>
>their master. They had guaranteed access to their bit, enough to provide a
>living plus taxes either in the form of goods or work done on the master's
>patch.
>
> There were hundreds, if not thousands of forms of feudal tenure. But in
>all of them, a woman was largely considered either as an appendage of her
>father or her husband.
>
> The peasant was over lorded by all and sundry but in his own home he was
>the king and the wife was his subordinate. Killing your husband was
>regarded as treason, a form of regicide, rebellion against the state,
>against the natural order of things.
>
> The lord of the manor was supposed to provide some sort of social security
>for the old, sick, orphans, disabled and widows. Sometimes this meant
>taking them into his household as servants. Sometimes the church would
>perform this function after the lord of the manor had made suitable
>donations. Sometimes the church was the lord of the manor.
>
> The lord of the manor regarded the peasant and family as one unit and
>could demand work from the whole family.
>
> The bourgeois family unit emerged as a wage earner and his family as one
>unit. In the early factories the worker would take his wife and children
>along to help. It was discovered that some jobs could be done just as well
>or even more easily by women and children and they could be employed at
>lower rates of pay.
>
> But by and large capitalist society sought to preserve the family unit as
>the cheapest means of producing more workers, much needed by expanding
>industry.
>
> Peasants were forced off the land by the enclosure movement to become
>industrial workers in cities. They had to become much more mobile, once
>again breaking up old family traditions.
>
> The bourgeois family household of a man, his wife and children, is much
>narrower than any kind of family before.
>
> Except in those areas where women could gain regular employment outside
>the home -- for example the cotton mills -- the man, the wage earner, was
>the means of survival for the whole family.
>
> Divorced from the land, there was no way a woman could raise children on
>her own without benefits or charity. The biggest form of economic
>employment for women -- as domestic servants -- precluded getting married
>or having children. Once the woman did have children she was entirely
>dependent on her husband and it was this that has kept women in
>subservience. Men could set their own terms for marriage and they were the
>boss.
>
> It is only in this century, with women more and more able to work outside
>the home and support themselves and their children, that domestic violence
>has become an issue. Before that it was taken for granted as was violence
>towards children. Even decent men thought it was their duty to discipline
>their wives and children, with violence if necessary.
>
> Even now there are those that believe smacking and caning children are
>vital to prevent them running off the rails and becoming juvenile
>delinquents. A hundred years ago it was thought in some circles that wives
>also had to be disciplined and controlled in the same way to prevent them
>getting rebellious ideas.
>
> It is the economic factor of women being able to earn their own living
>that has upset this firm control and we have begun to regain some of our
>equal rights.
>
> Now, no one offers any moral justification for violence against women but
>it still happens.
>
> In many cases it is down to men still feeling that they ought to be able
>to control their wives and children in the same way they would control a
>dog. When either show signs of independence they feel threatened.
>
> It is often the men who feel most insecure, those who are threatened in
>the outside world by the boss, the foreman and so on, who feel they should
>have complete control in their home in the same way. Those who are bullied
>by the system become bullies.
>
> They blame women's refuges for breaking up marriages -- forgiving the wife
>an option to walk away from a violent situation -- and undermining their
>"control". The more helpless they feel in the outside world, the more they
>feel a need to dominate within the home.
>
> Often they are repeating a family pattern. They grew up watching their
>fathers controlling the household and cannot understand why their young
>wives will no longer accept such control.
>
> In many cases violence rarely erupts but the threat or it is there all the
>time. it does have a controlling effect. The woman conducts her whole life
>on the basis of not upsetting or provoking her husband. If a violent
>episode occurs she sometimes blames herself for provoking him by breaking
>one of his rules, without questioning his right to set such rules at all.
>
> It is a mirror reflection of the power of the state. Most workers rarely
>come into conflict with the law, the police and so on. But it is the
>awareness that if we step out of line the state will react with violence
>that stops us from stealing food from the overflowing supermarket shelves,
>even when we are hungry, or stealing shoes from the shop, even when our own
>are leaking.
>
> We rarely question the right of the ruling class to set such property laws
>and blame ourselves if we transgress and so incur the wrath and violence of
>the state.
>
> Fear of violence changes behaviour and personality -- it turns a woman
>into the stereotype feminine woman, not challenging, accepting her
>husband's greater wisdom in all im portant matters, weak and submissive.
>
> This attitude from women used to be taken for granted. Even now, on buses
>sometimes you can eavesdrop on the conversations of pensioner couples where
>the man will authoritatively be telling the woman about something -- the
>local geography for instance. He may be getting it all wrong and telling
>her a load of rubbish but she will be nodding away, hanging on every word.
>
> He has probably never ever been violent but she just grew up accepting
>that men always know more than women. When collecting petition signatures,
>we still get wives who ask their husband's permission to sign.
>
> Fortunately, this is all breaking down now and most of today's young women
>would not stomach it for a moment and the new attitude is due to the
>women's movement of the 70s.
>
> But it can be a bit of a shock for young men who are expecting their wives
>and girlfriends to behave as their mothers and grandmothers did and this is
>where the implied violence breaks out into real violence.
>
> Nowadays, if a women calls the police to say her partner has beaten her
>up, he will be taken into custody overnight and only be bailed in the
>morning if he has another address to go to until the courts can decide if a
>crime has been committed. This is enormous progress and the result of long
>hard struggle and campaigning. Even so, many battered women do not have the
>courage to call the police and instead flee in search of a refuge. Either
>way, they no longer have to simply endure violence.
>
> There is also the problem of some bourgeois cod-scientists coming up with
>lunatic theories about it being men's natural instinct to rape in order to
>justify violence against women. If this was so, the human race would have
>died out long ago.
>
> As I said above, early group marriages were strictly economic alliances
>between families, pooling their economic and food gathering resources and
>based on mother groups. Bad behaviour and lack of respect to the senior
>women or their daughters would inevitably have resulted in instant expulsion.
>
> It is hard to tell whether there is more domestic violence now than
>previously but there is certainly more reporting of it. Women are less
>ready to put up with it. And it is not only the refuges and the ability to
>earn a living that is giving women the freedom to walk away from violent
>situations.
>
> Benefits paid to single parents have been crucial, especially in the
>absence of affordable childcare. Life on benefits is a life of very severe
>poverty but you can just scrape by -- and it is only for a few years until
>the children are well settled in school and you can get a job.
>
> It is this that sends the colonel blimps raging. It is indeed undermining
>the traditional family values -- values that are based on all we hold evil
>-- violence, oppression and exploitation. A recent report showed that in
>some states in America the murder rate went down when divorce was made easier.
>
> Marriage based on fear and threat of either violence or starvation if you
>walk away is bad marriage and divorce an essential right and freedom.
>
> But currently the state is trying to force people back into traditional
>bourgeois marriages and put the economic burden of support on the wage
>earner. The Child Support Agency was invented not to help children or those
>looking after them but to save the state paying benefits to single parents.
>
> The state is also opposed to gay or homosexual relationships because these
>too are a challenge to the traditional patriarchal family and so could
>undermine the state.
>
>
>traditional family
>
>
> The traditional bourgeois family is also the cause of violence to the sick
>and the elderly because it is a way of the state throwing the burden of
>caring for the sick and the elderly mainly onto women but sometimes men as
>well, unpaid, who are isolated in narrow nuclear families. Sometimes the
>carer just cannot cope with too big a burden and this leads to neglect or
>even violence.
>
> Changes to Britain's economy over the last two or three decades have
>already started to blow the nuclear family apart: the closure of mines,
>steel mills and so on has robbed whole communities of men of the chance of
>earning a proper wage while the demand for low paid "women's work" at
>computer keyboards grows. Yet still the state tries to impose traditional
>family values.
>
> The first act of the new Labour government in 1997 was an attack on single
>parents.
>
> The ruling class media still try to brainwash women into a subordinate
>role. Television programmes, magazines and books aimed at young women tell
>them the only important thing is what they look like. They must spend hours
>in front of the mirror and buy endless new clothes and cosmetics. The
>implication is that they have nothing to do so important as attracting and
>pleasing a mate.
>
> The demands we should be making are:
>
> * easier, quicker divorce -- on demand -- especially in cases involving
>violence;
>
> * there should be more, better funded refuges but these should be
>regarded only as a temporary stop-gap measure;
>
> * violence inside the home should be just as much a criminal offence as
>violence in the street;
>
> * it should be a criminal offence to harass or threaten violence against
>a former partner -- the onus should be on stopping the violent partner, the
>victim should not have to need to go into hiding;
>
> * the marital home should automatically go to which ever partner is
>granted custody of the children and children should have more say in who
>gets custody;
>
> * the Child Support Agency should be scrapped and maintenance payments
>decided in court in each case, taking all circumstances into consideration;
>
> * income support should be automatically available on an emergency basis
>until all legal aspects are sorted out -- no one should fear hunger for
>themselves or children from walking away from a violent situation;
>
> * there should be vastly improved childcare facilities -- state funded
>and free at the point of use -- especially for single
>parents, to enable them to seek employment;
>
> * we should strengthen our calls for equal pay and opportunities for
>women, defend child benefit -- which is paid directly to mothers, improve
>lone parent benefit and social service support for lone parents should be
>improved;
>
> * there should be improved social services for caring for the sick and
>elderly so the burden is not thrown on unpaid isolated individuals in
>narrow bourgeois nuclear families;
>
> * abortion should be available on demand;
>
> * low cost housing is important for all workers, whatever form their
>family takes so we must fight the sell-off of council housing and call for
>the building of a lot more of it.
>
> Drink and drugs play a big part in increasing tne cycle of violence. They
>are most likely to be used by men or women who are feeling depressed,
>oppressed and losing control of their lives anyway.
>
> Much violence in marriage could be prevented by tackling drink and drug
>abuse. There is far too little support for countering these problems and
>what there is can be counter-productive.
>
> So we should call for:
>
> * improved clinics and facilities to help drug and alcohol addicts and
>this help should be provided on a strictly secular basis -- let the
>churches provide what missions they want for those who want it but NHS
>patients should receive treatment on an entirely secular basis that
>respects their right to their own conscience.
>
>
>New Communist Party of Britain Homepage
>
>http://www.newcommunistparty.org.uk
>
>A news service for the Working Class!
>
>Workers of all countries Unite!
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