If Labour is to build One Nation, it must be a safe and equal one for women

Today End Violence Against Women (EVAW) releases a new report auditing the Government’s progress in acting to prevent violence against women and girls. And with the revelations from Operation Yewtree and group exploitation cases set to roll on for many months , we hope the response from Parliament, policy-makers and the media will be unanimous : that prevention must be at the top of the priority list for any government, of any colour, from now on.

On that basis, it’s disappointing to be able to award the Coalition Government a prevention score of just 24%. Worse, there was even a zero mark for the work being done in schools, which was found to be “patchy and done without coordinating leadership from the Department for Education”. We have today written to the Prime Minister with the results and, like any bad school report, we hope it will lead to a better standard of work in future.

And the lessons to be learned from this apply to Labour too. This is not to deny the importance of champions like Yvette Cooper and Stella Creasy, for example during this year’s One Billion Rising campaign. In light of the disappointing performance of the Department for Education, the women’s sector were particularly delighted by Cooper’s call for statutory sex and relationships education in schools, which we hope to see develop into a fully-fledged manifesto commitment.

But if a winning Labour government in 2015 is to continue this record, then Labour and Ed Miliband still have work to do. This should start with a recognition (internally at least) of the ways in which the Coalition has in fact made real advances, such as the cross-departmental action plan to tackle all forms violence against women and girls, from domestic violence to sexual exploitation to forced marriage, under the leadership of Theresa May . May has shown a commitment to a joined-up approach from the outset, at a time when Labour ‘s vision, though clear and focused, still treated different forms of gendered violence in a narrower and more fragmented way .

Similarly, though Boris Johnson may seem an unlikely feminist, London’s Violence Against Women and Girls strategy, The Way Forward, has been repeatedly recognised as a global high-water mark in nuanced and connected thinking on tacking violence, despite – or perhaps because of – the divided and often dangerous nature of our capital. If Labour is serious about this issue, it must ensure its 2016 candidate and their team do not row back on this achievement.

In the same vein, Labour’s current interest in reclaiming some of the values of the past, for example a renewed focus on the family must be explicit about the fact that women’s equality and rights to be safe from abuse are non-negotiable. Pro-family choices must also be equal choices, for men and women – made out of love, and not the socially and economically enforced dependence of women. Blue Labour thinkers must not wear rose-tinted glasses.

In this climate, it was immensely encouraging that Diane Abbot’s recent speech on masculinity argues for society to do better by boys in a way that rejects “a lack of respect for women’s autonomy” as the answer, and seeks to move beyond the “adversarial gender politics” that would sacrifice women’s equality, including their safety. And other Labour voices are also making the case for Labour to keep women’s equality central in 2015.

It’s vital that not only the Government, but those at the very top of the Labour Party are listening to women and the women’s sector. And then they should be speaking out, against the idea that violence against women and girls is inevitable, separate from the business of government, or a lesser priority in the age of austerity. If Labour is to build One Nation, it must be a safe and equal one for women.

Ellie Cumbo is Prevention Coordinator at EVAW