NL THE ASSOCIATION of London Authorities (ALA) launched a high profile publicity campaign 'Zero Tolerance' against violence against women last week.
The campaign is designed to raise awareness - and reduce tolerance - of violence against women and children.
Posters have appeared all over London backed up by leaflets detailing help and support available to women victims of violence.
Part of its aim is to expose the high levels of domestic violence in London. One hundred thousand women seek treatment for violent injuries received at home each year, four Birmingham campaigners protest the violence of Bhopinder Basi against his wife and child in ten homeless young women leave home because of abuse, almost half of all murders of women are by a current or former partner.
Unreported
Only two per cent of violent attacks on women are reported to the police and domestic violence accounts for a quarter of all reported violent crime.
The Chair of the ALA's women's committee, Jacqueline Abbott, said: 'the aim of the campaign is to make violence against women socially unacceptable. It carries a message for all men: violence against women is a crime.' This campaign is to be welcomed and should be used as a springboard for further action against domestic violence. Calls for the government to back the campaign need to be accompanied by demands to improve options for women who are victims.
Services to support victims are underfunded and scarce. Local government cuts profoundly affect choices.
Combatting women's oppression is fundamental to the campaign against violence against women and the wider struggle against capitalism.
As Lynne Segal says in her book Changing Men, we are confronting here is the barbarism of private life reflecting back the increased barbarism of public life, as contemporary capitalism continues to chisel out is hierarchies along the familiar grooves of class, gender and race.'