Contagious Diseases Act

[MichaelHerbert]

P owers being given to police by Tories are chillingly like those in C19th Contagious Diseases Act introduced in 1864 which allowed police to arrest women suspected of being prostitutes in certain ports and army towns. They were subjected to compulsory checks for VD and could be locked in hospitals. Took decades to force a repeal.spartacus-educational.com/Wcontagious.htm

As presumably this applies to the whole population and given the severity of what we're facing, I'm going to cut the government some slack at the moment.

This act was horrendous, enforced imprisonments for up to a month, the examinations were terrible and sometimes quite public...and they just arrested any woman on the streets in garrison towns/ports...I used to teach it about week 3 of A-Level History course, a great welcome to the course with horror stories of VD!

What you refer to was indeed awful with women being subjected to sexual abuse by police

While the customers of course, the men were left alone.

What does this have to do with covid-19 though?

www.itv.com/news/2020-03-17/emergency-coronavirus-bill-to-give-government-new-powers-to-arrest-and-isolate-people/. History shows "temporary" becomes permanent very quickly

Yes but surely this is a general political point rather than one related to oppression of women specifically?

DH said Israel are going to be empowered to check phone location messages etc to track who people have had contact with. In times of crisis govts can and do pass laws which are then used for immense harm.

The law about submitting prostitutes in Victorian England to compulsory "examinations" etc was really very different.

Concern about this is great from a politics perspective but please can you elucidate on the FWR link

But arent we in an emergency situation now, and this would apply to both sexes rather than women?

Something similar is already in force in Europe. Family in France have to have written permission to leave their homes, and may be fined without it. Entry to supermarkets is being strictly limited, with long queues outside. We've gone much less far here.

Surely the Ops point is that when certain groups are given more power, that often leads of a (sometimes extreme) over reach or abuse of power. What is intended to help everyone, ends up harming vulnerable groups. When the group being given more power is male dominated, the group most likely to suffer from abuse of that power is women. Is that what you were getting at OP?

This is an emergency situation. These powers are needed because society can break down very quickly in these extreme situations, and to be honest, women (and children) would be put at more risk if that happens.
I don't think they're going to start pulling random women off the street and giving them gynaecological examinations though.

The powers would be used regardless of the shade of government in number 10.

This isn't a party political issue. The powers were ready to go if Swine Flu took off and that was under Labour.

OP I think it might be an idea to move this to politics or start a thread there?

Certainly it's an opportunity for govts to push through laws that can be used for harm, history shows us this plenty.

But you've not explained the specific parallel here.

My history isn't great but I don't think the Victorian lawmakers need a massive national emergency to do what they did. They could do it any old time as hardly anyone was going to object to laws which were awful for female prositutes. It's just not a good analogy.