Pandemics, Cotton Pickers and Suffragettes

Allyship in Action - Deeds not Words

I am one of three Allies Leads for the Centrica Women’s Network. The importance of allyship is writ large in my mind and this week whilst thinking about allies, a few examples occurred to me and reminded me of the utmost importance of allies.

Pandemics

With our world reeling from a global pandemic, I remembered a pandemic which started in my childhood and remains one of the biggest health crises of my lifetime. Yet it is only now as I reflect on the current Covid-19 pandemic that I recall the corrosive toll a pandemic has on the collective psyche.

On June 5th1981, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the first cases of a rare ‘cancer’ in otherwise healthy gay men. It was subsequently defined as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). This turned into a complex crisis because apart from battling a previously unknown illness, there was also a battle against homophobia, apathy, intolerance and prejudice. Of course, it was soon realised that it wasn’t a disease just afflicting gay men. Ten years after the initial declaration of the disease as a global epidemic, 2.4 million people had died of AIDS. In 1999, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that AIDS was the fourth biggest cause of death worldwide and number one killer in Africa. An estimated 33 million people were living with HIV and 14 million people had died from AIDS since the start of the epidemic. Ostracisation, confusion, and misinformation were still rife and in parts of the world, the illness continued to be ‘othered’ as it was thought to afflict the promiscuous and the ‘deviants’ and so the surge in fatalities continued particularly in sub Saharan Africa.

Records from the time relay a shocking story of the scale of the terror. The ignorance and stigma were so great that hospitals regularly refused to treat patients and parents disowned their children. And yet while some were paralysed by fear and others turned a blind eye, for people like Larry Kramer and Terence Higgins this was a time to join with allies and friends to raise money for research, gather data, lobby governments and exchange ideas. The fact that globally men and women can now manage and live with the illness is in a large part attributed to allies who stood shoulder to shoulder with the suffering – amazing allies like Iris Long who wasn’t gay but became the linchpin in the institutional fight against bureaucrats and scientists to accelerate drug development and Ruth Coker Burks who refused to be scared, broke through the isolation and fear and was in a number of cases the last and only person young gay men saw on their deathbeds in mid-80’s Arkansas, USA. Her inspirational story can be found here

Cotton Pickers

Albert Square (not that one, the other one) sits in the centre of Manchester overlooked by the Town Hall. Just off this sprawling well-known square is a smaller square named after Abraham Lincoln with his statue in the center of it (‘the stomach-ache statue’). Beneath it, is inscribed a letter to the people of Manchester from the 16th US President praising them for a heroic and historic act of solidarity against the slave trade. 

In 1862, the Manchester cotton workers heeded the call from Lincoln for an embargo against the shipping of slave picked cotton into Europe. The men knew that the last hands to touch the cotton before them had been the hands of slaves. So, the Manchester working men put their principles ahead of their self-interest and out of sympathy with millions of black Americans they agreed not to touch slave grown cotton. Instead the mill owners had to find alternative supplies of cotton, encouraging its cultivation by free labour in countries such as India. This act meant that many of these working men had to work shorter hours and, in some cases, went out of work and were thus unable to feed their families.

Suffragettes

There is no shortage of examples of allyship and littered throughout history are stories of brave individuals who worked with others to nudge the collective conscious and bring about change. The suffragettes fought for the right for women to vote. Several men like MP’s John Stuart Mill and Kier Hardie played key supporting roles. Without allies in the all-male parliaments of the day a change in the law would have taken so much longer. Women in the UK were eventually able to vote in 1918 (but only if they were over 30 years of age and householders). They did not achieve equal voting rights to men until 1928!

Human Rights

The true foundation of the modern recognition of equity (fairness) and equality (the achievement of fairness) probably goes back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 “ the recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”. Unfortunately, more than 70 years later, problems of inequity continue today in our homes, our communities, our workplaces, the entertainment industry, politics etc. There is evidence in the current pandemic that a high number of women have been furloughed or now work reduced hours due to caring responsibilities and so inevitably, gender inequality continues. It is a sobering thought that although the equal pay bill was passed in 1975, the gender pay gap remains and the World Economic forum 2020 report predicts that gender parity will not be attained for another 99.5 years gender-gap-2020-report In addition, there is still a need, in 2021, for movements to remind people that Black Lives Matter, that BAME are disproportionately affected by Covid-19 and that numerous other examples of inequality exist. So, the work is not done. Nowhere near.

Privilege

Strangely, we have come to view privilege as a word/characterisation to be shied away from. It shouldn’t be. We all have an advantage over another whether it be age, gender, physical ability or capability, looks, education or whatever. All we are called upon to do is to ‘do unto others as we would want done to us’; to walk in the shoes of someone else and see the world from their perspective. In the words of Marcel Proust ‘The only true voyage would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes’ –

Because we are all different, invariably, there are things that some will never experience and situations that will never have to be thought about, but we can look through a different lens, notice these things and act. Being an ally is being the recipient of a privilege to stand up and support another. It is empowering to be in a position where one can do this.

Advocacy cannot be passive and it’s not always easy, but we should all start where we are and draw strength from each other and from small steps. We all have a different starting point. It may be a gay son or daughter, an elderly mother or father, someone from a different race or religion, a colleague of different ability or looks. But in all things, being empathetic to the ‘other’ is where the journey starts. We can then move from that place to a place where we are more alert to the needs of others, aware of the need for equity and deciding what we can do in order to make progress.

The need for allies remains and perhaps we can borrow the suffragette motto whenever we see inequality – ‘Deeds not words’. Saying you are an ally doesn’t make you one, actions do. We can and should all be allies. 

There are some practical ideas for what we can do which are summed up nicely here by the Bath University Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Team

 #Centrica #EmployeeNetworks #BAME #BLM #Suffragettes #Allies #Diversity #Inclusion #D&I #Pandemic #Covid