cobbles

TW: Rape Clause

I am a child of defiance.

I'm not talking about a childish feeling of breaking the rules.

I'm talking about my very existence being defiance.

Family

Starting with my mother being disabled and recovering from a coma after a horrific car accident where the doctors didn't think she'd wake up. Or have children. My father's determination to make sure he was in my life when my parents split up was defiance. I defied my mothers wishes to forget my father in turn and at thirteen I left my mother to live with my father.

When my grandmother died, my brother and I lowered her into her grave. Which I had to fight for the right for both of us to lower her down. Convention wanted men who weren't related to her to do it. I was fortunate the rest of the family backed me up, but there was pressure to get me to back down.

This defiance wasn't just a circumstantial occurrence. It's been baked into me from generations of ancestors before me. We aren't always loud about it, but we also can't just accept circumstances.

My Grandfather joining a union and becoming a strike leader was defiance against his conservative voting parents. My other grandfather rolling into a field after being captured in 1940 and then helping others to escape France was defiance.

Sometimes though, defiance is existing despite your circumstances.

I always knew that my maternal great-grandmothers father was a secret. She didn't know who he was and her mother slammed the door on the man who turned up at her door a few years after her daughters birth.

I'd recently done a little family history and searched for that side of the family. I found an extra sibling that I'm not sure my Grandmother knew about. I know that her grandmother was herself brought up by her unmarried mother.

In the UK we currently have the two child rule limit on child tax credits (also known as the Rape Clause because if you've been raped and had a child then it's not limited.) A very awful right wing law that tries to define who is the “deserving poor”. It judges poor women with multiple children. Our society loves to blame women for it's lack of care of poor families. We've not moved beyond Victorian Industrial morality. [1][2]

I looked at the census for 1891 and saw a grandmother, a mother and her daughter living with their uncle. I found three children with different surnames.

I looked further and saw how estranged those two women were from family with only a brother living with them. The black sheep of the family. In a small town in the North East of Scotland in Victorian times. Those women were tough, both women survived into their seventies.

They survived scrabbling from job to job. It took brothers to go out into the world and earn money to give stability and a home over their heads. They worked where they could in factories, doing knitting and as washer women. All to put food on the table.

They survived despite being considered loose women. They survived despite there being no social contract. They survived despite not being the “deserving poor.” I sat there looking at the screen for a while. Feeling that coal of rage within me heat up. But at the same time I marveled at the toughness of those women.

Defiance doesn't always have to be loud. Sometimes defiance is existing and bringing up the next generation. We build on each generations progress. It's slow and sometimes we are knocked back down.

Betrayal of the Social Contract

I think about the fact that I got an education and got an Honours degree in Computer Science.

From 1860 which is roughly when my great-great-great grandmother was pregnant (and gasp, was unmarried), it only took nearly one hundred and fifty years for someone in the family to get there. To rise from the very dregs of polite society to having qualifications to participate as part of my community as an equal.

Girls in my family mainly tend to go into teaching. I got a different class of degree.

My grandmothers sister got a good education and became a teacher, she was sponsored by her uncle. She had a patron. My Grandmother had to stay home to look after the family, because she was the youngest. She was intelligent, but ignorant. So she made sure I did my homework. A part of her resented not being able to get an education.

So both of my living Grandparents were proud I made it to University.

My cousins and myself are the first generation in my family on my Fathers side to go on to further education, straight from school. I'm the first girl for both sides of my family, to get a degree that's more on the Sciences and engineering side.

I was only able to do this because my generation was the last generation to get grants. I got a free education because I was too poor for tuition fees. I feel very angry about the opportunities that other folks are denied.

When you have policies that want to judge people and only help people who are the “deserving poor” then you've gone backwards. This is why I am a huge believer in Universal Basic Income. I also want a Free Education to all, Free Healthcare and Free Public Transport. We could have this.

The reason we don't is because very rich people want to control who gets looked after. They don't want their taxes to pay for the poor to build a better life and community.

This is the betrayal of Labour on the populace in the UK. Not just within Government but our political representatives making legislature. It was activists who pushed over decades for social policy. For a National Health Service, for Free Education, for Nationalised Infrastructure.

Thatcher did a lot of damage. But New Labour continued it. From opposition they allowed the two child limit to be voted in. From opposition they were whipped to vote for Brexit. Labour has not been a socialist party for a long time. They cater to centrism, so of course they are gradually turning more right wing.

Labour have betrayed the social movements that caused it to be created. Now they are criminalising protest. They are making it harder to protest the wrongs in our society and things like genocide.

So the most radical thing that any of us can do is pass our knowledge onto others. To ensure that knowledge is available to others. It's a defiance of those who would limit our thoughts and our knowledge to do so. Sometimes we may be considered hostile in our tone. People for the status quo tend to see any push back as hostile. So that should never stop us.

We need more defiance. I don't want it to be another One Hundred and Fifty years before families get that further education. I want education to be free to everyone and available to everyone.

Defiance doesn't always have to be loud.

[1] https://www.womensaidni.org/everything-wanted-know-rape-clause/ [2] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/child-tax-credit-exceptions-to-the-2-child-limit