’s also considered weird that I should attend alone at the Moria Refugee Camp following clashes that breakout from time to time”, says Anthi Pazianou, a Lesvos island journalist writing for the local “Empros” newspaper and reporting on “Radio Aiolos” as well as being a correspondent for the national daily newspaper “Kathimerini”.
Anthi’s experience lays bare a facet of oppression experienced by women working in the media sector. “The profession acts as a multidirectional hotspot which clearly operates as an ideological hub, generating and regenerating stereotypes. Consider the naked misogyny of Themos Anastasiadis who has undertaken on behalf of his newspaper the operation of symbolically annihilating women through sensationalist and objectified representation of the female body in lifestyle magazines;
Greek media reeks of sexism. Or the entertainment section where women are portrayed either as sex objects or as “homemakers” and “mothers”, whereas they are almost completely absent from the news section. Panels of commentators on news programs are male dominated with the exception of a few female MPs and ministers. The structure of broadcasting itself in Greece seems to imply that women aren’t capable of serious broadcasting, and should only do cookery, fashion and gossip spots. I feel terribly vexed when sexist crime e.g. femicide or domestic violence is not referred to as such and instead we hear reports of “crimes of passion”; this is deeply offensive and misleading. Perpetrators of such crimes appear to be decriminalized and the patriarchal root which gives rise to these crimes is silenced”, adds Anthi Pazianou.
The truth is that nowadays we are experiencing a revival of true, pure and inbred sexism, and Donald Trump could be considered as embodying all of these attributes, however many men try to avoid being branded as sexist. Their claims, despite very often being affected by informal collective adult learning, stem from the womb of sexism itself. Justifying gender difference within a historical and evolutionary context which defends the gender based distribution of tasks and duties, or seemingly admires “femininity” or “the fair sex”; essentialistic sources of inspiration which reinforce traditional female roles and seek to paternalize female existence, or the conspiracy to represent women as dark and devious creatures with magical powers and men as mere puppets, or the denial of a patriarchy and therefore by extension the need for the existence of feminism, are barely disguised forms of sexism.
These strategies are now being upgraded with new forms of sexism and female oppression, like stealthing, the male practice of removing protection during sex without the consent of their partner, a practice which according to research in the USA is becoming “fashionable”. Also, slut shaming, the social stigma attributed to how women may manage their sexuality or revenge porn, publicizing female sexual content (photos, texts, video) without mutual consent. Two core methods of controlling female sexuality and punishing emancipated women. Huge tension is brought to bear through the omnipresence of social media, besmirching reputations and transforming personalities.
All of this is wonderfully facilitated by the absence of the State itself to convincingly establish an antisexism standard, instead it churns out of its bowels abhorrent effigies of antifeminism. Sexism is ratified in Parliament, it becomes embedded in politics and it is publicly applauded. Political reporting is alive with such examples, from the immortalized comment of Pasok MP Mr Socrates Xynidis to Ms Eva Kaili also a Pasok MP who was pleading for permission to speak in parliament “Pipe down, you garter!”, to Mr Iordani Tzamtzi MP for New Democracy commenting “Even when you marry, you could end up with a wrong’un”, to the way the names of Scarlett Johansson and Georgia Vasileiadou have been added to the toolbox of wisecracks in micropolitical life. Female politicians hardly ever attract attention to their role as public servants, but are often in the limelight due to their gender. Journalist Stefanos Kasimatis blatant misogynistic announcement of Tasia Christodoulopoulou Syriza MP becoming a grandmother “Shudder the thought, you must have become a mother at some point” was later baptized as “humorous” by himself, but nobody was laughing. Politicians partners are often easy targets.
The newspaper Avriani published one of the most filthy pages in Greek journalistic history in their character assassination of Dimitra Liani. The same newspaper, unrepentant years later in 2015, called upon Zoe Konstantopoulou’s husband to “Sort her out”. Greek journalists and the great general public who use the internet don’t see any reason to restrict their comments to the partners of Greek politicians. Sexism knows no borders. Daggers are out for Brigitte Trogneux, Emanuel Macron’s wife. It’s not like couples with a twenty-five year age gap haven’t ever paraded out in public ever before. Many men, whether they are politicians or not, are married to much younger women. No problem with that. They might actually gain in social stature by doing so. A male with a much younger female partner is usually described in terms relating to “swagger”. Trogneux caused an outcry because she breached the gender based hierarchy. The guardians of patriarchy, whether pulling cheap sexist psychiatrization punches with references to the “Oedipus complex”, or overtly criticizing Macron’s love choices – indeed why didn’t he consult them – are shoring up phallocratic support.
Maria Repousi, a woman with a long tenure in feminist regime change and a historian, but also on the receiving end of sexist behaviour as an MP, speaks to Inside Story of her experiences: “Female politicians are on the receiving end of many sexist attacks, intended to politically annihilate them. Our appearance tends to provide ammunition. If you type “Repousi and tights” into Google, you will find a number of photos of my legs at the ballot box in Parliament. Female MPs are very often judged not on their political opinions but on the way they choose to dress, their choice of handbags, shoes, etc. The travesty doesn’t stop there. Its true dimension lies in the fact that regardless of their political affiliations, female politicians aren’t capable of adopting a common stance of solidarity in order to rebut such behaviour. In general, political life in Greece is extremely patriarchal, both in its representation, its formation and of course in its rhetoric. Feminism is but a caricature, even when for reasons of political correctness it defends gender equality. I count amongst the most difficult days of serving as an MP the 8th of March when I have to listen to cheap political debate about women. We are easy topics for controversy because we inevitably bring out gender ideology and therefore targeting us is always completely successful. I have been the target of extreme controversy, as indeed have other female politicians, and in my experience I can say that such controversy threatens our physical integrity. For example a Deputy Minister from the current coalition government with the Independent Greeks called upon Golden Dawn to “crowd” me in Parliament so that I could grasp the concept of crowding. This was not questioned at all when he became a Minister.
Language, which transpires from the dominance of the male gender and which stands defiantly inventing words and labels which universally embrace gender based identities, is a very important determinant for establishing sexism in everyday life. In recent years there have been individual and collective interventions into the field of sexist language but it is extremely telling of the adherence to a sexist culture that these interventions are dealt with as hysterical attacks intended to injure spontaneity. When we ask our co-interlocutors to refrain from making sexist gags, to refrain from criticizing women’s appearance, to refrain from commenting on sexual activity in dominating terms, to use more inclusive language in their writing, they look at us as if we were aliens newly-landed from the planet of political correctness, as if language wasn’t a semantically loaded sector which puts skin on the bones of reality. In fact, in Jacques Lacan’s work, language is intended as the driving force which constructs subjectivity with the phallus taking pride of place.
Dimitris Zachos, Assistant Professor of Pedagogy – Intercultural Education Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, explains that the language of negotiation remains very phallic: The language we use is predisposed given that it reflects social structures, a fact which affects the way in which we grasp meaning and the way in which we think. Sexist language prevails both in public and private discourse and it contributes to the reproduction of sexist ideology and of social practices which emanate from the same. Sexist language manifests itself on a structural, syntactical and semantical level. On a structural level a rule has been established (by male linguists) on the basis of which “male precedes female”, e.g. in the Constitution of the Hellenic Republic the term “Female Hellenes” is referred to just once, whereas the term “Hellenes (male case)” is dominant. On a syntactical level the rule is that when the subjects in a sentence are not both of the same gender, the grammar defaults to the male case, e.g. “Kostas and Nikki were colleagues (male plural) in the past”. On a semantics level, let us just ponder for a moment the meaning attributed to the words: Wifey, womanising, effeminate, vixen and on the other: Bravery, puppet, man-up.
To demonstrate the structural presence of sexism and how the appropriate backdrop is formed for the manifestation of gender violence, the French filmmaker Eleonore Pourriat shot a genius experimental film “Oppressed Majority”. The film presents a reversal of reality with women behaving exactly like men, e.g. running around bare-chested alongside men pushing prams, urinating in urban alleys, chatting up male passers-by, sexually harassing them. It is an exquisite sketch exposing sexist colonization in everyday life and the dangers implied therein. It is encouraging that we are experiencing an international trend of exposing everyday sexism, even in its most deeply embedded form, thanks to a revival of feminism both in the arts and journalism.
Recently a video on periods went viral on ABC, showing an overdue need for normalisation of menstruation in public life, breaking free from disdainful patholigization and signification of profanity. Familiarisation with periods, as a basic and simple function of the female reproductive system and the cessation of trading pads and tampons subversively like we were pushing drugs in Omonoia, constitutes a small victory against sexism. Everyday sexism project is a space where women may catalogue instances of sexism in every day life. The experiences of women, not as individual cases, but as a collective challenge, lie at the core of this modern debate. Moreover, we have learned from postmodernist theory that experience is always political. Therefore for women to speak of their body and their daily life, means that we are exposing personal sites of oppression and abuse. It simultaneously heralds a process of raising awareness which flips the hourglass of tolerance upside-down.
It’s a man’s world: Sexual harassment.
21/03/2017
The majority of straight white men are almost unfamiliar with a category of sounds. It is the sound of irregular breathing on a dark road at night; breathlessness from running all the way home in order to get in safely, the unutterable cursing on the underground or at the traffic lights of a busy junction, the gritting of teeth at work or in a lecture room, the echoing of an extended “no” disappearing after an act of imposing male dominance. I am talking about fear; not of the existential type that is associated with death, the passage of time, or illness, nor of neurotic fear conveyed through objects or situations. I am talking of the fear that women experience. It is integral to our collective memory, an unspoken and painful common experience. It accompanies us solidly from adolescence, initially in an amorphous and hazy manner but later we recognize this to be the shape of a man. He may be a relative, a co-student, or a colleague, a complete stranger on the road, or in a bar, he is every man who sexually harasses a woman. It is all at once the archetypal threat and the epitome of macho culture that so many of us have unfortunately fearfully come face-to-face with at some point.
Dragged centre stage by recent depressing incidents, the topic of sexual harassment is once again at the forefront of international affairs, its most prominent exponent Donald Trump who has been accused of multiple counts of sexual harassment, or publicly manifest through the silent absolution of Casey Affleck accused by two women of sexual harassment, then rewarded by Hollywood with an Oscar for best actor in a male leading role, presented to him by an unimpressed Brie Larsson. Let us not stop here without mentioning Uber. Susan Fowler, formerly a site reliability engineer publicly reported how she became the victim of sexual harassment at the company at the hands of her manager. Before going public with her story, Susan reported the incident to the company’s HR department, but she soon discovered that he wasn’t going to be challenged by HR because he was a high performer and this was his “first offence”. After Fowler went public and the #DeleteUber campaign was reactivated, the company announced that it was hiring the former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the accusation and contribute to creating a better working environment for women.
This is by no means the first time that Silicone Valley has been shaken by a sexual harassment scandal. Colossal hi-tech companies such as Apple and Google have been accused from time to time of propagating a sexist working environment that favours sexual harassment and gender discrimination. Research conducted amongst 200 women working in technology companies found that 60% had experienced unwanted sexual advances, whereas one in three didn’t feel safe. The Guardian newspaper research sheds light on the epidemic of sexual harassment and gender based violence in British universities. In accordance with published information, 300 incidents of staff sexually harassing students has been reported over six years; these incidents were generally not reported by the students for fear of what the impact on their studies or careers might be, or an unofficial “solution” was sought within academia.
Clearly sexual harassment is not a problem specific to the anglo-saxon world. It is a normalised form of gender based violence and it is prevalent everywhere, in every country, both in the public and private sector. Nonetheless it remains notoriously undocumented, clearly the victims choose not to officially persevere with their complaints, maybe because their complaints are clearly not perceived as such, a fact which reflects the established social perceptions of “masculinity” and “femminity”. In 2014, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights registered reported sexual harassment in Greece at 15% and in Denmark at 37%. Obviously this doesn’t prove that Denmark has a higher incidence of sexual harassment than Greece, rather it speaks of a diffuse sexist culture in our country, where aggressive male behaviour is so deeply-ingrained that it is accepted as a given.
“The recognition of sexual harassment – as well as other forms of violence – from the victims of sexual harassment themselves as harassing or offensive behaviour, is directly linked to subjective and other social factors. Often victims of sexual harassment do not make a formal complaint either because they are afraid or because they consider harassment as a normal component of gender role play. Gender stereotypes in Greece remain powerful, despite the significant progress which has been made in raising awareness and providing support services to deal with violence against women. It’s enough to surf the internet or follow in the media (advertisements, programs, television series) to discover that traditional perceptions are deeply rooted, often under the guise of “humour”, nevertheless such perceptions strengthen or “sanction” violent behaviour.
Unfortunately there is a plethora of examples. It’s worth mentioning at this point that after our strong reaction to an advertisement that incited gender based violence, we were attacked as lacking a sense of humour and accused of censorship. Our experience derives from operating the Advice Centres, the cases handled by our advisors on a daily basis leave no margin for mirth when it comes to dealing with the phenomenon of violence against women”, VIMagazino is told by Irini Agathopoulou, the President of the Research Centre for Gender Equality.
Recently she had lodged a complaint against her superior whilst working in the public sector in Zakynthos for sexual verbal abuse which had lasted for two and half years. When she finally reacted, she was punished with a revenge change of post. This is the second charge that has been brought against the person in question. The Directorate for Secondary Education in Ileia is handling a parallel case, whereby students reported being sexually harassed by their teacher, whereas reports from female officers at the Venezuelan Embassy of aggressive and abusive behaviour of the former ambassador were very revealing. The common thread which ties all these cases together and many others that remain invisible is that they involve a male authority figurehead seeking to breach the boundaries of his authority by passing into the female body and psychology.
Pothiti Chantzaroula, a historian at the University of the Aegean with a considerable body of research, sheds light on an obscure facet of sexual harassment and abuse which is experienced in domestic work: “Paid domestic work has always been an area where power relationships are played out and this type of employment seems to be sexually charged in the European fantasy. The role of the domestic worker – the “maid” – in Greek cinema expresses and positions gender and class divisions which pervaded Greek society within the context of urban households. On the basis of these class divisions the female employers were cast in the positive role both in respect of social class and femminity (mother-Madonna), whereas the employees were cast as negative roles (by traditionally becoming sexual objects).
This fantasy is an ideological construct and it is so powerful that it is posited as completely normal in the verbal expressions and representations of the dominant class. Power relationships withdraw from public sight, where they become the “norm”. The shame felt by the victims of sexual violence, i.e. female domestics, and their silence stems from the knowledge of what is said about them, and how they are portrayed, as well as from the patriarchal organization of honour, on the basis of which women must prove their innocence in rape incidents. This patriarchal honour culture embraces purity as a control mechanism; it follows therefore that the loss of purity results in the loss of honour and therefore the only destination for women is lost too, i.e. that of the sanctity of marriage and motherhood.
Sexual harassment is a facet of sexual violence, arising from inequality and patriarchal structures in modern society, it is propped up by the culture of rape. A term reminiscent of the feminist drive of the 70s, whereby rape was recognized as an act of violence accompanied by patriarchal dominance and structural inequality and not by what is conveniently termed as male “sex drive”, a term which promotes the logic of absolution and tolerance of sexual violence. Rape, despite being the most marginal version of objectifying and humiliating the human body is the only crime where the victim is paraded around rather than the perpetrator. If we take into account that not a single public prosecutor, has ever enquired as to how the perpetrator was dressed, and is only interested in what the victim was wearing when the crime was committed, if she was inebriated, if she was flirting with the perpetrator, if she was promiscuous, then it doesn’t come as a surprise that this is the crime with the lowest conviction rate (just 2-3%). Judges don’t seem to require evidence of guilt on the part of the perpetrator but evidence substantiating the reliability of the victim. A woman who has been raped is only credible if she is surrounded by evidence of an untarnished life and if she bears serious wounds which prove that she engaged in mortal combat with her rapist.
In Greece in 2015, in accordance with official police data, 122 rapes were recorded and 54 attempted rapes, whereas 134 rapes and 64 attempted rapes were recorded in 2016. The International Organization Equality Now classifies Greece amongst the countries where rape victims are unprotected by the legislative process. However, what is even more shocking is what is recorded in the social conscience, given that a recent European Union study found that 27% of Europeans and 32% of Greeks accept rape “under certain conditions” (if the victim was scantily dressed or was under the influence of alcohol), these perceptions invoke the most anachronistic gender stereotypes. Perhaps the most shameful and sinister expression of misogyny in Greek society occurred in 2006 in Amarynthos, when a fifteen year old Bulgarian schoolgirl reported that she was gang raped by four of her classmates who were also filming themselves committing the crime and that in court forty witnesses came forward in support of the defendants whereas only the mother of the victim came forward for the prosecution.
It is within this framework that the group “sexharassmap” was formed, to record incidences of sexual harassment and gender based violence in Greece: “The aim of the map is to gather all incidences brought to our attention that have taken place all over Greece. We feel that by actually placing them geographically, renders them more visible. We don’t like talking about this type of violence, and if we do, we treat it like something that happens elsewhere. By putting these crimes on a map we highlight how prevalent this type of violence is. The frequency with which these crimes occur prove that gender based crime isn’t committed by men with mental health issues but it’s perhaps closer to home than you think, maybe even next door. Even though we are by no means a professional reporting organization, we have already placed 141 rapes on the map. Information is sought in the media and police reports and often we are contacted anonymously. Talking to friends, relatives, and acquaintances we become increasingly aware of how common this type of crime is. This is a particular type of violence that many of us simply cannot stave off. That is why even unofficial reporting is so important. “Reporting is reacting” this is the mantra of VIMagazino.
This is the story of our lives, it is the bread and butter of our upbringing, whether this was in a conservative or more liberal family environment, we need to be careful, even if this means stifling our desires and our freedom, otherwise we may fall victims of gender based crime. We are destined to carry the stigma of original sin, we need to learn to duck and dive through an assault course of insults, and to suffer in silence. In fact prevention strategies are all about teaching women to avert harassment, abuse and rape. And if the threat actually manifests itself, as it inevitably does, we are taught to go through the trials and tribulations of re-establishing our lives alone, and to reconcile ourselves with fear, so as not to rock the happy families boat, the education system, the world of work, religion and politics.
A sincere approach to equality would reverse the status quo; it would train men not to harass, abuse or rape. And if they chose to do so, it would punish them.
A new type of feminism
02/05/2017
From Madonna to the women of the Sioux tribe at Standing Rock, from Arianna Huffington to the trans activists in Pakistan and from Asli Ergogan to Peru’s forcibly sterilized women under Fujimori, the length and breadth of this increasingly sad and dark world, where the advances of human civilization stand at the precipice of the abyss, women are charging ahead to the forefront and they are doing so with dynamism. Women are the public face of resistance. Resistance, which for many years was sparse, atrophic and inward-looking, is now united in a different dimension, the wonderfully diverse and powerful solidarity of a new type of feminism, capable of shaking the foundations of a dystopian global political conservatism. At this point in history, Walter Benjamin’s, “Angel of History”, has the face of a woman. It might be Saffiyah Khan in Birmingham, defying the EDL with a smile on her face, or Leshia Evans peacefully confronting a line of heavily armed riot police during a Black Lives Matter protest or Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who escaped an ISIS camp where she was forcibly held as a sex slave, now the first Good will Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking of the United Nations. Womanhood stands united and sticks two fingers up in the face of those who would subdue it.
Feminism is trendy. Even international fashion houses have upped their game seeking to shake off criticism for seemingly sanctifying the objectification and oppression of the female form in the past. We are all feminist-friendly. This isn’t something that has suddenly fallen to earth, quite the opposite. It has been a long-time coming, staking out workplaces, universities, parliaments, hiding out in interpersonal relationships, which, as Carol Hanisch maintains, remain political. The struggles that women have had to endure are deeply ingrained in our collective memory and at least from the beginning of the 20th century – when a systematic recording of the same commenced – they resurge during intervals of dead calm or recession in order to do battle with omnipresent patriarchy.
Feminism in its new manifestation is high on intensity and dynamism, as conveyed on the great Women’s March, which put a damper on the lips of those who hastened to call a rematch against women’s rights. The truth is that the feminist movement experienced a great, revealing moment of renaissance in the 70s and 80s when it managed to establish a series of institutional changes which improved women’s everyday lives and it left its mark as a moral compass for the future. However, the end of the 80s brought with it a decline. We entered into an arid twenty year period of integration, internal division and derision of the very concept of feminism itself, which was presented in the media as a caricature of an unshaven and unsexy woman. Of course during the years of decline, processes persisted on an intellectual level within groups but their power and reach was limited. Today however, given that the glitz and glamour of lifestyle media has lost its sheen under the burden of a global economic crisis, against the menacing backdrop of growing extreme nationalism and religious fundamentalism, the lay of the land lends itself to the rise of a new type of feminism.
It started emerging in Poland last year alongside a trend towards attacking women’s reproductive rights and self-determination to the female body. It became evident that women weren’t just going to lie down and bear it, no, they were resolute in their decision to protect their rights. It was this reaction that influenced the Polish government into refraining from criminalizing abortion. Donald Trump’s election caused an international storm which drew in female disapproval worldwide, as he is the very embodiment of macho culture. “Trump is empowered by unbridled hatred and sexual activity that doesn’t hang around for consent. From when did we start asking women if we need permission to grope them, why should we? He may not be so explicit, but that is exactly what he means. He has opened the floodgates to anger and hatred. His supporters whether wealthy, poor or from the middle classes feel as though they were repelled or censored by the left, by feminists, by movements in support of political rights and equality, by Obama’s legacy, which permitted a black man to represent the nation”, writes Judith Butler, Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley and queer theorist, writing on the Trump phenomenon.
The Women’s March on 21st January, was the largest civil protest in the history of the USA and it sparked 700 protests around the globe which involved a total of 4,5 million protesters and set the pink woollen beanie with cat ears against the red baseball hat with the slogan “Make American great again” and heralded the clashing of two worlds; the backward, intolerant, misogynistic, homophobic world, i.e. the stuff of the Wild West’s cowboy wet dreams, against that of the open world which embraces inclusivity, pluralism, like a living metaphor for darkness against light. The pussyhat immortalized this contest and it made the covers of Time magazine and the New Yorker. This was followed by 8th March which didn’t take long to diverge from the soulless, standardized proclamations of government representatives, to denouncing consumerism and attacking female stereotypes, thereby reclaiming the Day as a struggle for women’s rights with mass demonstrations in all major cities.
New feminism is distinctive because of its inclusivity. It joins up stiletto heels to hijabs, it embraces cultural diversity, transgender women, those that feel female or refuse to be categorised on the basis of traditional norms on “masculinity” and “femminity”. The feminist movement of the 70s and 80s was criticized for being a white type of feminism, centred round a western worldview and because it didn’t interact with non-Western typologies of female existence. Albeit its huge contribution it couldn’t surpass surmounting contradictions that have been inherited from the modern world. Today, purified postmodern feminism lays down the terms for gender based engagement, class, gender, sexuality and the formation of identities but also gives rise to cinematic expressions of black feminism, native feminism, the lgbtqi community, it has transformed the previous contract and creates a mosaic of verbal engagement, representation and action.
“Older feminist movements victimized women who didn’t fit into the mould of western feminism. Today the coordinating committee of Women’s March has a woman wearing a hijab. In general terms there is a plurality of voices emerging e.g. black and transgender women who have now found representation. In Greece, this kind of dialogue isn’t so vibrant, given that there isn’t yet an established organization of women wearing hijabs. Recently however there was a concerted effort to welcome female immigrant groups into the Hellenic Womens Movement, as indeed was done with the African Womens Union. Disagreements still persist between older and younger feminists. Porn, slut shaming, BDSM, the hijab, these are the most common grounds of controversy. For the older feminists BDSM is simply not a practice that can be accommodated within feminism. Of course the most controversial topic is the hijab. I must confess that on a recent visit to Turkey, I felt bewildered to see 70% of women, even girls as young as 4 or 6, wearing the hijab.
I am however very interested in hearing the voices of women who say that the hijab is their personal choice. Basically in Greece feminism was for white city women. The world of work remains a hardcore patriarchy. My grandmother, Simela, a worker in a tobacco factory in Kavala, often felt betrayed by male co-workers. They had even gone on strike in protest of women being promoted to superior roles. My grandmother never forgot this”, we are told by Zoe Kokkalou, a social worker and member of the Feminist Initiative to combat violence against women. She maintains that what we are experiencing today is a conjuncture of decompression in a movement with depth and vision: “Crucial work is being done in the feminist movement in the USA. Whereas gender violence is rife in India and we are seeing mass mobilization there. Latin America presents us with some very interesting progress. In Africa we have a resurgence of female politicians. In Greece we have many groups and e-magazines. All this tells us that what we are experiencing is not transitory”, she adds.
The wind of global feminism is blowing over Greece too. The long financial recession intensified the terms of female oppression, e.g. job insecurity, unemployment, the gender pay gap, sexual harassment. Statistics recorded in the crisis show visible gender categorization. Whereas parameters pertaining to gender based violence and trafficking have taken on a particularly dramatic and multi-layered appearance. Despite the institutional background for dealing with gender based violence, we are seeing that there is a chasm between its purported work and what actually happens in daily life. The recent decision by the Court of Kavala to acquit the rapists in Xanthi on arguments which are complete fabrications, is just one endpoint of a sexist regime and the dominance of inequality. This environment has given rise to feminist collectives that re-establish female activism and seek radical interventions in the arena of speech and ideas.
Irini Dafermou, an administrator at Panteion University and a member of the recently launched active group “No Tolerance” speaks to VIMagazino about her experience: “Women who are living through a capitalism crisis and political conservatism are under siege. We have discussions and we are very concerned. The groundwork had been done. Last year in September after the rape case and forced prostitution of the 14year old in Larisa we decided to this form group. We wanted to create a platform which brought female initiatives together. That is how we formed Zero Tolerance. The group has been active for a year now and it is plugged into international developments. Some of its members are long standing feminists from the previous generation but the core members are young women, many 20-22 year olds, without any experience of politicization but who are oppressed and angry. They are angry that they are experiencing a dead end in terms of employment prospects due to the financial crisis. Sexism finds fertile breeding grounds in despair.
Nevertheless, their anger is creative. This year’s demonstration of the 8th March was one of the largest we have known over the past 30 years. I think we are at the dawn of an era where feminism will be called to play a vital role. It won’t be opportunistic but the inception of a new movement, a new type of feminism that will be overwhelmingly inclusive. This is how the movement is described in America too, with a direct reference to the movement Occupy. I am very happy and optimistic. I perceive feminism as a channel which embraces every facet of life, from cradle to grave”, she concludes.
The new face of feminism is defined by a constant osmosis and dialogue with other movements. It embraces Black Lives Matter, it is against Islamophobia, it supports radical environmentalism for the protection of the planet, it fights against job insecurity, it supports a strong social state that will provide a safety net against poverty and despair. With emancipation at its core it is indeed fuelled by women but it reaches out to wider social majorities. In this sense new feminism sows the seeds of a new democratic world order free from the powers of autocracy and patriarchy. This is how civil rights activist Angela Davis, rallied the crowds at the Women’s March in Washington: “At a challenging moment in our history, let us remind ourselves that we the hundreds of thousands, the millions of women, trans-people, men and youth who are here at the Women’s March, we represent the powerful forces of change that are determined to prevent the dying cultures of racism, hetero-patriarchy from rising again. We recognize that we are collective agents of history and that history cannot be deleted like web pages”.