Like the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve been so happy to see the New Left Party project get rolling, I read NLR’s interview with Zara Sultana with keen interest. Has she got what it takes to build on what the Corbyn movement in the Labour Party did a few years ago?

There are so many people who think they’re socialist but aren’t, and so many tricks and traps on the road to the ‘better, kinder politics’ the Corbyn movement was aiming for, that we really have to keep our wits about us.

I am absolutely delighted to see a good analysis from Sultana of some of the worst stumbling blocks we suffered from last time around. She talks about the Israel / Palestine situation as a litmus test for politicians and there’s a lot of sense in that, because Israel is all about racism but there’s another test I think we need to apply.

I’ve always judged socialist projects/groups on their attitudes to race, sex and class.  The opposition to socialism comes from capitalism and, in recent years, from other wealth-led, divisive powers that get called things like neoliberalism, techno-feudalism, conservative populism and so forth. Many present as radical new movements ‘for the people’ but all very quickly fall down when you test them in terms of these three questions:

1. Are they setting up the white, western male as ‘the norm’, so they can divide and rule us with ideas about race and invasion?
2. Are they pandering to ‘traditionalist’ views of sex that keep women and men divided against each other according to gender norms? and,
3. Are they setting up a world where the 99% end up working themselves to death to serve the wealthy few?

Sultana shows signs of being very good on class and race and, at one point in the article makes an attempt at dealing with sexism in the traditional liberal-feminist way – mentioning suffragettes, and saying something about really, really trying to get more women into this and that and she even talks about a female/male co-leadership that’s more than just a ‘tokenistic figure’ but sadly, she does not seem to see that the forces of sex-based oppression are every bit as dire as those of race and class, or that it’s going to take much more than feministy-sounding words to solve them.

And she’s already scuppered her feminist credentials by leaving us with the notion that she actually has two ‘red line’ issues, and they aren’t even race and class: They are race and trans. (“I have no qualms, for instance, about advocating a resolutely anti-racist and pro-trans socialist programme, even if parts of that sounds contentious to some people.”)

And presented in such a way that we’re left seeing her as one of those who believe the only way of looking at the trans rights / women’s rights situation is to be a ‘progressive’, ‘bravely’ facing down women’s rights campaigners.

Socialism needs to do a lot better than that. Socialism needs to understand that ‘gender ideology’ is itself a sexist trap, that there’s nothing to be gained by getting more women into this or that role, if you’re then going to stifle their feminism by insisting on the language and behaviour that labels women’s rights as ‘transphobia’.

Socialism needs to understand that the big three issues, race, sex and class, come way above mere policy decisions. Socialists must not be side-tracked by any divisive, post-modernist up-shoots from identity politics.

What we need on the trans topic from potential socialist leaders is a clear statement that trans people have the same rights to protection against discrimination, to health care and to everything else that comes under human rights that we all do, but they can and must learn to take their lead from socialism, not from trans lobby groups whose aim is to destroy women’s sex-based rights supposedly for the sake of trans people.

Most importantly, any would-be socialist leader who’s lived through the last 20 years or so in UK politics absolutely should be aware of the battles feminists have fought and won, of the extent of the propaganda offensive against them, and the extreme discrimination they have suffered as a result, all over statements of sex-based rights.

Not to have noticed this, and not to understand why that Judicial Review was necessary to women’s well-being, is a serious failure on one of the big three of my personal litmus test of socialism.

In recent years, I have spent most of my political efforts within the feminist movement and for the last two, most of that was about trying to use the fact that feminism tends to span the party-political spectrum, to spread a socialist understanding of Israel / Palestine. Now, I find so many of my contacts from those groups who are reasonably close to socialist thinking very, very reluctant to involve themselves in the new left party project because they consider its leaders blinded to women’s needs by their support for a very individualistic, anti-feminist ‘trans rights’ movement.

I really, really hope Sultana is a fast learner because if ever we needed a thriving new socialist movement in this country, we need it now. I’m supporting the Corbyn/Sultana movement but until I see it headlining its statements of principle with an informed, socialist analysis of sex, race and class, I do so with trepidation, and a fear of failure dragging at my heart.

The photos I’ve laced this article with are not of ‘trans people’, they are of ‘the trans rights movement’ as expressed by London Trans Pride this summer. That is the movement that gains traction whenever a politician makes a vague statement about being ‘pro-trans’, without affirming women’s sex-based rights. The ‘trans rights’ movement is violent, it is divisive, it is misogynistic and it is driving women away from the socialist movement we all need. It is not remotely in line with what British people want.

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