VIOLENCE against women and girls has now reached epidemic proportions and, to add insult to injury, the far right is using this rising tide of violence to generate civil unrest on a scale unseen in recent years. 

The hateful organisations of the right, peddling fear and racism, don’t care about women either. Many are violent, thuggish men, likely to be abusing and bullying women themselves while making false and racist claims that misogyny is exclusive to immigrants and Muslims.

Prior to the shocking murders of the young girls in Southport, very few batted an eyelid at statistics revealing that violence against women and girls has risen by 40 per cent between 2018 and 2023. There was little public outrage at the press exposing the “blow jobs for promotions” scandal across the ambulance service in this country. 

Our porn-saturated society has become desensitised to the fact that women and girls are increasingly unsafe absolutely everywhere, even in public places like a dance class or a teen pop concert.

The issue of rising male violence against women is the elephant in the room for the labour and trade union movement. We simply cannot allow the far right to reframe what misogyny is and weaponise it in order to target black and Asian communities for violence.

There is a risk that some women are being taken in by the poisonous narrative of Tommy Robinson and his followers and this comes back to a failure of the left and the unions to correctly articulate and oppose women’s oppression.

Women have been labelled Terfs, bigots and Nazis for daring to stand up for our sex-based rights. This misogynist hate which has been spewed out by left-wing men, and by women too, is a factor in the rise of violence against women and girls.  

No debate in the trade union movement on VAWG is ever complete without the cry “men too, men too!” Whether we like it or not, there is a growing perception that if you speak out in defence of women’s sex-based rights you are not welcome in the labour and trade union movement.

Where is the debate on the left over the fact that for two years in a row women are leaving the trade union movement in droves? Some 129,000 women left trade unions in 2022 and a further 89,000 women left the trade unions in 2023. Where is the concern about the potentially devastating impact this exodus of women will have on the ability to mount the fightback — now a matter of urgency — against racism and fascism?  

As the struggle for women’s sex-based rights has been demonised by many in the labour and trade union movement, the Tories and the far right have exploited this ground to divide the working class and to peddle hatred, fear and a racist agenda.

The truth is that abuse, exploitation and the murder of young girls and women is perpetuated by men of all races, creeds and religions and the underlying common denominator is the fact that the perpetrators are all men — adult males. 

Those pushing a hateful and racist agenda do not hold the keys to women’s liberation and they do not have any political, social or economic solutions to stem the rising tide of violence against women and girls. For them, the rising violence against women and girls is merely an opportunity to tap into the anger of dispossessed working-class communities.

Violence against women is part of a wider malaise that permeates throughout society and it is perpetuated by the capitalist system itself. The commercial sexual exploitation of women and children is a booming industry and powerful vested interests will always protect their profits first and foremost.

Many on the left and in the unions — even some claiming to be Marxists — reframe commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls as “liberation” and tell the parents of working-class girls that so-called “sex work” — ie prostitution — is a legitimate career option. And the profiteers and exploiters of women’s bodies are lauded as social justice warriors.

When we use words like “patriarchy” it is all too easy to dismiss this as just another aspect of liberal feminism. But that is not how Marxists or socialists view the word patriarchy.

The first great class division in society was in pre-history where men relegated women to an inferior status materially and ideologically. The struggle for women’s liberation is therefore a class issue that should be deeply entwined within the class struggle.

Correctly people are calling for the widest alliance to defeat racism and fascism. The question of attacks on women and girls is bound up in this fightback — therefore how women are perceived must be discussed across the left and in the unions if we are to win the battle for ideas against the far right.

Thorough and honest debate and analysis of the methods and ideas racists are using to win support in the most deprived communities in the country can only enable us to develop our own ideas to defeat them politically. And we have to defeat them politically as well as in large numbers on the streets.

The struggle against fascism must be built around the trade union movement. Working-class women have always been the fiercest fighters against racism and fascism and this is why the left must listen to women’s concerns in this period.

Helen O’Connor is a trade unionist and former nurse.