Women's Views on News |
| Unethical adoption practises in the UK too Posted: 18 Jan 2016 12:50 PM PST
The Movement for an Adoption Apology (MAA) seeks recognition and acknowledgement of the pain and grief suffered by many birth parents and their children because of the unethical adoption practices of the past. We believe that this can only be achieved by a full Parliamentary apology with cross-party support. For many years, until at least the 1980s, pregnancy outside marriage was severely frowned upon, and frequently young women who found themselves in this situation were given little choice but to give in to the strong pressures which were exerted on them by the authorities to have their babies adopted. They were not given information about the welfare services, including housing and financial help, which were available at the time. There was no question of these women being found to be unfit mothers; they were simply prevented from becoming mothers at all. This experience so traumatised many of these women that they have suffered years of mental and/or physical ill health ever since, and many were unable to have more children. In some cases, fathers also, even when wishing to help, were refused a say in their child's future, because the child was classified as illegitimate, and thus these fathers also became unwilling parties to these adoptions. It is possible that a government inquiry will be needed to reveal the full extent of the unethical practices and the damage suffered by these birth parents. However we recognise that such an enquiry would take time to set up and therefore we ask for a start to be made now, with a parliamentary statement of intention to examine all the facts. No woman today would expect to have a baby taken away from her just because she is not married. But this is what happened to thousands of women for about four decades, from the 1950s right up until the 80s. Those who saw the film 'Philomena' may think this only happened in Ireland; but it happened here too in England, as well as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Advice and support were not given, many women were harshly treated in Mother and Baby homes, and many of us never had any more children because of the stress of this first loss. We ask everyone who can relate to this grief to sign our petition, so that at last we will get some recognition of what we have gone through, and some acknowledgement of what this did to us. Many women are still too ashamed to speak out about it, and so continue to suffer in silence and still experience long term post-traumatic stress. We need the public recognition which a cross-party parliamentary apology would give us. Please sign our petition. And support this early day motion (EDM): EDM 590: ‘That this House recognises the suffering caused by forced child adoptions during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, which took place due to social pressures on women who had children outside of marriage; notes the unacceptable adoption and care practices of the past, such as not giving information about welfare services, including housing and financial help which were available at the time, and not questioning whether women putting their children up for adoption had given informed consent; further recognises the negligence of previous governments with regard to ensuring that the care provided for unmarried mothers was appropriate and that they and their children were not mistreated or discriminated against, resulting in many women suffering traumatising pre and post-natal experiences, and children being denied contact with their birth parents; and calls on the Government to apologise in order to go some way toward helping the parents and children who were victims of these practices.’ Early Day Motions are formal motions submitted for debate in the House of Commons. Although very few are actually debated. EDMs allow MPs to draw attention to an event or cause. MPs register their support by signing individual motions. So please write to your MP. Click here for a sample letter. Thanks.  |
| Special Branch files on new achive site Posted: 18 Jan 2016 11:16 AM PST
The Special Branch Files Project, a live archive of once-declassified files focussing on the surveillance of political activists and campaigners, was launched last week. Set up in 1883 to help with combatting the threat of Irish republican terrorists in the reign of Queen Victoria, the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch with time assumed a much wider role, monitoring the activities of anarchists, Bolsheviks and even the suffragettes. Later, it became the executive arm of MI5 in dealing with espionage cases, as the Security Service was not permitted to arrest potential spies. And as the war against terrorism became more intense, Special Branch worked closely with the Anti-Terrorist Branch before being subsumed into the Counter-Terrorism Command of the Metropolitan Police in 2006. Journalists and researchers have generously made their files available and accessible to The Special Branch Files Project as a matter of public record – and so the site provides not only access to the documents themselves, but they are complemented 'with engaging analysis' in background stories. The project is an initiative run by journalists, academics, researchers and volunteers. The documents, the project’s website explains, reveal the intricate details recorded by Britain's secret police about a range of protest movements in this country since 1968. In the early years of the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA), made law in 2000, journalists obtained various Special Branch documents from the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office. Although the FoIA made an exemption for information related to security services, disclosures to various journalists included files on the secret police monitoring of political movements and individuals, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the Anti-Apartheid movement, and disputes between trade union workers and their employers. The former MI5 officer turned whistleblower, Cathy Massiter, for example, was investigating left-wing subversive influence within CND from 1981 until the end of 1983. She initially felt such a limited investigation was legitimate but increasing political pressure led to her investigating the organisation as a whole. In the 1960s, CND was classified as a subversive organisation. But by 1981 CND was no longer on the subversive list so surveillance should have been limited to studying the influence of the Trotskyists and the Communists within it. Yet the surveillance became more intense. Massiter told Channel 4's 20/20 Vision programme ‘MI5's Official Secrets‘: 'We were violating our own rules. It seemed to be getting out of control. 'This was happening, not because CND as such justified this kind of treatment but simply because of political pressure; the heat was there for information about CND and we had to have it.' Massiter continued, 'You couldn't just concentrate on the subversive elements in CND, you had to be able to answer questions on the non-subversive elements, and the whole thing began to flow out into a very grey area'. CND rose from occupying roughly half of Massiter's workload in her first year or two, to dominating all her time by the end. And while she was studying the CND she became very concerned with the lack of definition about what qualified as 'subversive'. Another case highlighted by the media around this time was that of a woman called Madeleine Haigh. She was a CND supporter who wrote to her local newspaper in 1981 protesting about the cancellation of an anti-nuclear event in Worcester. Shortly afterwards she was visited by two policemen who claimed to be investigating a mail order fraud. When she phoned the local police station they denied all knowledge of the men and the fraud investigation. After pursuing the matter for 18 months, the West Midlands Chief Constable Philip Knights finally admitted that Special Branch had been involved. Knights later defended this on the BBC documentary ‘True Spies‘ a three-part series broadcast on BBC Two during October and November 2002. He said, 'It was perceived that CND had links to the Communist Party, and it was automatically, I think, assumed that there would be people in there who had subversion as their main aim, and we wanted to try and find out who they were.' He believed that Haigh 'might develop into a Communist Party member. If she's fringe interested in extreme politics then she was certainly within the remit of the Special Branch to be investigated.' The reporter, Peter Taylor, pressed for clarification; 'So if I had gone on a CND demonstration in the early 80s I was therefore a legitimate person for investigation?' Knights agreed, elaborating, 'Unless you inquire, you don't find out. You can't just pick it out of thin air whether somebody is a subversive or not. You have to inquire.' But that openess was short-lived. The authorities now routinely refuse to disclose Special Branch files, including information which they previously released. The Special Branch Files Project aims to expand its collection and invites anyone who wishes to share further files, analysis or to support the project in any other way, to get in touch.  |
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