Post by admin on Nov 7, 2007 10:33:01 GMT -5
Twin-set and pearls brigade favour brothels
By Andrew O'Hagan
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 06/11/2007
Have your say Read comments
You may think the Women's Institute is the last bastion of conservative values and Victoria sponges, but it is actually one of the most radical groupings in the country, forever ready to slow-clap Labour prime ministers, argue for equal pay, fight for investment in Aids research and generally storm the Bastille at every opportunity.
I have really rather come to love the WI: pound for pound, the twin-set and pearls brigade can make the average student politician look like a boring model of sterile conformity. There it is, every other day, taking an interesting and thoughtful position on something frightening, and there isn't a youth movement in the country with half their courage.
As if to prove the point, 6,000 members of the WI in Hampshire have just come out with a statement in favour of brothels. Their idea is not to make things easier for men but to force councils to make life safer for those women who live by prostitution, and thereby to improve life on the streets of this country.
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It is a remarkably enlightened position to take, one based not on moral hysteria but on a proper and sober consideration of the facts.
Working girls in Britain are vulnerable not only to bad weather and cold but also to lack of protection: a great many of them are assaulted and abused each year, and housing them in proper facilities would be a blessing.
It is a grown-up and sensible thing to think: prostitution is the world's oldest profession; you may not approve of it, but one may as well admit the reality of it and seek to protect those involved as best we can.
The good women of the Hampshire WI are thinking straight and looking ahead.
Legalising brothels would clean up the inner cities and banish much of the crime that attaches itself to the circumstances of those who sell sex – the girls would have the protection of the law, thus saving them from a protection racket more vicious than anything that prostitutes themselves could be held accountable for.
It is brave of the WI, because many people who support its work might find it easier to dismiss prostitutes.
But the fact is that prostitutes, in most cases, are women first, and to have the enlightened backing of the Women's Institute would be a great boon.
Who is going to fight for the rights of those working girls if not an institution supposedly devoted to the welfare of British women?
There is nothing in the charter of the WI that says a British woman must be widowed or Christian or clean-living or devoted to knitting to be considered a worthwhile human being who deserves consideration.
She might merely be a woman whose reality is very difficult and who might be proud to enjoy the support of the clever women of the WI, those who wish to understand people much more than they wish to judge them.
One is not sanctioning a person's actions simply by helping that person to survive them.
A good doctor knows this when he gives a patient a prescription for methadone. Much of the danger that faces prostitutes in this country comes not from the act itself but from the illegal circumstances in which the act is procured.
We must protect these women and drive out those who exploit them. There are very few people in the Government who would gladly speak up for prostitutes, and this makes the efforts of the WI all the more admirable.
Maybe it says something about the lily-livered, conformist nature of our times, but it is often the most docile-seeming organisations that are the only ones willing to speak up. It is certainly not female MPs or female columnists who are championing the rights of prostitutes; it is not academics or the legal establishment.
No, it is thousands of elderly ladies who are supposed not to care a jot for the vicious life of the inner cities.
Likewise, the National Trust has recently emerged from under its dust-sheets to shout the odds about the obscenity of building houses in areas of natural beauty. Not only shouting the odds but using its subscription funds to buy up land, thereby making it impossible for people to send in the diggers.
This kind of conservative radicalism has a long tradition in England, but one wouldn't necessarily have expected it from an organisation better known for quietly and expertly looking after the walls and floors of stately homes.
But the National Trust has a constituency of three and a half million members – more than the population of Wales – and it might prove very effective in exercising its political arm.
The organisation certainly cannot simply stand aside while politicians manoeuvre this way and that to protect and advance their jobs: the green belt has friends, three and a half million of them, and if they are willing to put their money where their mouths are, then that constitutes a massive force for the protection of the landscape against short-term number-crunchers.
Imaginative house planning and proper consultation does not happen by itself, but by people exerting pressure in the right places, and sometimes – as the National Trust is doing by buying up land – by circumventing commercial and political goals in the interests of something much larger.
Who would have thought it – two of the country's most dyed-in-the-wool behemoths of conservative thinking taking on issues and fighting battles that free-thinkers might run away from?
I believe it tells you a story about changes in the modes of free-thinking, just as it tells you how these organisations are not graveyards but places constantly growing with the times in which they exist and in which they seek to survive.
We have come to a point when bright young ministers spend half their day keeping quiet about what they really believe, while, out there, all over the country, people in organisations formerly known for jam-making and the selling of tea-towels are taking brave stands against stupidity.
By Andrew O'Hagan
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 06/11/2007
Have your say Read comments
You may think the Women's Institute is the last bastion of conservative values and Victoria sponges, but it is actually one of the most radical groupings in the country, forever ready to slow-clap Labour prime ministers, argue for equal pay, fight for investment in Aids research and generally storm the Bastille at every opportunity.
I have really rather come to love the WI: pound for pound, the twin-set and pearls brigade can make the average student politician look like a boring model of sterile conformity. There it is, every other day, taking an interesting and thoughtful position on something frightening, and there isn't a youth movement in the country with half their courage.
As if to prove the point, 6,000 members of the WI in Hampshire have just come out with a statement in favour of brothels. Their idea is not to make things easier for men but to force councils to make life safer for those women who live by prostitution, and thereby to improve life on the streets of this country.
advertisement
It is a remarkably enlightened position to take, one based not on moral hysteria but on a proper and sober consideration of the facts.
Working girls in Britain are vulnerable not only to bad weather and cold but also to lack of protection: a great many of them are assaulted and abused each year, and housing them in proper facilities would be a blessing.
It is a grown-up and sensible thing to think: prostitution is the world's oldest profession; you may not approve of it, but one may as well admit the reality of it and seek to protect those involved as best we can.
The good women of the Hampshire WI are thinking straight and looking ahead.
Legalising brothels would clean up the inner cities and banish much of the crime that attaches itself to the circumstances of those who sell sex – the girls would have the protection of the law, thus saving them from a protection racket more vicious than anything that prostitutes themselves could be held accountable for.
It is brave of the WI, because many people who support its work might find it easier to dismiss prostitutes.
But the fact is that prostitutes, in most cases, are women first, and to have the enlightened backing of the Women's Institute would be a great boon.
Who is going to fight for the rights of those working girls if not an institution supposedly devoted to the welfare of British women?
There is nothing in the charter of the WI that says a British woman must be widowed or Christian or clean-living or devoted to knitting to be considered a worthwhile human being who deserves consideration.
She might merely be a woman whose reality is very difficult and who might be proud to enjoy the support of the clever women of the WI, those who wish to understand people much more than they wish to judge them.
One is not sanctioning a person's actions simply by helping that person to survive them.
A good doctor knows this when he gives a patient a prescription for methadone. Much of the danger that faces prostitutes in this country comes not from the act itself but from the illegal circumstances in which the act is procured.
We must protect these women and drive out those who exploit them. There are very few people in the Government who would gladly speak up for prostitutes, and this makes the efforts of the WI all the more admirable.
Maybe it says something about the lily-livered, conformist nature of our times, but it is often the most docile-seeming organisations that are the only ones willing to speak up. It is certainly not female MPs or female columnists who are championing the rights of prostitutes; it is not academics or the legal establishment.
No, it is thousands of elderly ladies who are supposed not to care a jot for the vicious life of the inner cities.
Likewise, the National Trust has recently emerged from under its dust-sheets to shout the odds about the obscenity of building houses in areas of natural beauty. Not only shouting the odds but using its subscription funds to buy up land, thereby making it impossible for people to send in the diggers.
This kind of conservative radicalism has a long tradition in England, but one wouldn't necessarily have expected it from an organisation better known for quietly and expertly looking after the walls and floors of stately homes.
But the National Trust has a constituency of three and a half million members – more than the population of Wales – and it might prove very effective in exercising its political arm.
The organisation certainly cannot simply stand aside while politicians manoeuvre this way and that to protect and advance their jobs: the green belt has friends, three and a half million of them, and if they are willing to put their money where their mouths are, then that constitutes a massive force for the protection of the landscape against short-term number-crunchers.
Imaginative house planning and proper consultation does not happen by itself, but by people exerting pressure in the right places, and sometimes – as the National Trust is doing by buying up land – by circumventing commercial and political goals in the interests of something much larger.
Who would have thought it – two of the country's most dyed-in-the-wool behemoths of conservative thinking taking on issues and fighting battles that free-thinkers might run away from?
I believe it tells you a story about changes in the modes of free-thinking, just as it tells you how these organisations are not graveyards but places constantly growing with the times in which they exist and in which they seek to survive.
We have come to a point when bright young ministers spend half their day keeping quiet about what they really believe, while, out there, all over the country, people in organisations formerly known for jam-making and the selling of tea-towels are taking brave stands against stupidity.