Sheila Rowbotham is an author and my favorite of her books is 1973's WOMEN, RESISTANCE AND REVOLUTION. JACOBIN speaks with her for a new article and this is the opening of the conversation:
ANP
You came into the Left in
the early 1960s in the environment of the disarmament campaign and the
lingering aftermath of 1956. How did those years shape your political
development?
SR
I think it was key to be
involved in a movement, because CND [the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament] had lots of different kinds of people in it. There were
members of the National Union of Teachers who used to walk very solemnly
and seemed incredibly old. Then there were people in leather jackets
and people in jeans. It was a time when there was still a beatnik
counterculture. Then there would be trade union people who went. So there was a great mixture of people, and politics wasn’t at all
sectarian; there were people who were Christian socialists and
anarchists, and there was a tradition of direct action through the
Committee of the 100 — peaceful direct action that came through the
Ghandian influence. We did things like sitting down in protest, and on
one occasion we marched to a regional seat of government. We had an idea
that you’re challenging the lack of democracy in the state, at the same
time as making a moral protest.
GW
You write in your description of those years — and I think you’re referring specifically to New Left Review
— that you could not understand how they could be socialists but not
bother about being personally remote from working-class people. I’m
curious how you grappled with the question of being a middle-class
socialist as you developed your political orientation.
SR
I think it may have been
because I came from a northern industrial city that I had that
awareness. People came from the south, and particularly London. My
father’s family, and my mother’s, hadn’t had formal education. My father
was a mechanical mining engineer and he’d gone up and down in life so
he worked in the mines when he couldn’t get a job in the ’30s, and then
became a salesman. There wasn’t a tradition of books in our home. We had
various books that arrived there by chance because my father had gone
to auctions and the books would come in lots, and I used to read those. I had a really good history teacher at school, who was a liberal. At
the time as I was growing up, there was such a strong emphasis on class,
because of the culture of the novels, the angry young men — there was a
rebellious feeling that class was something that people were protesting
about. So, I think I picked that up before I ever had any idea of left
politics. It was part of being against everything that seemed to have
already existed.
ANP
What was your relationship with the New Left Review milieu?
SR
When I was in university, we had a group called Universities and Left Review.
And it was a more fluid situation. My boyfriend then was called Bob
Hawthorne and he was a close friend of Gareth Stedman Jones. I met
Gareth in my first year of university. Actually, I met Gareth on a blind
date — I got invited by a friend to meet some friend of somebody, and
Gareth and I met. I was not at all left-wing, and he had been chalking against the
Algerian War in the streets. So it wasn’t the most successful blind
date, because I was a sort of mystical beatnik hippie-type person, and I
said I’ve been chalking in Paris — by which I meant I’d chalked to get
money. And he’d chalked political slogans. And it wasn’t until I met him
again through Bob that I got to know Gareth. But he was a student, and a
bit younger than Perry and the people who started the New Left Review.
ANP
So, after a time as a Trotskyist, you describe yourself as drawn toward libertarian socialism and women’s liberation.
SR
I wasn’t really a Trotskyist. The main influence wasn’t Trotskyism and it wasn’t the New Left Review, although some of my contemporaries were connected to that. It was the politics of the New Left I’d read from the Reasoner and the New Reasoner
that Dorothy and Edward [Thompson] had. I’ve always had friends who
were in lots of different groups, so I developed an idea that I’m
friendly with people of different political persuasions and I got that
through participating in a movement in which there was this great
mixture of people. There was a moral commitment, and the commitment to
living and working with working-class people, which Dorothy and Edward
did. A lot of my life has also been involved in living in working-class
areas and working with working-class people. I wanted to overcome the
class divisions between people. From quite an early age, I felt they
were pointless and stupid. And it seemed obvious that the inequalities
affected people from very young, because I used to teach school, before I
taught at Manchester University, so I could see the ways in which
everything was against the working-class girls and boys that are taught.
ANP
Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with Dorothy and E. P. Thompson?
SR
I met them when I was
nineteen. I met them because I had a tutor who I’d been sent to —
because I was a bit of a problem. He said, you should go see these
friends of mine, Dorothy and Edward Thompson, who live near Halifax, and
they write about things like Chartism. So I rang them up and I was exceedingly nervous. And Edward and
Dorothy said I should come and visit, so I did. When I got to the house,
I didn’t see Edward, I just saw Dorothy, who was in her thirties then,
and she was wearing this black polo-neck jumper and black tights which
is very much at that time what intellectual lefty women might wear, not
the people that my mother knew. They didn’t know me or have any idea why
I was there, particularly, but they just welcomed me. I used to visit them a lot, and read everything in their study. So I did read The Making of the English Working Class in proofs. And it was like no other history book I’d read. I had read things like Primitive Rebels
by Eric Hobsbawm, so I’d read some left history. But Edward’s book was
just completely extraordinary — all these people — and quite a lot of
the places were places that I was familiar with because they’re close to
Leeds.
Read the whole interview. Even just on paper, it makes for a lively and great conversation.
Monday, June 29, 2020. Who is running Iraq -- or is it: who's ruining Iraq?
Where is the prime minister of Iraq?
It's
a question that needs to be asked as all the problems continue in the
country. In July, he'll be in the US meeting with President Donald
Trump. Will Iraq still exist?
Iraqi authorities said Sunday 13 doctors have succumbed to coronavirus in the country since February.
A further 775 doctors have contracted the virus, Abdulalameer
al-Shimmary, head of Iraq's Doctors' Association, told Anadolu Agency.
Hundreds of #Iraq's medical staff are now infected with #COVID19. Those doctors are risking their lives and their families' lives in order to contain the catastrophe with minimum resources. Many have died after getting the virus.
Men
sit at a traditional cafe in the historic city of Shaqlawah, about 48
kilometres northeast of Erbil, in the northern Iraqi Kurdish autonomous
region. AFP
Iraqi
authorities ordered medical students to volunteer at the country’s
hospitals after a sharp increase in coronavirus deaths was reported. The National Security Council made the decision during a Saturday
session chaired by Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi, state media said. Fifth and sixth-year medical students will be “directed to volunteer
to work at hospitals” to support health staff “in the confrontation
against the coronavirus pandemic”, the council said.
The
'volunteer' term is an issue. Will they be paid or not? This is an
issue and it's a serious one. Iraq cannot find paying jobs for their
citizens. The government has noted earlier this month the decision to
stop paying some workers. You're ordering students to volunteer -- are
you paying them? Are you paying them a living wage?
Authorities in Erbil province announced a total lockdown on late
Sunday as the number of coronavirus infections continues to rise.
Meanwhile, Kurdistan Region health officials reported 139 new cases and
six deaths due to the complications related to the disease over 24
hours. A ministry statement detailed that among over 1,400 coronavirus tests
given in the past day, 139 returned positive. It also said the total
number of infections had risen to about 5,700. The statement noted that six more patients had passed away due to the
highly contagious disease and added that, since the beginning of the
outbreak, 186 people in the Kurdistan Region had succumbed to the virus.
Firsat Sofi, governor of Erbil, informed Rudaw that the provincial
lockdown will begin on Tuesday, rather than on Monday as previously
noted in a statement
The order will now be put in place between Tuesday, June 30, at 6:00 am and 11:59 pm on Saturday, July 4.
All civilian movement will be prohibited, including vehicle traffic.
Residents will be allowed to purchase essentials at their local
bakeries, supermarkets, groceries, and pharmacies, which will remain
open during the lockdown, according to the issued order. No hours of
operation have been specified for the essential businesses.
Yes,
another problem the prime minister of Iraq should be addressing.
Turkey is in violation of international law and Iraq's sovereignty by
bombing Iraq and by sending ground soldiers into Iraq. Seth J. Frantzman (JERUSALEM POST) reports:
There are growing concerns about Turkey’s military operations in northern Iraq, two weeks after Ankara began bombing areas of the country claiming it was “fighting terrorists.”
Turkey
began operation “Claw-Tiger” on June 17 and it seems to come in the
context of Turkey launching new military attacks every month in
different countries to distract from failures at home by Ankara’s
leading party.
Turkey has had almost a year of near-constant new conflicts and militarist saber-rattling.
Last
spring and summer it threatened to invade eastern Syria, threatening US
troops and the Trump administration in the process. The US tried to
appease Turkey by having its anti-ISIS partners on the ground remove
obstacles to Turkey’s invasion. It wasn’t enough, in October Turkey told
Washington it would begin bombing the region and US troops must move.
Turkey plans to set up more temporary military bases in northern Iraq
after stepping up its strikes against Kurdish militants there, a senior
Turkish official told Reuters, saying the effort would ensure border
security.
[. . .]
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) said on Wednesday that Turkish and
Iranian military interventions violated Iraqi sovereignty. The UAE and
Turkey in opposition on several fronts, including in Libya where they
back rival sides.
The
spokesperson for the Iraqi military laughably declared weeks ago that
ISIS was vanquished. That's never happened. ISIS remains active in
Iraq and continues to carry out attacks. It's an issue the prime
minister needs to seriously address. THE NEW DELHI TIMES notes:
The resurgence of the Islamic State can be attributed to a
weakened Iraqi government along with an administrative and security
vacuum in the country. The Islamic State (IS) has carried out a series of attacks in recent
times which has led security studies analysts to take note of the
resurgence of the terrorist and extremist groups in Iraq. According to a
May 2020 report by the Combating Terrorism Centre (CTC), there has been
a surge in attack activities in the second half of 2019 and the first
quarter of 2020. The number of reported Islamic State attacks
increased from 1,470 in 2018 to 1,669 in 2019, with 566 reported attacks
in the first quarter of 2020 alone. As per the CTC report, the number
of areas with active attack cells seems to nearly double, from an
assessed 27 areas in December 2018 to an assessed 47 areas in May 2020.
The IS attacks have taken place in the provinces of Anbar, Baghdad,
Diyala, Kirkuk, Ninewa and Salah al-Din. The IS has also plenty of
fighters at its disposal. In May 2020, assessments from the U.S. Central Command, the Defence
Intelligence Agency and the U.S.-led coalition, shared in a report by
the Defense Department Inspector General, claimed that the IS as a group
was still operating mostly on the margins, both in Iraq and Syria and
the terror group lacks the capabilities to sustain that pace over
several months. However, many security experts contend that the U.S.-led
coalition is unable to see key changes on the ground. The most recent U.S. estimates put the terror group’s force strength
in Iraq and Syria at anywhere from 14,000 to 18,000 fighters. Further,
despite the U.S. raid that killed former IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
in October last year, IS has maintained command and control under new
leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi.
We are so excited to announce the launch of Ms. magazine's very first podcast, On the Issues with Michele Goodwin!
You read Ms. online and in print. You follow along on social media. Now, keep up with the feminist movement and even more of Ms.’s substantive, unique reporting with your new favorite podcast.
Tune in for our premiere episode on Tuesday, June 30 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or MsMagazine.com.
Get a sneak peek of the feminist analysis, insightful conversations and exciting guests to come: a trailer is available now! We hope you’ll give it a listen, subscribe and rate the podcast.
On the Issues is a show where we report, rebel, and tell it like it is. Join host Dr. Michele Goodwin as she and special guests tackle the most compelling issues of our times, centering your concerns about rebuilding our nation and advancing the promise of equality.
Listen to a trailer for On the Issues with Michele Goodwin now — on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
And we’d love if you help spread the word, too! The number one thing you can do to help the Ms. magazine podcast reach new listeners? Subscribe and rate the podcast on Apple. Let’s show the power of independent, feminist media!
Meet Your On the Issues Host:Dr. Michele Goodwin is a frequent contributor to Ms. magazine and on MsMagazine.com.
She is a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine
and also serves on the executive committee and national board of the
ACLU. Dr. Goodwin is a prolific author and an elected member of the
American Law Institute, as well as an elected Fellow of the American Bar
Foundation and the Hastings Center. Her most recent book, Policing The Womb: Invisible Women and The Criminalization of Motherhood, is described as a "must read."
Tune in Tuesday, June 30 for the first episode of On the Issues with Michele Goodwin—Policing in America: A Tale of Race, Sex and Violence.Professor Goodwin and her guests will ask critical questions like: where are the women in the field of policing? And why does it matter?
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