International Women's Day – Cornton Vale Prison Protest

On 8 March, International Women’s Day comes around once more.

As the Scottish Socialist Voice explained in a previous IWD special (scroll down to centre pages):

For over 150 years, women and men across the world have demonstrated on International Women’s Day. On that day in 1857 in New York, hundreds of women workers in the textile industry went on strike, protesting casual labour, low wages and poor working conditions. The women were attacked and beaten by the police – their stand was one of the reasons 8 March was officially recognised as International Women’s Day in 1910. So why do we still mark the day now in the 21st century?

The multinational bank HSBC is a major sponsor of the ‘official’, or at least biggest, International Women’s Day celebrations in Britain now. Their website explains:
“Many companies have actively supported International Women’s Day… This is essential if they are to recruit and retain the best female talent, sell their products/services to them, and see more women investing in them.”
But for others, including the Scottish Socialist Women’s Network, the reasons we march on International Women’s Day are the same as why the New York textile workers marched – because we are still fighting low pay, exploitation and oppression.

Photo by Eva Merz

Socialists in Scotland will be marking the occasion with our annual International Women’s Day protest outside HMP Cornton Vale.

Cornton Vale is the only women’s prison in Scotland, and it is notoriously overcrowded – despite the fact that most of the inmates shouldn’t be there in the first place. Just one per cent of women in Cornton Vale are there because they have committed a violent offence. Previous reports have found that 90 per cent of women imprisoned in Scotland have committed crimes related to poverty  – through drug and alcohol abuse, non-payment of fines, or just struggling to cope with living below the breadline.

In 2006, it was found that 98% of the inmates were struggling with addiction; 80% had mental health problems and 75% were survivors of abuse.

Former Scottish Socialist Party MSP Rosie Kane was held in Cornton Vale in 2006 for non-payment of a fine. One of her fellow inmates was there for nothing more than throwing some candles and a James Blunt CD out of a window during an argument. You can read about Rosie’s experience in Cornton Vale here.

It costs £37,000 a year to keep one woman in Cornton Vale – that’s money that could be investing in helping women with drink and drug problems, helping poverty stricken women from having to turn to prostitution or theft to feed themselves, their families or their habits. That is money that could help women rebuilt their lives after abuse and trauma. Instead women are being locked up and mistreated over and over again.

Socialists and feminists protesting outside womens’ prisons is often misunderstood or deliberately misconstrued. We DON’T think women are inherently good and gentle and should therefore don’t belong in jail. The fact is that women receive disproportionately high sentences when compared to men who have committed similar crimes. As previously reported in Leftfield, shoplifters (mainly women) are more likely to be imprisoned than sex offenders (mainly men). Women taking a tiny bit of profit-making opportunity from private companies are considered more dangerous criminals than men who pose a serious risk to the safety of women and children. That’s FUCKED UP.

Stop the war on women!

Join us this Sunday, 7 March at 12 noon at Stirling Train Station, to march on Cornton Vale and PROTEST.

Please bring ribbons and flowers to decorate the fence.

If you are a driver, your help ferrying protesters from the train station to the prison would be much appreciated.