Black Eyes Are the New Black

Ha. So Tony Blair is spearheading a campaign against domestic violence. Bet he wants to land one on Cherie at the moment, with all the havoc her dodgy friends have caused. Ha, ha, ha. That, I'm afraid, is the way domestic violence has always been treated: a bit of a joke, a laugh for the lads, a brag down the boozer.

Until now. Suddenly something has changed the shocking figures that surround domestic violence. More than 200 women are killed by their husbands or partners every year. Domestic violence also makes up at least a quarter of all reported crimes. Compare that with street crime - just 2% - about which we have heard so much recently, and you wonder about our priorities as a society.

When it was revealed earlier this year that murder rates in British cities were the highest for a century, one Home Office official tried to look on the bright side by pointing out that a third of these were "domestic". The assumption that somehow these are lesser killings, not to be worried about quite as much as - the much rarer - street murders by strangers, is deeply rooted.

The newspaper stories are like the poor, always with us. Think, only recently, of the two children killed alongside their mother; the 14-year-old boy killed trying (unsuccessfully) to save his mother; the four children who will grow up to learn that they were asleep upstairs while their father malleted their mother to death in the sitting-room. Each story chills; yet most of us turn the page and move on. It must have been such an unusual situation, an incomprehensible private tragedy, beyond the range of public policy.

And yet, at last, there seems to be a spreading acceptance that this is not so. Domestic violence is everywhere as an issue: black eyes are the new black. Today, Tony Blair and Barbara Roche, from the deputy prime minister's office, will announce a cash injection of millions of pounds for refuge accommodation, to counteract the disturbing news that one in six of those needing local authority housing is fleeing a violent partner. A million pounds of lottery money, alongside a further million from the government will help set up a National Refuge Helpline, providing a single comprehensive database, with immediate advice on where refuge places are available. Domestic violence has been raised several times recently at prime minister's questions. Blair declares it "at the top of the criminal justice agenda".

A new bill - proposed for next year, with consultation in the spring - would give anonymity to victims of domestic violence when they testify; allow the criminal courts to use restraining orders on violent spouses; make reviews of all domestic violence-related deaths mandatory, since police believe many could be prevented; and make breaking a non-molestation order a criminal, rather than a civil offence. That should be in next year's Queen's speech.

Even before that, there are legal changes afoot. Harriet Harman, the solicitor general, is behind new moves to force more prosecutions, even when women are pressured into trying to drop them, arguing that if you assault someone in the home you are every bit as much a criminal as someone who assaults a stranger in the street. Harman is working, along with the attorney general, to get the court of appeal to overturn unduly lenient sentences in domestic murder cases. Among those which have been referred to the court are the three gruesome cases mentioned above.

And it isn't just Labour. The Association of Chief Police Officers suggests a register of domestically violent men, like that of sex offenders: one problem is that men who beat up women tend to move around, strike up new relationships and carry on. The Conservatives, meanwhile, are launching a Christmas campaign, including the distribution of 10,000 posters warning of "Boxing Day", and highlighting the fact that one woman in four is the victim of domestic violence at some point. Iain Duncan Smith says that "for us as a party, this is not just a side show - this is serious", and, as proof of that, they have agreed to work with the government to produce a bill that really makes a difference.

Whether or not people listen to the politicians, they certainly pick up messages from TV soaps and dramas. This week BBC 1 announced that it was to include a new series, Hitting Home, in its winter season as part of a BBC campaign against domestic violence. And storylines are to be written into Casualty after Little Mo's experiences at the hands of her abusive husband, Trevor, in EastEnders produced a huge public response, according to the channel controller, Lorraine Heggessey.

Any issue which can unite Labour and Tory campaigns, bring in the police and also mobilise one of the biggest opinion-formers, television drama, has clearly seized the imagination of official Britain. Men too, of course, can be victims of domestic violence. We mustn't forget that, but in the huge majority of cases, it is women we are talking about. In terms of women's real lives, this may be the single most important political shift for a generation - remembering that the murders are only the worst end of a spectrum of beatings, kickings and lacerations that go on all the time.

So why this sudden awareness? For once, the simplest explanation seems the best one. At last, the slow incursion of women into public life is having some effect. On the government benches, it is female ministers like Harriet Harman, Barbara Roche, Hazel Blears, Yvette Cooper, and their backbench supporters such as Vera Baird, Maggie Moran, Julia Drown and Fiona Mactaggart, who have been pushing this. For the Tories, Caroline Spelman seems to have been the moving force. And without a main channel controller like Heggessey, would the BBC have been quite so interested?

Along with some of the family tax changes and credits coming out of the Treasury, this is the first real sign of the feminised political agenda so many people thought they saw coming in 1997 - the first flicker of hope that all those bland, smiling female faces clustered round Tony Blair would actually make a difference. Along with them we now see a clutch of senior women in top positions throughout television - Heggessey, but also Jane Root, Jana Bennett, Dawn Airey, never mind the quangocracy. Of course, there are still far too few female politicians, almost no senior female judges and hardly any real female opinion formers in business. Too few female ministers are being promoted just now. But the sisters are shuffling, if not marching, and what a difference it already makes.

How much further might this go? What would be the effect on transport policy, on the environment and on work-life laws if the feminisation of politics continued? I don't know about you, but for me it would be the first possibility in many years of beginning to scrub away the grime of cynicism that has slowly blotted out most of our hopes for public life.