Women and Dale Farm
The soothing voice of the Woman has been silenced, Her soft touch calloused and Her warm embrace cooled. Where are the Nightingales, the Frys, the Slessors, the Bartons, the Boardmans of the 21st Century?
In the period over which the drama of the Dale Farm evictions was played out on the national media and press, there was a silence from one section of the society, a silence so deafening, it led me to question whether its Voice still existed or if that silence was permanent and never to be broken again.
Over the course of the last century and beyond, one sure thing communities across the World could count upon was the unflinching and formidable solidarity of Women as a distinct group, the famed Sisterhood, the strong women of the World railing against the wiles of male dominated societies regardless of race, class, religion or culture, all united in their fight for the recognition women's civil and political rights, children's rights, the fight against prostitution, woman and child trafficking, forced marriages, religious oppression and a whole host of other similar campaigns. But on this particular and pertinent issue I ask this question:
Where was the solidarity with the fellow mothers, the fellow wives and the children of Dale Farm?
I certainly do not intend to be presumptuous in stating that if not the majority of people in general, the majority of women residing in the so-called ‘settled community' will have identified with and empathised to some degree with the core aims and desires of the most prominent members of that traveller community; those outspoken and formidable mothers and grandmothers. The desire to keep their families intact, the desire to see young children settled and their livelihoods undisrupted, the instinctive responsibility for the well-being and care of elderly relatives, the desire to propagate the lifestyle and cultures handed down through the generations, the importance of family history and its personal sacredness, the recognition of the importance of mutual support and assistance afforded by having the extended family to lend a hand particularly when one belongs to an ethnic group which has been consistently marginalised. Surely, through all the rhetoric of the rights and wrongs of the planning law, one would have thought women of all backgrounds would have seen through the defiant words, the braggadocio of the likes of Kathleen McCarthy (a prominent Traveller spokeswoman, mother and grandmother) and recognised that far from being a compulsive lawbreaker, here was a mother who just like any other would in that situation, fighting in defence of her family's and in particular her children's futures in the face of an uncompassionate bureaucracy? And if this not be the case, I ask why not? Have we lost all sense of compassionate empathy, become so base, selfish and low in our relationships with others less fortunate, that even Woman, the more nobly and instinctively caring of the species is forced to suppress and subject her innate and valuable assets, her virtues to the prevalent macho drive?
I prefer to contend that all these distinctively feminine and motherly cares and desires outlined above are deeply felt by mothers and females of mature age alike. The bond between a child and its mother is one I cannot say I fully fathom but it is one which I saw expressed in its extensive rawness in the recordings of the events of 19/10/2011. The desire of those mothers to fight and argue the case against disrupting their children's stability and living comfort is surely one thing that every mother regardless of culture recognises. However I ask again: Where were the likes of the Women's Institute, ‘mumsnet', Platform 51 and other prominent women's organizations including the women's groups affiliated to prominent political parties, the majority of whose members were in the unique position of understanding both sides of the dispute, being females and mothers who understood the inbuilt desire of a mother to protect and provide for the child as well as the need for the law to be upheld? Where were their offers to mediate between the two parties in such a unique situation, where surely their voices would have held up much weight in the rhetoric and clamour of ‘The law must be upheld?' in offering the understanding and compassionate angle sorely required to balance the debate?
Imagine this scenario. Fifty or so of the female constituents of Basildon Council, of all ages – girls, wives, mothers and grandmothers marching on the Council Hall with the full support of prominent women's organizations I outlined above, demanding an audience with the Council leader and his fellow councillors in a bid to negotiate a settlement between the two disputing parties; an audience which would likely have been granted as a recognized right of a constituent. Wouldn't such an action have gone a long way in getting the Council to acknowledge its obligation to provide appropriate sites for the evicted travellers to settle on? An action to offer a balance, to impress on the Council that after raising a family for 10 years, legally or illegally on a site surrounded by extended family, links with society, schools, healthcare and local amenities, it is with great difficulty and a great deal of reluctance that one has to contemplate packing up and leaving unless one is assured that as a mother, the future welfare of her children and her family is assured and secure. Else, one is likely to fight to keep what one has irrespective of the law. The law may have been broken, but the importance of and the need for the Council to meet its obligations to settle the evictees in adequate child-friendly and yes, culturally amenable sites is something I feel women more than most could have impressed upon the male-dominated authorities who refused to countenance such a fundamental desire.
I fear the highest feminine attributes, attributes which all men (by ‘men', I mean the male of the human species) look up to and admire; virtues and merits instinctive within the Woman, the so-called paragon of virtue and the angel of the family have dwindled in public esteem and seem to be suppressed to such a degree that that natural fount of compassion has dried up and can no longer be counted upon. Alas, it appears the natural caring, compassionate, soothing and merciful voice of the female has all but died out drowned by the calls for more machismo and toughness of character as the sole means for an ambitious female to get by in the 21st Century. Furthermore, it seems in this day and age, an expression of sympathetic cares and empathetic compassion on the part of the female is regarded as a soft stance, evidence of a weakness of character, a carbuncle to be scratched at and rooted out, a blot, a stain on the copy book of one's feminist drive. No! I say. It is the very opposite, a valuable and necessary asset, the expression of the highest virtue, the virtues embodied in the highest of all goods which by and large comes more instinctively and intensely to the Woman. The soft touch of a Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Fry, Mary Slessor, Clara Barton, Mabel Boardman, Eleanor Roosevelt amongst many others, all strong-willed women, I grant but who nevertheless showed through their actions that natural untainted femininity, compassion and selfless empathy indeed embodies the greatest of all virtues in a male-dominated macho World. Now, more so than ever before, this World requires more demonstrations of this kind of selfless compassion and not less of it.
To suppress these instinctive compassionate urges I put to you is to deny this ailing World the soothing balm it sorely requires at the very moment it requires it most; the necessary push it requires to tilt it back on its correct axis. Cherish those urges, I say. Embrace them, nurture them as assets, as values and express them in the face of the relentless machismo prevalent in these times. For the Woman need not be content with being regarded and lauded the fairer of the sexes in looks and appearance alone, for she is also endowed with the natural capacity, if she'll only give it free rein, to be the fairer in her judgement.
In the period over which the drama of the Dale Farm evictions was played out on the national media and press, there was a silence from one section of the society, a silence so deafening, it led me to question whether its Voice still existed or if that silence was permanent and never to be broken again.
Over the course of the last century and beyond, one sure thing communities across the World could count upon was the unflinching and formidable solidarity of Women as a distinct group, the famed Sisterhood, the strong women of the World railing against the wiles of male dominated societies regardless of race, class, religion or culture, all united in their fight for the recognition women's civil and political rights, children's rights, the fight against prostitution, woman and child trafficking, forced marriages, religious oppression and a whole host of other similar campaigns. But on this particular and pertinent issue I ask this question:
Where was the solidarity with the fellow mothers, the fellow wives and the children of Dale Farm?
I certainly do not intend to be presumptuous in stating that if not the majority of people in general, the majority of women residing in the so-called ‘settled community' will have identified with and empathised to some degree with the core aims and desires of the most prominent members of that traveller community; those outspoken and formidable mothers and grandmothers. The desire to keep their families intact, the desire to see young children settled and their livelihoods undisrupted, the instinctive responsibility for the well-being and care of elderly relatives, the desire to propagate the lifestyle and cultures handed down through the generations, the importance of family history and its personal sacredness, the recognition of the importance of mutual support and assistance afforded by having the extended family to lend a hand particularly when one belongs to an ethnic group which has been consistently marginalised. Surely, through all the rhetoric of the rights and wrongs of the planning law, one would have thought women of all backgrounds would have seen through the defiant words, the braggadocio of the likes of Kathleen McCarthy (a prominent Traveller spokeswoman, mother and grandmother) and recognised that far from being a compulsive lawbreaker, here was a mother who just like any other would in that situation, fighting in defence of her family's and in particular her children's futures in the face of an uncompassionate bureaucracy? And if this not be the case, I ask why not? Have we lost all sense of compassionate empathy, become so base, selfish and low in our relationships with others less fortunate, that even Woman, the more nobly and instinctively caring of the species is forced to suppress and subject her innate and valuable assets, her virtues to the prevalent macho drive?
I prefer to contend that all these distinctively feminine and motherly cares and desires outlined above are deeply felt by mothers and females of mature age alike. The bond between a child and its mother is one I cannot say I fully fathom but it is one which I saw expressed in its extensive rawness in the recordings of the events of 19/10/2011. The desire of those mothers to fight and argue the case against disrupting their children's stability and living comfort is surely one thing that every mother regardless of culture recognises. However I ask again: Where were the likes of the Women's Institute, ‘mumsnet', Platform 51 and other prominent women's organizations including the women's groups affiliated to prominent political parties, the majority of whose members were in the unique position of understanding both sides of the dispute, being females and mothers who understood the inbuilt desire of a mother to protect and provide for the child as well as the need for the law to be upheld? Where were their offers to mediate between the two parties in such a unique situation, where surely their voices would have held up much weight in the rhetoric and clamour of ‘The law must be upheld?' in offering the understanding and compassionate angle sorely required to balance the debate?
Imagine this scenario. Fifty or so of the female constituents of Basildon Council, of all ages – girls, wives, mothers and grandmothers marching on the Council Hall with the full support of prominent women's organizations I outlined above, demanding an audience with the Council leader and his fellow councillors in a bid to negotiate a settlement between the two disputing parties; an audience which would likely have been granted as a recognized right of a constituent. Wouldn't such an action have gone a long way in getting the Council to acknowledge its obligation to provide appropriate sites for the evicted travellers to settle on? An action to offer a balance, to impress on the Council that after raising a family for 10 years, legally or illegally on a site surrounded by extended family, links with society, schools, healthcare and local amenities, it is with great difficulty and a great deal of reluctance that one has to contemplate packing up and leaving unless one is assured that as a mother, the future welfare of her children and her family is assured and secure. Else, one is likely to fight to keep what one has irrespective of the law. The law may have been broken, but the importance of and the need for the Council to meet its obligations to settle the evictees in adequate child-friendly and yes, culturally amenable sites is something I feel women more than most could have impressed upon the male-dominated authorities who refused to countenance such a fundamental desire.
I fear the highest feminine attributes, attributes which all men (by ‘men', I mean the male of the human species) look up to and admire; virtues and merits instinctive within the Woman, the so-called paragon of virtue and the angel of the family have dwindled in public esteem and seem to be suppressed to such a degree that that natural fount of compassion has dried up and can no longer be counted upon. Alas, it appears the natural caring, compassionate, soothing and merciful voice of the female has all but died out drowned by the calls for more machismo and toughness of character as the sole means for an ambitious female to get by in the 21st Century. Furthermore, it seems in this day and age, an expression of sympathetic cares and empathetic compassion on the part of the female is regarded as a soft stance, evidence of a weakness of character, a carbuncle to be scratched at and rooted out, a blot, a stain on the copy book of one's feminist drive. No! I say. It is the very opposite, a valuable and necessary asset, the expression of the highest virtue, the virtues embodied in the highest of all goods which by and large comes more instinctively and intensely to the Woman. The soft touch of a Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Fry, Mary Slessor, Clara Barton, Mabel Boardman, Eleanor Roosevelt amongst many others, all strong-willed women, I grant but who nevertheless showed through their actions that natural untainted femininity, compassion and selfless empathy indeed embodies the greatest of all virtues in a male-dominated macho World. Now, more so than ever before, this World requires more demonstrations of this kind of selfless compassion and not less of it.
To suppress these instinctive compassionate urges I put to you is to deny this ailing World the soothing balm it sorely requires at the very moment it requires it most; the necessary push it requires to tilt it back on its correct axis. Cherish those urges, I say. Embrace them, nurture them as assets, as values and express them in the face of the relentless machismo prevalent in these times. For the Woman need not be content with being regarded and lauded the fairer of the sexes in looks and appearance alone, for she is also endowed with the natural capacity, if she'll only give it free rein, to be the fairer in her judgement.
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