The Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society is a name to pause over. Might there be an agenda here, a reworking of notions of place and locality to fit the post democratic world? Well yes, but reading critically on, data on male worklessness and the rise of lone parenthood in Great Britain pulled attention irresistibly.
It has been a flagship policy of the Leader during his years bunkered in the Treasury with the Balls, and interfering ferociously at all levels with every aspect of domestic United Kingdom policy, to provide means-tested goads to the employment of single parents.
"UK government policy towards lone parenthood...has focused almost exclusively on efforts to get more lone parents into work through tax credits, employment promotion and training...in 2006 43.5% of loan parents were still without a job...[and] subsidising lone parents in work through tax credits is expensive." The authors note the further undesirable result of encouraging lone parenthood by "improving the financial situation of loan parents relative to that of couple families". To prevent lone parenthood in the first place is always better than to have installed the present system, which is referred to as 'second best', but might well be considered 'worst'.
The econometric results presented in the paper show that for the whole country as much as half the rise in lone parenthood between 1971 and 2001 "has been due to higher male worklessness".
When Labour was voted into power in 1997 much of the landslide was an expression of hope that, particularly in the old industrial heartlands, a party with a tradition of planned intervention in infrastructure and encouragement of industrial growth might recover the fortunes of those made workless by technological change and altered terms of trade. Instead we got Gordon Brown and his tax credits and PFI; and Harman, Jowell and the wimmin lifting the heavy hand of patrilineal exploitation.
And another generation without family, provided with school as a substitute place of safety rather than a place of extrafamilial education, learning and enrichment, a client state in Labour's ghetto heartlands, and the best hope of employment there to become a trusty and help administer the rest.
Relieving this regime of office, by whatever means, is not going to be enough; they must pay more than that.
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26 comments:
I disagree.
Welfare advantages and poor allocation of housing with married parents last in the queue is causing our troubles.
It pays to produce fatherless children. Therefore we HAVE fatherless children.
Our woes in a word
WELFARE
They misheard me, I didn't say 'I love my country. It's a great place to live.'
I said,
'I loathe my country. It's a great place to leave.'
Having seen last night's Panorama about feral gangs and listened to Radio 5 Live about terrorised pensioners I am so very very angry... AND frightened.
How do we rout the utter shits that infest our legal and political systems ? Their ideologies have been unleashed upon us in a very real and deadly war and we're not fighting back.
It needs to be done urgently.
I haven't written clearly enough, E-K. The mass of data analysed shows that had the expenditure thrown away on Brown's tax credits etc. been devoted instead to assisting the reestablishment of the industrial and manufacturing sectors, particularly in older, de-industrialising areas, had social investment been directed at establishing training, retraining and educational facilities for boys and men, then the culture of lone parenthood might never have been established. It is one thing to fear the Labour movement has been instrumentalised to establish a broken, welfare world and quite another to see the hard, numerical evidence. And the authors could never be thought of as academics of the right; R.E. Rowthorn is no right winger.
But I know plenty of working fathers who have abandoned their children too.
They may well think they are hard done by paying £200 per month per child through the CSA but as a father I know they are getting off lightly.
In effect divorce among working parents is subsidised by the state through welfare top-ups. Divorcees we know are often better off or no worse than we are financially.
So many of the divorces are motivated by boredom - rarely because of abuse.
The impetus behind this is feminism. The right of mothers to exist independantly of fathers and the machinery of welfare is geared towards this.
I hate to mention it but I'm going to.
What of the influence of Carribean culture on feckless fathering ?
Weren't these the trail blazers in this phenomenon ?
I'm teaching 'em. There is no adequate substitute for loving parents. And boys need caring but dominant adult males.
And as for your econ comments, yes, how is this country going to pay its way in the world in future generations? And what's happened to the teaching of maths and science?
If I remember long ago studies correctly, the family cycle in domestic groups in West Indian cultures is a very different shape from that in the UK, with marriage occurring at a different point in the cycle and a different weighting in the roles and importance of members of kinship groups. That doesn't mean fecklessness, but it makes nonsense of when and how need might arise that calls for social assistance.
The arrival of others invariably causes unforeseen crashes in the receiving cultures, as well as the expected ones, and this happens just as much to the UK as it did to the colonies and dominions the British arrival impacted on in imperial days.
A much smaller and less interventionist state and lower social wage would leave more room for all the different cultural practices to adjust of survival necessity. As well as ending the conflict over access to socially provided goods that themselves attract the more economically dependent migrants.
Serial fathering lost its social stigma.
I believe this was the thin end of the wedge and that our welfare and religious systems (fearful of offending new 'culture') gave way in benign acceptance.
Not to lay all the blame here (I blame the establishment for caving in by the way) but we were also faced with 'free love' culture at about the same time too.
But major serial fathering was first prevalent among West Indians and probably still is.
E-K the detailed, analysis resting upon data gathered over the years stated, and treated with great sophistication in its interpretation, tells another story. Had the resources that have been given over to means tested benefits been used to enhance conditions for the development of modern industry and infrastructures, and male worklessness in all is manifestations reduced, so too, would the development of lone parenthood, in every damaging aspect, have been greatly reduced and possibly never have become established.
Anecdotal asssertion of what you consider the causes of lone parenthood and all it brings with it cannot enjoy the same worth as well-conducted and solid research work. It is not as you say. The evidence, never mind my rejection for other reasons of the view you put, makes it plain. That is what is so important and interesting about this complex study, whose conclusions are all that can be presented on a blog. If you wish to look at the data, the econometric and statistical work, rationale for choices in data treatment, counter factuals etc, then the new journal is on line and can be googled-up.
I do not believe that "assisting the reestablishment of the industrial and manufacturing sectors" will achieve anything lastingly useful.
Those sectors are gone from our economy; in today's world they do not yield enough added value for our lifestyles, given that they must compete with the Chinese etc etc.
To spend money on re-establishing yesterday's economy merely postpones the adjustment. It must be faced, and we must transition our society now to the higher-value activities which our consumption levels require.
Of course this does beg the question of what we do with those who cannot adapt, but this is a passing problem; already many are retired (properly retired, not just redundant or idle). The coming generations must not be allowed to dwell in the past - "job at the factory for fifty years and then a gold watch". Not any more, the world has moved on.
15.15
If the manufacturing and industrial activities of the UK are not to be rebuilt what will be the nature of the work undertaken?
Other European countries have modern manufacturing and industrial sectors. What are you saying? That we cannot rebuild? Of course we can but not in this disempowering, destructive, client-based New Labour ethos whose primary purpose is the permanent entrenchment of a profiteering elite.
No wonder the European Union agrees with President Sarkozy's outspokenness on the destructive free trade ad oltranza policies of Mandelson.
I think you're conflating two issues here, HG.
The safeguards put in place to compensate for joblessness (welfare) facilitated illigitimacy - not the joblessness itself. It has reached the point where it is economically viable for a father in stable employment to revert to a batchellor lifestyle because the arrangement is subsidised by the taxpayer. I know of countless families which have broken down for no other reason than boredom.
So now we have entire communities welfare dependant and breeding on a cycle of negative rewards - stay a single parent and you get more assistance and to the head of the queue for a free flat.
My first point about Jamaicans was in reference to the high levels of illigitimacy inherent in their culture and the impact that this may have had on our policy makers who were loath to criticise an ethnic minority - did this soften the welfare criteria that now forms the bedrock of Chav UK ?
Coupled with a drive for female emancipation and an era of 'free love' the pressure on our staid policy makers was immense ... or perhaps they even agreed with those radical ideologies involved.
To be able to say "We embrace the diversity, richness and modernity that mass immigration has brought us" is used so widely and freely by our politicians as to have become a cliche' - at least this is to acknowledge the huge impact that immigration has had on Britain.
Might not any negative impacts be of equal magnitude ? Are we not allowed to discuss them ?
And why do the feral youth - the ones we are most worried about, those in baseball caps and hoods totting guns and knives seem to always resemble Jamaican gangster rappers ?
The destructive effects of worklessness on social organisation in general and family life in particular, as well as the destructive effects of degrading and cruel work patterns has been recognised widely over at least the last two centuries. From the start of the industrial revolution efforts have been made to ameliorate the savage degradation inflicted by both bad working conditions and periods of prolonged, mass worklessness that accompanied it. This study confirms exhaustively and accurately what we know from the past. And it is a particular horror of he New Labour regime that they have overseen the installation of what are effectively open workhouses across large areas, specifically in their client state 'heartlands', instead of using the mandate so generously given in the belief that they were the party whose name they have usurped.
Of course this should be discussed.
But social degradation is not the result of moral fecklessness and inappropriate cultural models. There is no such thing as an illegitimate child, either formally in legal and rights status or in our hearts and thoughts. Nor are parents 'illegitimate'; people are without means to support their social and private dignity because they have been deliberately misled by means testing and outrageous levels of regime confiscation of any earnings they may have, into competitive behaviour that results in social collapse and the instalation of infinitely inferior but easily controllable social patterns.
Please don't debate this in unacceptable categories and even more unacceptable terms; discussion of the failure of this awful regime should not be disabled by openness to charges of racialism and intolerance.
I'm the first to laud the benefits of multi-racialism though I don't much like multi-culturalism (a different thing entirely). Being born in the sixties in multi-racial London I've never known any different. But I fail to see how a nation can remain cohesive and multi-cultural at the same time.
It is the dilution of British culture which has brought us these problems. Our culture was probably the most peaceful and secure in the World circa 1950. It protected its own standards fiercely and proudly. Now our culture is fragmented.
Where did the fragmentation come from ?
Our policymakers, of course. They were at first forced, and then keen to prostrate themselves before newly arrived cultures.
There may well be extensive academic data but I don't expect any academic to reach my conclusions; well they wouldn't, would they ? Academics aren't allowed to think as freely as me.
What can't be denied is that for decades there had been a problem with fatherless black youth long before it became the widespread issue that it is among whites today.
Let us remember:
- There have been countless police operations targetting the problems of violent black youth
- There have even been dedicated COBRA meetings focused on the problems of violence among black youth (no other race has had this level of attention for ordinary street crime)
- Our stop and search laws were changed at the behest of a violent uprising by black youth ... (violence has escalated since - so I conclude from this that the police had been using those laws properly and that Parliament caved in weakly and foolishly)
- And then there are the proposed (and in my mind correct) solutions of mentors and figureheads within those communities. These projects have been going on for generations but have only become a necessity among white communities relatively recently.
- Then there is my own experience of violent black youth
My belief is this; that as far as standards go in this country there has - in the desire for inclusivity - been a race to the bottom on a range of issues.
Rather than pulling people up our politicians have consistently dragged them down for reasons of political correctness.
Now white boys are at the bottom of the school league tables and have taken to street crime too. Mission accomplished - everyone's equal.
This is plainly and simply because mass single parenting is paid for by the State. The State first gave way to this lifestyle choice within our West Indian communities. Now white kids behave the same way, dress the same way, and are influenced the same way.
Some proof of these origins ? Wayward youth will assimilate more seamlessly with the lifestyle and ethos of Jay-Z, 50 cent or Puff Diddy than they ever will with yours or mine. Such a useless, pointless and dangerous culture as this couldn't possibly survive without a system of amorally supplied benefits supporting it.
I wouldn't attempt to cross this cultural schism and our grandparents simply wouldn't recognise vast swathes of our youth as being English...because in spirit they're not.
-----
NB,
I notice that Police Chiefs always say, "Youth in deprived areas ..."
Deprived
On Panorama the mother of one of these 'youths' lives in a council house which is better appointed than mine.
This has nothing to do with deprivation or joblessness.
Everything to do with the fact that his father (estranged and in an equally nice house) continuously spoke of his 13 year-old son as though he was someone else's. And in effect he IS someone else's - the State's.
Expect from the deliberate misuse of the word 'deprived' yet more redistribution of wealth away from parents like me who are struggling financially to do things the right way and who are good for a civilised country and who ought to have the right to speak openly even when they are wrong.
Any reading of the condition of the working people, and the conditions of the workless poor in England and Wales, from 16th century to the present day, will detail the horrors of social fragmentation that resulted. The conditions of life caused widespread and repeated soul-searching by the elites, both financial and political. In each period and in each wave of worklessness, accompanied often by mass immigrations, the forms of alienation and suffering were affected by who was suffering and the cultures and values they held. Invariably worklessness among men resulted in the exposure of children and their mothers to regime-provided charity and to private charity; which in turn led to competion to fit the categories of deprivation in order to survive.
Our standards of survival in an advanced capitalist country are higher now, but the mechanism is the same in all its aspects, and the despoliation of lives is the same too. So great was the revulsion at the way some treated others that entire political and economic movements were born as understanding of the way resources can be mobilised and some control over desperate lives regained was better understood.
Movements for controlling the distribution of drink and other drugs in the temperance societies, financial clubbing-together in the friendly societies and mutualisation of savings, trade unions to seek better conditions for the working, including social provision for the workless. This is the broad history of the amelioration of the downsides of capitalist development. It is, too, the history of Methodism and of the Quakers, and many other Christian movements in English culture. Which is why the demutualisation brought about under an ostensibly Labour government, the unleashing of wave after wave of unskilled and economically dependent migrants onto the trade union achieved working conditions of the lowest paid, the assault through specious 'multicultural' and anti-paternalistic ideologies on settled patterns of life, the closing down of excellence in free education, the emphasis on highly specialised and expensive health care over the provision of standard services we all use much of the time (dentistry, glasses, low-level GP accessibility for everyday illness and injury...), the selling off of social infrastructures like libraries, sports' facilities, community centres, the privatisation of the supply of such services and their infrastructure under PFI, the personalisation of social welfare to the detriment of communally consumed health and welfare service (think of the Peckham Health Experiment for the avoidance of ill health rather than the curing of the results of poor living) is so unforgiveable.
Angels weep at what this vile regime has done and what it has not done. Sins of commission and omission for the petty private gain of the worthless and ugly. Crimes of war against distant peoples for individual self advancement and enrichment.
What is going on is not specific to our current lives; it is specific in its form but not in its driving force.
And some academics are not lickspittles, nor are they in the least afraid of where their carefully collected, assessed, and elaborated data may take them. Why do you think this regime has attacked the appointments for life of the university? Why do you think contracts are now for 'research' appointments of a couple of years, or even less? To intimidate and control, to reward the conformist and silence the truth-sayer.
Thank you, HG.
Was there serial partnering going on during these other eras ? Was there the normalisation of mothers being inseminated by different men as we have now ? Or fathers of multiple families given respect in terms of being considered a 'right Jack the Lad' ?
Was there not general revulsion and exclusion in the face of such behaviour due to the religious piety of that era and the genuinely held beliefs in Christian doctrine ? These institutional forces are very weak nowadays.
Though I agree there was poverty and guilt quite unlike what we know today, I cannot believe that institutionalised approval or sympathy was ever given to such feckless behaviour as it is now - nor that Government ministers of those days would have baulked at me for daring to criticise this behaviour in the way that I would fully expect them to do on a Question Time panel today.
Actually there is no shortage of work. People reach these shores unable to speak English and yet often find work straight away - many of them manage to send home money to support their families too. So out of kilter is our benefits system that it keeps the idle-but-able at home when there are employers crying out for reliable workers. Hence we've needed mass immigration (REAL mass immigration) thus causing further cultural fragmentation and pressure on our infrastructure.
And in any case - is unemployment ever an excuse for abandoning children ? Or fornicating without consideration given to the consequences ?
What we are really addressing here is youth crime, for if single parenting produced well behaved and successful children then we wouldn't really be concerned about the issue at all. The truth is single parenting doesn't generally work and violent street crime is spiralling.
It is important that we go back to its roots - this is because Nu Labour and Nu Conservatives latch on to falsehoods such as 'deprivation' 'lack of sex education' and 'unemployment' and lead us deliberately up a blind alley. They don't want to face truths because they will upset those prepared to scream and shout loudest.
In seeking to go back to period where street crime came back in vogue we have a clue where to look - the date is quite easy to find:
1984
The year of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act
What was happening then and the years preceeding has transmitted to the present growing in force exponentially.
Violent youth crime was such an issue then that the police tried to deal with it but were piloried for an over heavy response. Our laws with regard to stop and search were changed radically and wrongly in my view.
The police have been hamstrung with paperwork ever since.
Bad fathering won in 1984.
Bad fathering wins to this day and is now emulated the country over.
This has been a most entertaining and informative debate and I think that "deuce" would be the current score.
I can see where you are both coming from and you both make excellent points. It looks like you will have to agree to disagree on this one.
A further additive to EK's arguments is that over recent years the forcible removable of disciplinary procedures in schools (mustn't shout at or touch the little darlings now, might upset their feelings; nobody must lose; prizes for everybody etc) has resulted in general disrespect for authority among younger members of society; the decline is quite marked. There is currently running on my local satellite TV a series of programmes (sorry, I can't recall its title) about a school in England where the teacher is try to teach some basic science to a class of (secondary years - 14/15 year old) students who have no intention of learning anything. They pay no attention whatever, walk around, talk incessantly, and on occasion just get up and walk out. Yet the teacher carries on chuntering away as though nothing was happening! Is that really the state of schools in Britain at the moment? If so, words fail me... Perhaps a teacher reading this might care to comment?
When I grew up I, like every other member of my generation, instinctively knew right from wrong and I also knew that if I overstepped the mark I would likely end up with either a thick ear or be unable to sit comfortably for a while. I am quite certain that childen (and youth generally of both sexes) know fully well what they are doing and the difference between right and wrong; the problem now is that the consequential sanction/penalty for "wrong" has largely been removed so the perpetrators have a free hand to carry on with their mischief and mayhem with no painful comeback.
Furthermore, unfortunately, I do not see any likelihood of Victorian altruism returning any time soon.
All of which reinforces my "leave while you can" position.
Excuse me adding my tuppence in here, but Kev said
"The impetus behind this is feminism. The right of mothers to exist independantly of fathers and the machinery of welfare is geared towards this."
Feminism grew out of a backlash amongst women to the bullshit of their "free love" feckless multiple child siring lefty male peers. When they saw that the "revolution" meant they were expected to fuck every bloke who asked and still make him breakfast they said "no, that is not progress, women are people, and we have had enough of being raped and beaten, paid shit, and told what to do". Feminists try and hold things together, because they are women, and generally that is what women do. Things would be even worse without the feminist movement. For example, you could legally rape your wife. It is not feminists who created the welfare state but male politicians. Even male politicians thought "you cant bung a woman in a loony bin for having a kid" so the welfare state has expanded to look after single mums. "Feminists" have nothing to do with it.
Donnaiolo is the contemptuous usage in Italian (and Mediterranean culture has the a similar word in all its languages) for what E-K calls jack the lad. No Italian male would be pleased to earn such a tag. Interestingly, in English, the term is positively 18th century - a libertine, a rake, a womaniser, with all the contempt carried in the Mediterranean usage.
Libertines, rakes and womanisers are not the bearers of culture; they are a repellent, minor extrusion of the deeper failings of proper governance; governance of self and governance of a country. It is noticeable that the governance of the UK is marked by the vulgarity of the sexual behaviour of its ministers and their hangers-on. When the Minister of the Interior, the UK Home Secretary, appears in the national Parliament with her breasts half-bared, when the casual coupling of politicians and their bag carriers and media apologists is the stuff of everyday public gossip, when intellectual and technical competence is assessed in the language of prowess, then we know the degeneration is complete.
Feminism is truly concerned with the assertion of dignity and it is a pity that the drives of teenage boys have been identified with the social collapse that is really the product of worklessness and ideologically flawed, morally evil regimes.
Lilith:
Slightly off topic, but I recall reading somewhere or other that feminism and women's lib was the creation of those (mysterious beings) who (purportedly) wish to create a One World Order. It was said that "bankers" or "shadowy financiers" in one guise or another secretly financed all this and encouraged women to break free of the proverbial kitchen sink, not for purposes of enhancing their lives, but simply to get them into the working population so that they could be taxed.
Before women's lib, only half the population, the male breadwinners, were taxable. Sending women out to work not only disrupted the "normal" family relationship of the men going out to work to earn the cash while the distaff side stayed home, looked after the sprogs and generally acted as "home makers", but also led to "door step" children who came back from school to an empty house with nobody to welcome them, which in turn freed them up for mischief-making; such that what we see today as almost the norm in large parts of the country.
The extra cash in the family then encouraged more (over)spending, buying on HP etc, which in turn led to price increases as more cash was in the system, until eventually and ever so gradually over nearly 50 years, it got to the stage where it was necessary for both parents to work simply to provide for the family. Nowadays it is very difficult for a normal 2+2 family to exist comfortably on one (average) wage.
I can't say how much truth there is in all this and it may be just another fanciful conspiracy theory, but whatever, if it was all part of a grand plan, it seems to have been remarkably successful for "enslaving" large numbers of people and facilitating the dependency culture so prevalent today. Just a thought...
I dunno about that Nomad. Financed what exactly? Feminism to me is about women's refuges, rape crisis centres, having my own tax allowance and property, and the right to vote and equal pay for equal work... I am self employed so as to chose my working hours and be available for bringing up my child. I do think kids need someone at home and I can't bear working when my daughter is home. I agree with your analysis of how things have ended up, but I think women started going out to work to support their families when it became a financial necessity not because they had been persuaded that their career/job was more important to them than bringing up the kids. I can see why shadowy figures would want women producing visibly in the economy. Feminism was never about getting away from the kitchen sink. It was about not being beaten and degraded while you stand there.
As I have already pointed out, HG there IS work and decent men from other countries have fought their way here for the opportunity to take it.
I'd agree more with you if you'd said there was a lack of motivation, education and gumption among our young men but even this isn't strictly true "Why should I work in a chicken factory for peanuts when I can earn 4 Gs a week selling crack cocaine ?" said a youth on Panorama - his sense of ambition sounds quite evident to me.
Lilith - oppression of women, nay oppression of ANYONE but the lawless is wrong. Benefit culture is rooted in entitlement for women to have children independantly of fathers - this I disagree with profoundly. At first it was a safeguard in the event of failed relationships (fair enough) - now it is a cause of failure in parental relationships, it even negates the need for a relationship at all.
No woman is forced to have sex with a man - where she is forced to have sex with a man there are laws and severe punishment against it and, I might add, a special degree of revulsion reserved for sex offenders among free people and even more so among the male criminal fraternity.
Lilith:
Perhaps I am confusing/conflating feminism and women's lib? I agree that the setting up of women's refuges is a positive development. On the other hand I have come across men who have been terribly brow-breaten (and sometimes physically beaten) by their over-bearing wives, but I do not recall ever coming across a refuge for such men away from those harridans. Equality does not seem to stretch quite that far.
What was financed exactly? I dunno either, but maybe such things as certain US colleges; paid up trouble makers vociferously demanding their "rights" at the women's lib demos; press, tv and radio articles etc. I do not believe that it was all a spontaneous outbreak of bra-burning female freedom fighters; there must have been a lot of money coming from somewhere behind it all. How else would so many of these apparently unemployed people manage to travel across the US attending noisy, high profile and well organised rallies with flags, t-shirts, placards, slogans etc? Such excursions require a great deal of organisation and funding.
I confess it is all a mystery to me, but whatever the roots, the outcome has on balance probably not been beneficial to society. You are fortunate that you are able to work from home and be there for your daughter, but the vast majority of working women ended up in factories or offices being paid as little a possible by their employers. My mother brought up my younger brother and me on a shoestring. Bus rides were out; we had to walk a couple of miles each way to the market and back. She worked long hours and was never at home when we got back from school. I had the front door key on a string round my neck. Nonetheless, the culture was different in those days and we did not go looking for trouble or to bash somebody up. So why do they do it today?
This is all a bit off beam of the main debate here on single parenting and so on, but interesting nonetheless. One unfortunate result of all this aggressive feminism was the decline of what used to be known as chivalry, you know, offering seats to ladies on the bus, holding doors open for them, allowing them to go first etc. That is regrettably rare these days - and when you do see instances of it there is rarely a smaile or thank you in acknowledgement. Very sad.
I know Nomad. I am always opening doors and standing up for the elderly and child laden. I don't know why bad manners and disrespect became conflated with feminism.
My experience of feminism was Greenham Common and a lot of New York Jewish writers. I came to it "late." But no one funded Greenham. It was born out of terror and moral outrage. All organised by networks of women from all classes and social set ups. Feminism to me was also about valuing the economic contribution of women in spite of that being invisible on the balance sheet ie. growing food, raising families, caring for the sick, enabling their husbands and children to "produce".
Lilith:
We appear to be in agreement. By the by, I thought Greenham was all about American nukes on the airbase there rather than feminism. But I was living on the other side of the planet at the time so details are somewhat vague. Wasn't/isn't(?) CND a communist front organisation? Or am I once again mixing things up here?
PS: I notice that Mr Raedweld has also taken up these questions. Worth a visit to his blog.
Well yes, Nomad, Greenham was about Nukes but anything that threatened the lives of women and children, and indeed, men was/is a feminist issue. Like war. The fact that it was women only enabled women to experience the extraordinary personal power women garner from spending time in each other's company. There has not been anything since that has united British women of all backgrounds and ages in the way that Greenham did. Anyway, we have all had to go out to work ever since! No time to hang out at American Bases :-(
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