Southall Black Sisters get injunction to temporarliy stop Ealing Council funding cut

Posted on May 15, 2008
Filed Under BME, Campaign, Funding, London, Violence Against Women, Women's Group | Comments Off

Update from Southall Black Sisters on their funding situation

On 24 April 2008, a High Court judge granted SBS users permission to proceed with legal action against Ealing Council for its failure to have proper regard to its duties under the Race Relations Act. The Council has failed to consider the adverse impact that its decision to stop funding SBS will have on black and minority women. The judge also granted an injunction to stop the Council making any decisions on the funding of domestic violence services until the case is concluded.

This is good news for us and we are now gearing ourselves up for the hearing, which is likely to take place in the next three months. We really want to thank all those who have supported us since we would not have come this far without the encouragement and support that we have received from so many individuals and organisations.

We think that this case will have major ramifications not just for specialist services for black and minority women but for all those struggling for equality for key excluded groups. The Council has used the government’s vague and inconsistent cohesion agenda in a cynical way to stop funding specialist services for those who have been historically the most marginalised and least able to assert their human rights. In our area of work, we know of other women’s domestic violence and rape crisis services that are threatened by the cohesion/faith agenda and by the wholesale redefinition of equality so that it is no longer about protecting the historically disenfranchised. The case will also be significant because the Council’s decision represents a political attack on the right to self-organisation for secular black and minority groups. The case will therefore be keenly watched not only by the voluntary sector but also by all those who are concerned about how we are moving away from an equalities and human rights culture that has yet to be properly embedded within public bodies and indeed in the public imagination.

Thank you once again for supporting us. But we ask that you continue to support us in our legal challenge and in our fund raising efforts. We are desperately in need of funding to meet shortfalls in our budget for the provision of domestic violence services to black and minority women in Ealing.

We will keep you posted about action around the legal challenge.

Southall Black Sisters

(See earlier story Southall Black Sisters – Funding Situation Update)

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