Save Doncaster Women's Aid protest 21 September 2017, photo Steve Williams

Save Doncaster Women’s Aid protest 21 September 2017, photo Steve Williams   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Sarah Sachs-Eldridge, Socialist Party women’s group

On 8 April around 20 members of the Socialist Party who are involved or want to be involved in fighting the attacks on women’s and domestic violence services met up to discuss the next steps for this struggle.

We met in the Derby Women’s Centre, a resource kept open by heroic campaigning by working class women and by trade union solidarity.

All the Socialist Party members at the meeting, from sacked Doncaster Women’s Aid worker Lou Harrison, to trade union militants, to survivors of domestic violence and the austerity onslaught which falls so heavily on women, were inspiring in their determination to fight.

We were unanimous in our approach – the Tory attack on domestic violence provision, often passed on by right-wing Labour councils must be fought and that requires a socialist programme including demanding no-cuts budgets and building mass struggle against austerity.

We encourage all branches to investigate whether local services are among the third of refuges threatened with closure and if so to call a public meeting on defending the service.

Around the world, from teachers in Oklahoma to students in the Spanish state, from Latin America to India, the mood and confidence to fight and to defend women’s rights is growing.

We have every confidence we will encounter that mood and should boldly offer socialist ideas to those who have no choice but to defend the services that can mean women live or die.