*Header pic: Andy McDonald was one of the three MPs who turned up to talk to the RMT and their supporters when we went to Westminster to argue for the ‘keep the guard on the train’ campaign.
(an aside perhaps, but vital for solidarity in the current struggles)
Dear socialists,
I’m glad you’ve remembered thought-crime is a bad thing. It’s very worrying for all of us that the Home Secretary has decreed that a number of the things we say about Israel/Palestine are “hate”. As you will know as socialists, this is her mindset, not ours. To her, “from the river to the sea” means drive out or destroy Jews. That’s because that’s the only solution she can imagine but unfortunately, the Labour leadership agree with her, and have attacked Andy McDonald for saying those words despite the fact that his speech was obviously a call for peace for everyone in those territories.
This article about the absurd attack on Andy McDonald opens with a quote from George Orwell, quite rightly – Andy McDonald is, illegally according to team Starmer, trying to imagine Israelis and Palestinians living in peace across that whole land.
Trying to help figure out a way to genuine peace and freedom from the river to the sea is absolutely the most important thing any politically minded person could be doing right now.
That said, there are other issues that are being driven into the mire by the same stupid thinking that politicians are applying to Israel/Palestine. The reason I’m writing this post today is that I keep seeing socialists posting that Labour Heartlands article with comments about the idiocy of trying to “police” thought crime. I’m here to say yes, I agree — but a large number of socialists have spent the last five years or so ignoring a situation where I and my chosen political tribe, as socialists and feminists, have been consistently attacked for “thought crime”, mostly by socialists.
“From the river to the sea” is not necessarily a call to violence. “Jihad” is not necessarily terrorism. Similarly, belief in the importance and political relevance of sex is not “transphobia”. If you are spluttering with exasperation now, if you are saying there’s no comparison, may I remind you (you may not have noticed, but) many sex-based rights campaigners have been harassed and even arrested for their failure to believe that you can actually, physically, materially, change sex. This is not just an opinion. We have it on court records that one activist was phoned by the police and told off for something he’d said on twitter. He said he hadn’t said anything hateful. The police officer replied, “I’m worried about what you’re thinking.”
If the governments of the world do get their act together, if the horrendous situation in Gaza is not allowed to escalate to world war three, if we survive beyond all this, please remember this appeal: if trying to persecute people for thought-crime is wrong, it’s wrong on every topic. The feminists you saw out there calling for sex-based rights, and using accurate language about sex so they could make their case were NOT exhibiting “hate”, we are NOT denying anyone’s right to exist and in fact, we’re saying something more than a few trans people agree with.
Women exist and are allowed to talk about their material reality. This does not stop trans people existing and doing their own thing. You can’t replace one idea with the other. Both groups require legal and social recognition. You have to make room for both.
Preventing World War Three
Just as there are plenty of people in Israel who are opposed to their government’s bizarre, disastrously lethal behaviour in Gaza and the West Bank there are people, Jewish, Muslim and others (including Andy McDonald) who hope for a solution brought about by healing and reconciliation, from the river to the sea, rather than genocide.
We absolutely must keep focus on the Israel/Palestine situation now, both for the sake of the people there trying to survive and because there are clear signs that this could escalate and kill us all. The UK and the US are now regularly dropping in ideas about blaming Iran for Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran is the next country the US has a fancy to destroy. We must stay with the Free Palestine campaign to break down the credibility of genocide as a solution. They must not continue to get away with their eternal, rolling war that maintains US supremacy at the cost of everyone else.
Socialism all the way, please
Why am I offering up this confusing, two-topic post at this time? Because this habit of attacking anyone you think might disagree with you is what is dividing and disempowering us, right across the political spectrum, and it hasn’t stopped while our attention is on Gaza. In October 2023, Europe’s biggest feminist conference took place in Glasgow. Women came from all over the world, and were greeted by a little cluster of Green Party and socialist activists shouting “f*** you” at them. That included women from Palestine and Iran, who’d come to talk about their own campaigns for freedom. The Green Party MSP who spoke to those activists seemed quite willing to see them getting sworn at because she’s one of those who now go “oh, feminists. Must be doing a transphobic hate-crime”. It’s not good enough.
(NB In Hastings, the Green Party was the only party to send a representative to the PSC gathering in town — but don’t start thinking they’re electable. That was the same week their Co-chair arbitrarity disbanded their national Women’s Committee, effectively replacing it with herself and three others who think women must be prevented from talking about the realities of sex. The public will not stand for this nonsense. It has to be stopped if we are to unite the left.)
Let’s hope we survive the current horrors so we can all think all these issues through properly. With any luck, extremists like Braverman and Starmer will have talked themselves out of politics by then, so we will be able to express different views to try them out, just like proper people used to do.
In the meantime, sitting at home wishing Israel would be nice isn’t good enough – we need to be out there calling for peace, every way we can think of. Similarly, sitting at home wishing the Green Party and the SWP would stop pushing feminists out of left politics isn’t good enough. We need socialists to be out there protecting women’s right to meet and talk. It’s every bit as vital as doing anti-racism. If they don’t do both those things, they’re not doing socialism.
Let’s do socialism.
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Dear Reader,
Times are hard, and so the articles on this site are freely available but if you are able to support my work by making a donation, I am very grateful.
Cheers,
Kay
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Kay Green 