Violence against women and girls – is Labour making progress? asks Karen Constantine
Change begins”, reads the 2024 Labour Party Conference strap line. I attended conference along with 20,000 others and you couldn’t move without tripping over Labour’s latest slogan.
They say the “personal is political” and because of my own experiences of abuse as a younger woman, and through supporting residents as a county councillor, I’ve long been interested in the solutions to abuse against women and girls, an issue that transcends class and age. Indeed, whilst I was national officer for equality at the GMB, we pioneered a new workplace based approach almost a quarter of a century ago. This not only provided a much needed innovative policy framework and guidance for HR and Reps, but also sought to utilise the workplace as the means by which women (and some men of course) could safely and confidentially access help, and be a place where perpetrator beliefs could be challenged. It was a dynamic approach to domestic abuse, which the 1997 Blair/Brown Government adopted and drove forward. I was eager to see how Starmer, Reeves, Jess Philips and Shabana Mahmood the newly appointed Justice Secretary were developing this legacy.
There’s no doubt we have a crisis of abuse and urgent effective action is very much needed. In England and Wales, 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime; in Thanet that figure is 1 in 3. On average, one woman is killed by an abusive partner or ex every five days, and the police report they receive a domestic abuse-related call every 30 seconds. Yet it is estimated that less than 24% of domestic abuse crime is reported.
The wilderness years of uncaring conservative hegemony have done nothing to move the dial forward. Mark Rowley Met police chief concluded in June that there are “up to 4 million perpetrators of violence against women and children, who are mainly men, with one in 10 people being victims, who are mainly women or children.”
During the last fourteen years the Conservatives axed many grassroots support organisations, put a stranglehold on public sector housing and stoked austerity and inequality, none of which helped “victims’.
Conference was therefore the ideal place to assess Labour’s plans and priorities. One packed fringe meeting I attended, featuring the redoubtable and passionate advocate for women’s safety Jess Phillips MP, was billed as “Halving VAWG in a Decade: Labour’s plan”. It was hard not to feel cynical given the enormous challenge ahead of us. Halve abuse in ten years — you’re kidding me right?
The lack of stated ambition is startling. But then, so too are the obstacles to overcome. Jess described a situation in her constituency where women subject to domestic abuse are “rebanded” by the local council and identified as category A housing need. So in theory they and their dependents should be rehoused — away from the offender immediately — but as Jess pointed out, “what actually improves if your five year wait is reduced to three?” She’s right of course. Her number one solution to the current abuse crisis is more housing. It’s also true that some women are marooned with abusers because they simply can’t afford to leave and the scrapping of the two child benefit cap might well help. Labour could do that at the stroke of a pen.
Conference platformed a range of announcements designed to tackle abuse and to reform the criminal justice sector: “from next year we will begin a national roll out of independent legal advocates for rape victims”. An initiative which Shabana Mahmood described as “the first step to delivering our manifesto promise of having independent advocates for rape victims in every part of the country”. Anything that helps improve reporting and conviction rates is welcome.
I’ll never forget my front door being hammered down by a woman who had been raped in a nearby property. I don’t need to explain the lasting complex trauma she and millions of other women experience due to rape. I called the police. She needed immediate access to a female independent advocate. She didn’t get it.
Rape Crisis say “67,928 rapes were recorded by police between April 2023 and March 2024. By the end of March 2024, charges had been brought, in just 2.6% of recorded rape cases”. Also not forgetting that the average adult rape case takes two years — or longer — to complete.
Labour’s challenge is gargantuan. Firstly, support must be firmly in place both for those reporting abuse and those attempting to leave abusive relationships. This means Rachel Reeves needs to find funds for a huge investment in policing and sufficient independent advisors for both sexual and physical abuse (including complex coercive control). It means building homes so no woman, child, or indeed man, is ever “trapped” by lack of choice. It means reinvesting in, and reinvigorating those grassroots women’s organisations which provided a bedrock of support. It also means working with the men and boys who have become desensitised. As the Times reported “violent porn warping young boys’ attitudes towards sex”, and new figures show that girls of 14 are now the most common group to report rape.
There’s something about the urgency of this need for change to begin, that demands more than an ambition to “halve the problem in ten years” isn’t there? Abuse is a scourge and must be eradicated. The penalties need to be severe and public opinion needs to shift from tolerance to abhorrence. More than that, for women and girls, safety from violence comes at a price. Labour must not let them down.
If you’re impacted by anything in this article, Rape Crisis call free on 0808 500 2222 and for Domestic abuse Refuges 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline is 0800 2000 247