By 2010 I had been working for ten years as part of the national effort to prevent domestic abuse in Scotland. In the first decade following devolution, myself and many others were involved in implementing the new Domestic Abuse Strategy (1999) and Preventing Domestic Abuse – a national strategy (2000) at a local level. Domestic abuse became an early national priority for the new (then) Scottish Executive. The strategy and the creation of the Domestic abuse Service Development Fund established a clear policy direction, multi-agency framework and funding to realise what feminists had been calling for since the 1970s – coordinated national action against domestic abuse. Ten years on, Women’s Aid groups were receiving ring-fenced funding through local and national government and a new network of Domestic Abuse and later Violence against Women Partnerships had been created in each of Scotland’s 32 local authorities. An important element of national work was the creation of Domestic Abuse Training Consortia which built on the training which Scottish Women’s Aid Groups had been delivering to public agencies since the 1970s. My colleagues and I were closely involved in the Argyll and Clyde Domestic abuse Training Consortium. Working with a range of local and national services and agencies we set about creating and coordinating training courses for professionals working in police, social work, housing and health services. My background as a historian piqued my interest in delving back in time to look in more detail at domestic abuse in Scotland to provide a bit of historical background to the courses we were creating.
My searches kept drawing a blank for material on the post-war period with one notable exception: the research done by Rebecca and Russell Dobash and their team in Scotland and elsewhere in the 1970s formed the basis of the pioneering book, Violence against Wives – A case against the Patriarchy (1979). Important historical research has been done on domestic abuse in Scotland in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, Annemarie Hughes’ work on the period to 1949 and Lesley Orr’s study of domestic abuse among women in religious communities and faith groups in the 1990s – Out of the Shadows. Archive and oral history projects were commemorating the anniversaries of the Scottish Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis movements. However, there were still many gaps to be filled. If I was looking for a history of domestic abuse in late twentieth century Scotland I was going to have to write it myself. My doctoral thesis, An oral history of domestic abuse in post-war Scotland published in 2019 is the result.
I originally set out to focus on the period between the publication of Violence Against Wives in 1979 and ending with the first Zero Tolerance anti-domestic abuse campaign launched in Edinburgh in 1992. I wanted to interview anyone who had experienced domestic abuse as a child or an adult between the 1970s and 1990s or professionals who had worked with those affected. What I recorded were the rich life stories of sixteen women born between 1943 and 1967 and details of the working lives of ten professionals working. With narratives spanning the 1940s to the 1990s including biographies sometimes spanning three generations, I arrived at a different destination from the one I had first planned. The end point was a more fascinating history full of deeper insights than I would have thought possible. Feminist research works outwards from women’s experiences. Feminist oral history centers women’s voices and uncovers lives previously hidden from the history books in the interactive space of the interview room.
My research revealed another Scottish history. The women and the professionals described a world previously concealed from the public story of Scotland’s past. I heard about the everyday home lives of Scottish women and children, their experiences of school and of workplaces across almost five decades. Intimate accounts of families, parents and grandparents, friends and intimate relationships were shared as were detailed descriptions of workplace cultures and practices. My responsibility was to make sense of their lives in the wider sweep of Scotland’s post-war history, to place them into that history for the first time and to seek wider historical meaning. Their experiences provide important additions to our national story.
What I did
While domestic abuse has always had high incidence and prevalence rates, it is also estimated to be widely under-reported and a ‘hidden problem’ in Scotland and across the UK. This has been the case going back many decades and there are studies of violence against wives in the late nineteenth century which have come to the same conclusion. The big question for me was why did women not report the violence and abuse they were experiencing and what factors influenced their decisions? I approached these questions in the round using a context-specific historical approach to oral history.
My sources
I was keen to interview people’s about their childhood or adult experiences of domestic abuse in post-war Scotland and also professionals who worked with those affected at that time. I collected twenty-six oral histories and immersed myself in the archives, texts and cultural material of the post-war period.
What emerged were detailed accounts of many women’s childhoods, their parents’ and in some cases grand-parents’ life stories. Some of the women experienced domestic abuse as children and not as adults; some experienced it in their teenage relationships but not in their adult relationships; some with no abuse in their childhoods went on to experience it in their adult relationships. Some experienced it as children and in adult relationships. I spoke to professionals and activists and some of them experienced it too. Women told me about the impact of domestic abuse, why they didn’t tell anyone, how they eventually freed themselves from their husbands/partners’ abuse to rebuild their lives. They told painful, courageous, but ultimately very uplifting stories. Finding a way to make sense of these varied lives required a flexible but coherent approach to analysis.
Analysing my material
As a feminist oral historian I was looking for the interplay between women’s experiences and the wider context of the society they live in. The concept of patriarchy has been central to feminist understandings of domestic abuse since the 1970s. By the twenty-first century, the dynamics of the patriarchal system in different settings became better understood. I devised a way of examining the workings of that system in more detail across private and public life and was able to form some interesting new historical conclusions.
What I found
This introductory essay is the first of five to be posted in spring 2021, which will focus on the key themes and insights which emerged from my research. The essays are linked to four webinars hosted by Scottish Women’s Aid during April and May 2021:
- 1 – Children growing up with domestic abuse in Scotland 1950 – c.1980.
- 2 – Living with domestic abuse – women changing experiences of abuse from the 1950s to the 1990s.
- 3 – Police, criminal justice and social work responses to domestic abuse in post-war Scotland.
- 4 – Getting free – the impact of domestic abuse and leaving an abusive relationship 1960s – 1990s.
To find out more about the webinars and to book your place click here.
