Stand up and be counted

I’ve got to admit that it took me several days to send off the census form. For some reason I put off filling in or even looking through it, in spite of all the television and newspaper ads encouraging me to get on with it.

This is our third census at our present address. It’s one of those things that mark you out as an established couple, like replacing a saucepan or a washing machine that you bought when you first moved in together. It occurred to me that our former neighbours must have filled out at least five during the time they lived next door and that it will be the last one that another neighbour will complete as a resident of our street before she moves.

Establishing where we all are every ten years, the census of the UK’s population asks questions about employment (or unemployment), religion (a voluntary question) and the kind of home you live in, amongst many other things. Genealogists love them. Now that many are online you can find out within minutes what your great-great grandparents were up to in, for example, 1871. A tantalising absence from a census could be explained by a contemporary event such as a war. A child born a few months before one census may have died by the next one, a great aunt or uncle representing a potential branch of your family tree.

Unfortunately for those keen to know what more recent generations have been up to, the information collected by the census remains secret for a century. This rule only became a legal requirement in 1920, allowing the records for 1911 to be released three years early. Women had begun to demand the right to vote and some boycotted the census taken that year as a protest. One suffragette wrote “If I am intelligent enough to fill in this paper, I am intelligent enough to put a cross on a voting paper.” This comment, her personal direct action, remained a secret for almost a hundred years.

The question “Do you stay at another address for more than 30 days a year?“ tells of university for one young adult or military service for another. There must have been many households in the UK for whom the absence of one name at their address brought a sense of pride and happiness because their child had succeeded in gaining a place on a course. For others it meant pride and sadness at the loss of a family member in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The questions being asked are as good an indicator of cultural, economic and political changes as the information they bring in. I wonder what my ancestors would have made of questions about same-sex civil partnerships? The 2011 census allows for the fact that these relatively new official forms of relationship may have broken down already (“Separated but still legally in a same-sex civil partnership”; “Formerly in a same-sex civil partnership which is now dissolved”).

A great uncle of mine earned some extra cash while a student by gathering information for the 1921 census and came across a situation that revealed how some people dealt with failed marriages at the time. Calling at one house he asked for Mrs. X to which the reply was “Which One?” The head of the household was living at the same address as his wife and his new partner along with all their children. Both women referred to themselves as “Mrs. X“ to maintain a veneer of propriety at a time when it was not easy for the average person to obtain a divorce. The Divorce Act of 1969 came into force in 1971 so it may have been another ten years before the impact of the new legislation was evident in a census.

The questions that I found most difficult to answer were the one about qualifications (really confusing - I’m still not sure I picked the right option) and the one about the ethnic group I think I belong to. I wonder how many others from a partly foreign background struggle to answer that sort of question as I do. The promotion around this year’s census has emphasised its value to individuals, that it represents around £22,000 in spending. The government is trying to persuade those reluctant to complete it that it will ensure the right level of services in each area. One question asked if I help or support a neighbour or family member with age or health related needs. Another asked how I travel to work.

They seem to want to know so much and that may be what put me off getting stuck in. For the first time I found it rather intrusive. In the end it turned out that only a small part of the booklet required completion because it allowed for a household of more than two people. I got off quite lightly but I feel for anyone organising a sleepover on the same night.

“H4: Apart from everyone counted in question H2, who else is staying overnight here on Sunday 27 March? These people are counted as visitors. Remember to include children and babies.”

Some unexpected extras for the census officials.

A girl thing

A couple of years ago I had almost reached my front door after returning from work when I heard something that stopped me in my tracks. I was outside a neighbouring house and I could hear loud, continuous sobbing and weeping. It sounded as though a woman was in great distress.

I really did not feel like sorting out anyone’s problems at the time, I was tired and fed up, but this was days after the discovery of Jaycee Lee Dugard, kidnapped as a young girl and held for 18 years. I decided that I did not want to be one of those people who noticed something and did not act on it. So I dumped my bag just inside my front door with an explanation to my partner, walked back and listened again. The sound was still coming from a first floor window. I rang the bell and explained myself to the man who answered the door. “I suppose you want to see them for yourself?” he said before turning and calling to someone upstairs. Two teenage girls appeared who seemed perfectly happy. So I left. A week later the same thing happened but I ignored it. I’ve seen both girls since then and I still have no idea what was going on.

At the time I was already aware that the suburb I live in was home to a number of brothels, with convenient transport links. The ads in the back of the local paper testify to it and I suppose that most of us regard it as a fact of life. What the majority of people who glance at those ads do not know is that apart from the women who engage willingly in prostitution there are now many who have been forced into it. Women desperate to earn money and gain independence are brought to the UK by traffickers, discovering too late that the men who promised them a great job and a new life are actually selling them into the worst situation imaginable. Even if they are rescued they are cut off from their old life forever, knowing that other young girls from their home town are being targeted by the same traffickers.



The cases of Elizabeth Fritzl and Natascha Kampusch are bound to chill the blood of anyone who thought that women in the West were no longer vulnerable to this kind of ill-treatment. There has been much speculation, particularly in Austria where these incidents occurred, that the men who held them captive were fossils, throwbacks to an earlier time when women were expected to do as they were told. Others suggest that these cases are symptomatic of an underlying desire to keep women in their place.

It is tempting to think that, one hundred years after the first International Women’s Day, the repression of women is restricted to countries where it is part of a cultural tradition. The truth is that all around us women suffer in silence, treating the bruises they get from an angry partner as part of the deal. It was revealed recently that it is common for there to be an increase in the rate of domestic violence after football matches involving Rangers and Celtic, in fact they doubled after one game.

At the same time I have noticed the capacity for violence is no longer restricted to men, if it ever was. There was a time when it was taken as read that a young teenage girl who caused trouble was a fluke and likely to come from a challenging background. How things have changed. Last year a young women was convicted of manslaughter, having stamped on and kicked a man who later died. She was seventeen years old at the time, her fashionable ballet pumps and handbag covered in her victim’s blood. So much for an expensive education and a comfortable home. I see Ruby Thomas in many of the teenage girls I now encounter, the smart back chat that some see as confidence as likely to be a first step in a potentially violent encounter. I never underestimate the dangerousness of girls in school uniform.

Almost thirty years ago, when I was still at school, a fellow students was told by one teacher that she was not welcome to study technical drawing in his class as he did not feel that a career in engineering was suitable for a woman. Even then this comment made jaws drop amongst students and staff who took it for granted that a woman could have any career she wanted. By then women had begun to take control of reproduction using the Pill and, especially with the advent of AIDS/HIV, by insisting on the use of condoms. That made it easier for them to delay having children until they wanted too but it has become clear that some have delayed too long and it has now reached the stage where women are being warned not to wait until their forties to get pregnant.

The influx of Eastern Europeans, largely Poles in my area, has shown up this element in the change of women’s fortunes. I don’t suppose that many of the young women who moved here several years ago planned to stay more than a few years but have in fact settled down and had babies. They stood out, often slimmer and healthier than their British counterparts and now that they are mothers they are unusual again in that the fathers of their children are in evidence and even live with them as part of a family unit. In my street it had reached the stage where there were barely any young children living in the surrounding houses. One morning I found that I had spent several minutes standing by the bathroom window transfixed by something unusual - the sound of a baby crying, coming from a neighbouring house.

The impression I get is that in my area British couples wait until they can get a mortgage before they begin having children whereas other nationalities are quite happy to raise their families in rented accommodation. These newcomers have at times seemed to have old fashioned values that were once common in the UK and the women in that group don’t seem to regard motherhood as restrictive. Personally I don’t believe women can have it all. I think you can be a good mother and hold down a job once the children are at school but I now find it difficult to accept the idea of a woman heading back to work leaving a very young child in someone else’s care. Perhaps I’m getting old and conservative.

Even so I was stunned when I heard about the impact that the notion that a male is worth more than a female has had on ante-natal care in the UK. Hospitals in areas where there is a large Asian population do not advise the expectant mothers in their care of the gender before the child is born as it can be a death sentence for a female foetus. It could lead to a “miscarriage”.

During my life I know that things have improved beyond recognition for so many women but it is hugely dispiriting to think that we are still being paid less because of our gender. In Portugal, a short flight away from the UK, women can still end up in prison if they have an abortion. In Guatemala it is almost commonplace for women to be murdered. In Afghanistan women continue to kill themselves in despair at forced marriages. In my own country women return to the homes where they are beaten and abused because they have no other choice.

I suppose you could argue that the fact that I was prepared to challenge someone over what I thought might be a case of domestic violence means that things aren’t as bad as they once were. People used to look the other way when I was a child because they felt that it wasn’t their business. Worse than that, the policeman who attended the incident might actually commiserate with the perpetrator. Today, the police officer who attends is as likely to be female but still capable of standing up to a man who thinks that pounding his wife after his team loses on a Saturday night is a form of leisure activity. Perhaps that is the biggest gain of all.

Small society

Something happened last week that brought to mind the Prime Minister’s continued efforts to explain his concept of the “Big Society” .

I was at the small parade of shops a street away from my home when I spotted a young woman, wearing the kind of long skirt favoured by Roma women, standing very close to an elderly man with whom she was deep in conversation. I didn’t think anything of it until I happened to look that way again and realised that I could see banknotes. Sometimes you just know that something isn’t right and as I was in the mood to take notice I walked up to them and asked what was going on.

By this time I was less than two feet away and could also see a substantial gold chain which I automatically grabbed to keep it where it was. I couldn’t tell which direction it was travelling in but in the seconds I had my hand around it I realised that it wasn’t the heavy gold necklace it appeared to be. I know metallised plastic when I handle it. The girl was startled and pulled it away from me but I had reached them in time to see that she had been taking more and more five pound notes from him. Over her shoulder I could see a man and another girl standing a few feet away, clearly worried at my intervention.

Something about the girl I was standing close to threw me, she seemed so frightened. I couldn’t work out exactly what was going on so I backed off and left them to it but by the time I had dealt with my errand I realised that I should have been firmer with her and told her to get lost. It was too late. All those involved had disappeared. I asked a shopkeeper if he had seen anything and was given one of those answers that makes me despair. Yes, some people had been trying to sell fake gold jewellery in the street, especially to pensioners. There was no point telling the police because by the time they arrived they would be gone. That was the mindset of every person I told in the minutes after it happened. When I mentioned it in another shop and said that I thought those involved might be Roma someone asked me what my nationality was. The suggestion was that to point out their ethnicity was to be racist, even though that is the sort of information the police would have asked for.

Looking at it now, days after the event, it occurs to me that what happened in the small space between the three of us brought up some really big issues. That young woman represented centuries of persecution and discrimination. As a citizen of the European Union she is of monetary value to her family in that she can be married off to someone who wants the right to live in the UK and is prepared to pay for a wife. She wouldn’t keep the money she was making by selling jewellery, it would be passed on to someone else, possibly along with any she managed to acquire through the benefits system and was actually entitled to.

The man being conned was clearly a veteran, of an age to have fought the fascists who murdered as many as 600,000 Roma. His reward was to be ignored because no one seemed to have noticed what was happening to him. Perhaps old soldiers really do fade away. The elderly, constant and uncomfortable reminders of what we will become, tend to be left to their own devices these days, their lives characterised by isolation and loneliness, their pensions worth less and less.

And there I was, unable to decide what to do or who to tell. Was it theft and therefore a police matter? Would I be wasting their time? Should I contact Trading Standards? Should I have just had the guts to shout at that young woman and scare her off, aware that she was as much a victim as the man she had targeted? So fearful of doing the wrong thing, of being drawn into something I might lose control of, of being accused of discrimination. My original urge to follow my instinct and intervene drowned in a sea of doubt and fear, undermined by the knowledge that I would probably be on my own with it, that no one else would help. In that small space between a young Roma woman, a veteran of World War Two and a forty something blogger, it was my responsibility to decide whose rights took priority at that moment but I had forgotten how to do it. I made the wrong choice.

It took me some time to realise that personal experience of dealing with the legal system influenced the way I reacted. The despair I felt at hearing the words “no point” came from understanding that those who spoke them were probably right. If the case was proved the pensioner would be unlikely to get his money back and the girl, a pawn in someone else’s game, would find herself in an even worse situation. In the hands of a sharp barrister a statement written in a hurry at the time could make the whole process pointless. If every person I had told about it had at that moment rushed up to deal with those involved we would have been called a mob. I want to make it clear that I do not believe the police are to blame for this, I am sure they are just as frustrated as I am at times.

Mention the “Big Society” and immediate reference is made to volunteering, or to the running of state facilities by charities, or to taking part in local government. That’s when I (and a great many others) switch off. The sad thing is that I think I understand what the Prime Minister is talking about. In some ways it is about being bigger than yourself, “ubuntu“, I am because we are. Have a conscience, give a damn, get your hands dirty. Well, a lot of us do that already. The postman who notices that a vulnerable pensioner is being targeted by scam mail . The neighbour who reports a child’s bruises. We need to make it easier and more socially acceptable to intervene in small ways, and back up those who do so. Somehow we need to develop more confident caring habits because until we do we won‘t be willing or able to move on to the bigger things that we are being asked to take on.

There are plenty of people out there who haven’t waited for someone else to fix a problem for them. There are probably even more who want to do that but are put off by the fear of being told off for doing so. We’ve protected ourselves through legislation to the point where we’ve painted ourselves into a corner, a lack of common sense in relation to child protection and volunteering has made it almost impossible to do something as simple as drive someone else’s children to a football match. At the same time it would be foolish to risk the kind of incident which brought that hard won legislation into force. I suppose those who promote the “Big Society” are asking us to take the risk of being found at fault in the hope that our motives will be understood by the majority, to rediscover self-reliance. It has reached the stage where too many of us believe that we longer have to be conscientious because we’ve paid others to do that for us. It remains to be seen whether we will recover from the atrophy that has developed as a consequence of being so well looked after, leaving some of us unable to think for ourselves.

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

Yellow and white

I had forgotten the part the Catholic church played in the early years of my life until I watched some of the coverage of the Pope’s visit to the UK. The last time I attended a mass it was a grand affair, a requiem mass for someone I knew, but I did it out of politeness. I am surprised to find that I can still remember the words of the “Our Father” and the “Hail Mary”. Two faded religious pictures, a collection of prayer cards, a rosary and the cross that my Portuguese grandmother gave me are the few things I have left to indicate that I was, and as far as the Vatican is concerned still am, a Catholic.

It is hard to avoid being one if you are at all Portuguese. In the past the church dominated the country and its people, especially the poor of whom there were a great many. When I asked why my aunt had never learned to read my mother said it was because she was too busy doing jobs for the priest. Make of that what you will.

In the last few years the British branch of Vatican Inc. has been sustained by the arrival of Polish believers but before then it was the Portuguese, the Spanish and the Irish who filled the gaps. Catholic rituals such as a First Communion are an excuse for a big party in these countries, a chance to show off. My mother couldn’t quite believe it when she saw that little girls were wearing net curtains as veils for the occasion - she wasn’t sending me out looking like that (I was probably the only little girl at our church who wore a child sized mantilla to mass on Sundays). A ridiculous amount of money was spent on a dress from Portugal, with lots of embroidery and beading, and I stood out from everyone else looking like a mini bride. It was the closest my mother has ever come to seeing me in a wedding dress and she certainly made the most of it. Imagine her relief when she found that the same dress would do for my confirmation (sans veil thank goodness), carried out at a time when little Catholics were processed like sausages in the belief that these ceremonies would keep us in the church.

There wasn’t much point in my case. By the time I was thirteen and attending a Catholic secondary school I was already brave enough to say out loud that I didn’t believe in it. Even being confirmed by Cardinal Hume himself at the grand London Oratory had made no difference. The church had lost me. Having an outspoken Protestant father didn’t help but my experience of Catholicism was for the most part a dark and oppressive one. Father Ted didn’t come into it.

The ritual I dreaded most was Confession. I was a well behaved child and could never think of anything to say. I didn’t enjoy waiting for my turn in the dark box, conscious of the priest just visible through the grille. One afternoon when I was about eight I refused to go and was dragged to church by my mother. I ended up making my Confession on my knees in front of a priest and my outraged parent. Very Edna O’Brien. Before this story confirms the stereotype of a child abuser I should point out that he was probably as embarrassed as I was. I doubt whether anything had prepared him for this, unmarried with no children of his own, living a relatively sheltered life. The villain of the piece was actually my mother who required my absolute humiliation. However the priest need not have colluded with her and I doubt whether she would have got away with it today.

This Papal visit probably had the same impact on Catholic schools this time around that it had on mine in 1982. Personally I was more concerned about what was happening in the Falklands. By this time I was one of a group of girls who contrived to avoid involvement in this or any other religious event and we got away with it because we were reasonably clever. Our A level results counted. Even so we were not the only ones who raised our eyebrows at the sight of a different clique who turned up with yellow and white ribbons in their hair. The ringleader was a recent arrival whose family had converted a few years before. The deputy head mistress was particularly excited and enthusiastic about them. It was all terribly Iris Murdoch. Like all newbies they were really dedicated and involved but one other put them in the shade.

She, along with the rest of her Scottish family, was a member of Opus Dei - Vatican storm troopers. When she discovered that I had a boyfriend she promptly invited me to the OD hostel she was living in while she attended the sixth form at our school. I say “hostel” but this was an elegant Edwardian house near Chelsea Embankment with its own chapel. Most of the others living there were Spanish and probably very well off. Any notion that she had asked me round out of friendship evaporated as one of her fellow tenants explained earnestly and in heavily accented English that she was praying for my soul as my situation had been explained to her. My “friend” then took me off to the chapel where she actually believed I would spend the afternoon helping her polish the altar silver. I’m still not sure whether this was intended as penance or fun. I left fairly quickly after that but not before noticing that the picture of the founder of Opus Dei, Josemaria Escriva, was bigger and more prominent than the one of John Paul II.

Just before I moved in with my partner to our suburban home I bumped into a priest I had known my whole life. I told him that I was moving away and he was polite but clearly shocked that I was going to be living with someone. By this time I hadn’t been to Mass for years. He reminded me that as a little girl I had mended a tear in his jacket, something that came about because my mother had dropped heavy hints about my ability to sew. He seemed very sad. It is men like him that I think of when the issue of child sex abuse is mentioned because they have all, innocent or guilty, been damaged by the failure of the Catholic Church to deal with it honestly and openly. The priests I knew were a very mixed bunch, including at least one eccentric war hero and another younger man who I now realise was an alcoholic. I once saw him cycle past the bus I was on in Fulham Road, red faced and the worse for drink. He was the only one I disliked. Priests and nuns deal regularly with the people our society shuns in a respectful and positive way and for that they deserve respect.

The impression I get is that many of those who could have listened to victims, including priests, lay people and parents, found the whole idea of sexual abuse so repulsive that they pretended it wasn’t happening in the hope it would just go away. Even those who told someone breathed a sigh of relief because having done so they could forget about it. Those who closed their eyes just weren’t brave and unselfish enough to do the right thing.

In my opinion the Vatican took advantage of this failing. An institution that historically wielded enormous political power and influence is now reduced to manipulating the little people who put coins in the collection box. Amongst the many good and helpful Catholics who are involved in education, health care and aid work around the world there are a proportion who have a selfish and damaging need to abuse physically and sexually. The Vatican has a responsibility to weed them out and hand them over to the civil authorities but those who follow Catholic teachings had and continue to have a responsibility to challenge those in the church. If Catholics worldwide had responded to allegations of child abuse in the same way that UK tax payers did to the news of MPs’ expenses, flooding radio phone-ins and newspapers with calls, emails and letters, the Vatican would have had no choice but to put their house in order. If only the bad apples had been tackled with the same ruthlessness exhibited by the Inquisition.

Unfortunately for those who would change it Catholicism holds such a strong appeal for some that it will be around in its present form for a very long time. I’ve got to admit that I find those who were demonstrating about the rights of women and gay people in the church during the Papal visit difficult to understand. Why would anyone want to be a Catholic if they feel this way? I can understand the desire to make the Vatican apologise for homophobic behaviour but I really can‘t work out why a gay man or woman would want to go anywhere near such an institution as a worshipper or priest. I can’t help feeling that it is in part those who continue to long for what they can’t have that keep the juggernaut going.

The issue that really turned me off was the ban on contraception. One afternoon I was out with a school friend when we bumped into a teacher we hadn’t seen for some time. The child she had with her explained the absence and she was speechless with embarrassment when she saw us. A single woman and a convert, she had been kept away from the school by the headmaster while pupils who became pregnant were allowed back. We felt that she was really brave to keep the child and bring it up on her own. It wouldn’t surprise me if she came under pressure to have the child adopted by some worthy Catholic family.

There were some attempts to encourage chastity before marriage including a memorable session with a misguided volunteer who believed she could persuade a group of Sixth Formers that it was worth waiting until we were married before losing it. We sat there fully aware that most of us were on the pill or buying condoms ahead of university. I suppose she was an improvement on a priest. I have always felt that it is unnatural to ask men and women to be celibate but expect them to advise those who are not. Having said that I believe that if being celibate is part of the deal when you are a Catholic priest it’s a bit like having your cake and eating it to be allowed into the priesthood as a married man, something that is on offer to Anglicans.

I have found it impossible to shake off Catholicism completely. Recently it occurred to me that if I came across a dying person who I knew was a Catholic I probably would ask them if they wanted a priest, perhaps even say a prayer with them, because even though I don‘t believe in it myself I recognise that it might be important to them to be able to die in a state of grace. When one of my partner’s relatives was involved in the invasion of Iraq we sent him an Ethiopian silver cross. Had the time been available I would have taken it to a priest to be blessed because that is what most Catholics would have done. An unblessed cross is just a piece of jewellery. I have even been known to light candles for people.

However, I am also an avid reader of horoscopes. I reckon the Vatican storm trooper would have me polishing altar silver from now until Judgement Day to make up for all that astrology. I last heard from her when I received a letter from Rome. I binned it immediately.

Nasty boys

The story of “Baby P”, the child who died following sustained torture and abuse at the hands of the people who were supposed to love and care for him most, has re-entered the news headlines following the disclosure of their identities. A short life, filled with agony, in the company of two violent men and a selfish woman. I doubt that anyone who has heard about the torturing to death of angelic little Peter Connelly can have felt anything but anger and sadness about it. The official disclosure of the names of those responsible for the dreadful cruelty that he endured have not lessened these emotions but they have given us some insight into how the situation unfolded. It is clear that the events that led to it had their roots in abuse and neglect that took place decades ago.

The aspect of this story that lingers in my mind is the phenomenon of violent young men, in this case a pair of brothers, whose anger and aggression to those around them seems to have been left to fester and evolve into the kind of behaviour that I do not recall encountering years ago. There was a time when you would almost expect it of people brought up in the way that Steven Barker and his sibling Jason Evans were. However I have begun to see it all around me and it isn‘t restricted to boys from “sink” estates. Nice boys do it too.

A few years ago I was in a superstore and an incident that most of the other people there would have missed made me look again at a woman who was shopping with two lanky teenage boys who I presume were her sons. Nothing unusual about that on a Saturday. What made them stand out was that one of these boys had moved in a way that had made it seem as though he was about to strike her to the extent that she flinched. And then carried on as though nothing had happened. The meanness of the gesture struck me, particularly as he was grinning. I was left with the impression that he had done this many times before and was delighted that he had managed to make her jump. Years later I still regret that I did not ask her if I could help because I suspect that what I saw in those few seconds in a public place may have been the tip of the iceberg. There may have been a very good explanation for it, he may have had behavioural difficulties or even Tourette Syndrome which means that the sufferer cannot always control their actions, but my instinct was that this was a display of power. I wondered where Dad was and whether he would have allowed this to happen. Perhaps they had picked it up from Dad.

The aggressive “pretend I’m going to hit you” gesture is something that I have seen a number of times in TV footage of binge drinkers, where police are dealing with troublesome crowds outside bars. Women in these situations seem to accept these actions as part of a night out. I can remember when it would have led to the person behaving in this way being punished by her partner or other males because it was no way to treat a woman. Why do women think that being shown a lack of respect is funny? It’s nothing to giggle about. Are they so desperate to keep that relationship that mock violence is to be tolerated?

More recently I was asked to intervene and protect a young woman who approached me in Ealing Broadway one evening. She had crossed the road to speak to me and a man who was standing nearby because she had been on the receiving end of loud and angry abuse from two young men at a bus stop. I had noticed shouting and that the object of this very negative attention had been a woman but even I was shocked at how terrified she was. It seems that she had found a mobile phone on the ground and had not been convinced when one of these men had told her it was his so she had handed it in to the police station nearby. The time spent waiting to prove his ownership had not improved his mood and he had been taking it out on her verbally ever since. She was clearly afraid that the abuse would become physical as she appeared to know these brothers by reputation.

We told them to shut up and that she had done the responsible thing and eventually they backed off. It wasn’t that difficult. In fact they seemed quite keen to explain their side of the story, proving only that she was in the right. The small amount of moral authority that we exercised that night was enough to put them in their place. Two girls who stood on the sidelines but appeared to be with them looked on silently but seemed troubled. I wondered if they would have to act as shock absorbers for the rest of the evening, having witnessed the diminishing of the power of their men folk. Afterwards I wished that I had asked them if their male companions always spoke to women like that, if they thought that they would eventually treat the mothers of their children in the same way.

I wonder if, had someone been firm with Barker and Owen much earlier in their lives when they threw their weight around, they would have been denied the permission they appear to have been granted to torture to death a 17 month old child. If, in the weeks before they tried to force their elderly grandmother to change her will in their favour by shutting her into a wardrobe, they had been seriously scared by her neighbours into leaving her alone and would therefore have been directed away from the path they took. This isn’t just about punishing bad behaviour, it’s about the attitude of young people to those they are in relationships with. It’s about providing them with a template for their future.

Since that moment in the supermarket I have wondered how many middle class women endure what I saw everyday out of the sight of their neighbours and are too ashamed to ask for support in handling their boys. It could be argued that they are in a far more difficult position than a woman in a violent relationship with a sexual partner as they are supposed to be in a nurturing role. It is possible to walk away from a husband/boyfriend but how can you walk out on your child? Or ask them to leave?

Tracey Connelly traded responsibility for her son for a relationship with a violent sadistic man and his equally nasty brother. Perhaps she felt that this was as good as it was going to get. I suspect she isn’t the only woman who has this attitude. Unfortunately her little boy didn’t have a say in the matter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/nov/11/baby-p-death
Timeline: The short life of Baby P

www.guardian.co.uk/world/deadlineusa/2009/mar/16/rihanna-usa
Survey: Half of Boston teens blame Rihanna for Chris Brown beating

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/27/parental-abuse-domestic-violence?showallcomments=true
The day my daughter hit me

www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2003_07_tue_01.shtml
Woman’s Hour: Hitting home

www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2002_13_tue_03.shtml
Woman’s Hour: Fighting boys

www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2004_10_thu_01.shtml
Woman’s Hour: Explaining sexual violence to boys

The Goldfish Liberation Front

The Attached One had a nasty shock on Sunday morning when he went to feed the goldfish. Vanessa, the pretty one with the gauzy tail, had died during the night. No obvious reason, she had seemed perfectly healthy and was buried in the garden with some ceremony. It left us feeling very sad that she did not get the chance to live in the bigger tank that we were planning to buy for her and her friend Dennis.

The care that we have taken over the two years that Vanessa and Dennis have been with us, to make sure that they have been happy, is in complete contrast to the treatment of the goldfish that are sold every year by an Iranian grocer in west London. In March those passing his shop are treated to a display of all the items needed for the celebration of Nowruz, the Zarathustrian or Persian New Year. These include pots of fragrant hyacinth and sprouted wheat, but it is the glitter and flash amongst them of many small goldfish in tiny bowls of water that draws customers to the shop.

These are very popular with the Iranian expats, who can be seen peering at the pairs of young goldfish in their ornate bowls as they carry them home. What they do not realise is that these fish are being kept in a volume of water that is a tenth of the amount they actually require and that the traditional bowl denies the fish the surface area necessary to give them the oxygen they need to survive. It’s a bit like shutting a toddler into a cupboard where it can only turn round on the spot and putting a plastic bag over its head so that it can’t breathe properly.

I have been told by an RSPCA inspector that they have tried to stop this practice as the fish sit in these tiny bowls until they are sold and who knows what happens to them after Nowruz. I suspect the sewers of West Ealing are alive with goldfish by the end of April, unless of course there are Iranian households with substantial fish tanks. In which case why do they have to buy more each year? The saddest thing about this practice is that goldfish can live for as long as forty years but these die when they are only a few months old.

Most of the Iranians who patronise this shop are likely to be exiles who fled their country after the revolution in 1979. Even so, I always think of those delicate goldfish in their tiny suffocating bowls as a metaphor for the young people of Iran, suffocated by a regime that criminalises homosexuality and executes teenage girls who are themselves victims of rape and abuse. The death of Neda Soltani will make her a symbol of the youth of Iran and their desire to live in a modern democratic environment, but long before this the situation of young Iranian women has been a matter of concern to human rights activists worldwide.

Atefeh Sahaaleh was a sixteen year old girl with mental health problems who was the victim of repeated rape by a former member of the Revolutionary Guard. When she was five years old her mother was killed in a car accident and this drove her father to drug addiction. She was obliged to care for her very elderly grandparents who repaid her by ignoring her. She would wander the streets of her town, prey for older men who would take advantage of her. The penalty for having sex with an unmarried man in Iran is one hundred lashes. She was given this punishment on three separate occasions.

Eventually she was arrested after an unsigned petition describing her as a “bad influence” was presented to the local authorities, asking that action be taken against her. Under torture she confessed to having a sexual relationship with a married man, in other words, he raped her a number of times. Atefeh’s reaction to the sentence of death passed on her led the judge, Haji Rezai, to make a supreme effort to make sure that the sentence was carried out. Documents showed her age as twenty two even though her family can prove that she was sixteen at the time. Rezai himself placed the noose around her neck and it was later discovered that he had been responsible for torturing her. Her family cannot even visit her grave to mourn her as her body was stolen from it within hours of her death.

Young men suffer equally in Iran. In 2005 Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni were executed, convicted of the rape of a thirteen year old boy, although it has been alleged that they died because they were homosexual and that the “rape“ was a consensual act. Their case gained notoriety when photographs taken just before their deaths were published on the internet. Mahmoud was sixteen and Ayaz eighteen. In the UK we worry that our young men are too rowdy, too interested in drugs, too lazy, too inclined to wear hooded tops. What must it be like to be young in a country where you risk a public lashing for engaging in the kind of activity that we regard as part of becoming an adult? How much harder must it be if you are gay?

I have never been to Iran but the knowledge I have of it suggests that it is a place of contrasts. A country where there is torture and executions are carried out but with a long history of creativity. The ceramic and textile art of Iran has attracted and inspired collectors and designers for centuries. Women are obliged to cover their hair in public yet there are female reporters and sportswomen. Homosexuality is banned but Iranian surgeons carry out corrective operations on transgender people every year. Iran’s government has a reputation for cruelty and repression yet its people are some of the kindest and most courteous that I have ever met.

Cruelty and beauty. Goldfish and hyacinths. I hope that the ordinary people of Iran get the democracy that they long for and I hope that shopkeeper sticks to selling flowers next New Year.
　
　
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5217424.stm　
　
　

Sad and shocking images:

That villainous creature, the teenage mother

A couple of days ago a discussion about teenage pregnancies took place on the excellent Vanessa Feltz show on BBC Radio London. It turns out that every year around 57,000 teenage girls become pregnant in the London area. Some have protested at the reaction they get from the general public. They aren’t seen as role models.

At my school very few girls fell into this category and those who did were regarded as rather stupid by the ones who had plans for the future. This did not mean that we weren’t having sex. We had taken on board the information provided during sex education lessons and in those pre-HIV days this usually meant taking the contraceptive pill. I wonder how many of those who took this superior attitude now have gone on to have children? I suspect they have left it too late by putting their careers first and discovered that, in spite of what we were led to believe by teachers and parents, it is not possible to have it all.

We are now in a situation where older women are trying to fix the situation that the passing of time has left them in, using fertility treatment to give them the children that come too easily to those who succumb to a persuasive boyfriend in the heat of the moment. It has to be said that in both situations having the ideal father for your child is not likely to be the motivating factor. Older women may have searched in vain for Mr. Right and girls are probably on the receiving end of a good deal of persuasion that they have found him.

The irony is of course that it is the teenager who is at the right age to cope with pregnancy and produce healthy children. It is the mature mother who runs the risk of a child with significant (and expensive) health issues. Midwives will tell you that younger mothers have quicker and relatively trouble free births, whereas older mothers sometimes have a harder time and their children are more likely to need intensive post natal care.

I wonder if there ever was a time when the majority of young women married before becoming pregnant. I suspect that there were far more “unwanted” pregnancies than we will ever really know about and a great many more people “living in sin” than was admitted at the time. The fact is that women were afraid of getting pregnant because childbirth could kill you in an age when midwives were poorly informed. The urge to procreate is a powerful thing and resists all the rules that society thinks it can impose. Some sacrificed their own chance of motherhood to their careers as teachers, nurses and carers for other people’ children. How often were these women sneered at and described as “dry old maids”? How many women committed suicide because they were conscious of the shame of being pregnant but unmarried?

It’s very sad to hear that some teenage mothers have been on the receiving end of abusive comments from some older people. Where this has happened I think it has more to do with the suggestion that they are all living off the state rather than ensuring that they can support themselves and their child before becoming mothers. Times are hard and there is a largely unfounded theory that a teenage mother automatically qualifies for free public housing, unlike the many single men who are the ones most in need of this kind of accommodation. How frustrating it must be for a man who has been on the council waiting list for most of his adult life to see a very young pregnant girl “get” the flat that he has waited years for. Undoubtedly, a small number of young women who, having seen others (in some cases their own mothers) benefit from a system that tries to ensure that every child born in the UK has an adequate roof over its head, deliberately become pregnant in order to benefit from it themselves. However I don’t think it’s that easy for all of those concerned.

Someone usually takes in that teenager, even when she is turned out by an outraged father. This is often the mother of the boyfriend who allowed that underage girl to share a bedroom with her son in the first place. This seems to happen so often now that I can’t help feeling that there is a degree of calculation in all this. They are guaranteed at least one grandchild during their lifetime, unlike the parents whose well-educated, well brought up daughters have left them waiting in vain.

I also feel that we are missing the point when it comes to schoolgirl mums. How often does the person who got her pregnant get punished or even criticised? Unless you have been through it yourself it is hard to describe the pressure that the person you believe that you love at that moment can exert when they want sex. You don’t want to lose them and, for a very young woman who has yet to develop the self-confidence that an older woman searching for the right man has, it may seem as though this is your one and only chance for love.

A few months ago I happened to overhear a discussion between two young men that was mostly about girlfriends and parenthood. It was a fascinating insight into the older teenage mind but it revealed an unsettling degree of confusion. They seemed critical of those of their peers who had become parents but their own physical needs and desires were likely to get in the way of common sense when it came to getting what they wanted. The concerns about HIV and AIDs that dominated my teenage years had passed them by. And so the cycle continues.

One of the things that struck me about the radio discussion was the number of callers who had been teenage (and often schoolgirl) mums but had gone on to gain an education, even a Master’s Degree. One young woman had married the father of her child when she was a few weeks away from giving birth to her child. Her husband was now a plumber and although they were still living with the in-laws she was determined to be part of a self-supporting family.

I still believe that it is preferable that parenthood should be put off until those considering it are in a financial position to fund it. I no longer sneer at young women who want to be wives and mothers rather than having a career. Those who become pregnant when they are going through their education should be given the option of continuing it at some stage but I believe that the interests of the child should come first. Mum should be there until they start school but should expect to start supporting herself or re-enter education at this stage. I think fathers should be on the receiving end of more criticism for their part in getting very young girls pregnant – it’s nothing to be proud of that you’re the absent father to several children by different women, especially if you aren’t paying for them.

Above all I believe that children should never be punished as they once were for being the consequence of a moment of weakness. They should be regarded as a very precious resource whatever the circumstances of their conception.