I’m feeling pretty sorry for the Independent Alliance MPs just now. They’re new MPs. They’re there because the people in their constituencies wanted something better than what the Westminster Parties were offering, and that tells me two things: one, it must have been really hard for them to find their feet and make a space for themselves in the party-dominated House and two, that they must be above all constituency-focused MPs – they’re there because they know what people they represent want.

I don’t understand quite how they came to be ‘at the top of’ what’s supposedly an attempt at a new, bottom-up, democratic socialist party. Here’s a wiki summary of the main points that they got together to work on, presumably because they’re the issues they best align with Corbyn on…

The fact that they did that is, I think, the most important lesson we can draw from all this. If you want to work with other people, you find some things you agree on and work together to achieve them.  Now though, social media is buzzing with people having arguments about these MPs’ ‘socially conservative views’, and I note from Adnan Hussain’s statement this week, that he thinks it relevant for his constituents. Here’s an excerpt…

The term ‘socially conservative’ was in the public discussion before that though, ever since an interview where Zara Sultana agreed with Nish Kumar that ‘Your Party’ would be no place for people with ‘socially conservative views’. Bit of a problem that isn’t it, if you’re going for a mass movement? Especially if you’re aiming to serve ‘the working class’.  Has anyone checked what working class views are, because logically, ‘socially conservative’ tends to pan out as what feels right to most people, doesn’t it?

That normally means not what I want, because my instincts are generally feminist and socialist, with a bit of anarchist thrown in but when I’d got into one or two conversations in local political groups about ‘socially conservative views’, I wondered if we were all talking about the same thing. Assuming AI can usually be trusted to pull together what most people are saying, I called up this overview…

That’s nowhere near all the topics that might be covered under ‘socially conservative’ but, just for fun, let’s compare views. I’ll write a bit about my views under each of those headings and – let’s be really old fashioned here – can you bear to just look at my views, and note with interest where we agree and where we differ, rather than being all progressive and getting in a panic or a rage about every difference?

Family and marriage

This is going to be a long section because not only is it a big topic, but I think it flags up the problem with getting over-views from AI — can one really assume that the whole Stonewall alphabet is beyond the socially conservative family scene? Thinking about the more traditionalist people I know, I’d say LGB is accepted, although gays more completely than the other two; T – depends, and Q+ – WTF?

Perhaps that’s why my response is mixed. Here goes…

I don’t see any reason to support traditional marriage, although I think our society has been improved by making civil marriage available to anyone who wants it. I have nothing against adoption where it is a pair of responsible adults offering, whatever sex they are but I don’t think adoption’s a topic where adults have rights. It’s the rights of the child that should count.

This is one of the many areas where the inappropriate teaming that created LGBTQ+ is a problem. I don’t have the same opinion about all the letters. I’d want a lot more details about the Q+ bit before I had an opinion on adoption ‘rights’ at the latter end of the list. Does the ‘+’ still include MAP (minor-attracted people) if so, that’s a big NO from me. But does any of this apply? Adoption’s getting less common now. What is turning up more often is surrogacy, and here’s one thing I most definitely don’t approve of: babies should not be bought and sold. Nor should eggs, ‘harvested’ from women desperate for cash.

As for traditional gender roles within society and the family – forget it. Dreadful idea, and that’s where I think Zara Sultana and her followers have gone wildly wrong if they think they’re being progressive. I think the whole gender-identity, sex-self-ID notion is the most belligerently normative, regressive and downright sexist idea of our era. Why should a young person want to change sex, or deny their sex, because of their preferred style, opinions, or character-traits? Why does a man who ‘feels like a woman’ don a dress and lipstick? I’m a woman, and I hardly ever wear dresses or lipstick. My lesbian friends are sick to death of the kids who had Stonewall training at school (now in their 20s) asking them why they don’t ‘transition’. The whole thing’s based on observed gender stereotypes.

I don’t think it’s possible to ‘change sex’ but I don’t think that makes me socially conservative. I have no wish to tell anyone what clothes, manners or name they should use. I think that’s because I grew up in the era of Marc Bolan, David Bowie, Grace Jones and all the rest of the glam-rock crew, who wore what they wanted, behaved as they wanted, but never for a moment thought they had to be ‘the right sex’ to behave in a certain way.

I believe ‘gender identity’ is a religion. You can’t be ‘born in the wrong body’ unless you believe in a sexed, immortal soul and getting ideas about the nature of your soul is religion, and that’s socially conservative, isn’t it? What’s more, trying to force your belief onto others, and hounding them out of your groups if they don’t comply, as ‘trans activists’ generally do, is so socially conservative it’s medieval.

Sanctity of life

I am ‘pro-life’, in that I value mothers. I don’t think anyone but a pregnant woman should get the final say on whether she needs an abortion. That’s not because I think abortion’s a good or a bad thing, it’s not a ‘moral’ stance, I just know some of the horrible things that happen if a woman or a girl is forced to have a baby she can’t cope with, or indeed forced not to have one she wants to keep.

I used to support ‘assisted dying’, but I don’t at the moment because I don’t trust our society, hardened as it is by austerity and lack of care services. Put that idea right away until we have a proper welfare state, so that people can’t be guilt-tripped.  I don’t know enough about stem cell research to have a view on it but I do have a feeling (socialist, not socially conservative) that it’s not the sort of thing profiteers should be allowed to dabble in.

Morality and social order

The drug use bit doesn’t make sense – what are tobacco, alcohol and chocolate, if not recreational drugs? There’s no shortage of socially conservative people in the average pub. Prostitution — Who does the prostituting? Most prostituted women are victims of sex-traffickers. Yes, please, please get on with arresting sex-traffickers. That’s the main reason I think ‘buying sex’ should be illegal – it’s as bad as selling babies.

Pornography is just plain wrong as far as I’m concerned, not least because it gives the nod to vast amounts of violence and exploitation (see sex-trafficking above). It’s not a matter of ‘cheeky’ photos any more, it’s foul and if making laws about it would help schools to keep it away from children, please get on and make it illegal.

So I agree with quite a lot of the first part of that section, even though I’m never quite sure what ‘morality’ means but the second part’s nonsense. We have plenty of evidence to show that ‘strict punishment’ and ‘capital punishment’ don’t do what people think they do. They just generate a load of unnecessary cruelty.

Role of religion

I have nothing against religion but, according to this paragraph, socially conservative views are all about ‘religious institutions’ and that’s not the same thing. Any institutions people need should be secular, so they work for everyone. I don’t like any of the things the paragraph says it ‘may include’, except that I support freedom of belief — right up to the point where someone else believes they ought to, for example, attack me or steal my house (see Israel for details). Then I don’t support it. Does that count?

Individual responsibility

Again, a confusing melding of ideas. I think developing a sense of personal responsibility is important, but I think the empowerment of the individual is best achieved by funding and defending a reliable and undiscriminating welfare state with comprehensive health and social care services, and housing provision, so that people could all live well enough to think clearly and make decisions responsibly.

Addendum

I note that the AI list didn’t include sexism, racism or class-based prejudice, and I don’t see anyone out there in those conversations accusing the indie MPs of those things — have we decided those aren’t socially conservative views any more? I could be progressive like nothing on earth if disagreeing with those counted for anything. The biggest problems I see amongst the more traditionalist parts of our society is that they still have no idea how sexist, racist and anti-working class their institutions are.

Conclusions?

I hope nothing I wrote there made you want to scream at me, ‘cancel’ me, or smash up any venue I go to an event at, but I’m willing to bet that we don’t agree on every point on that list – I’m also willing to bet that you and I have friends, colleagues and family who don’t have identical views to ours on all of them. I bet we’ve all had interesting conversations, those ones that run late into the night and use up vast amounts of tea, biscuits etc, with friends who have different perspectives on some of those things so – which of those categories do you think might disqualify you or I from Zara Sultana’s ideal political party?

I really don’t think she’s thought this one through, and I see a lot that’s wrong with the world lately flashing up in the way a lot of social media commentators are vigorously defending or condemning those indie MPs because some of them ‘have socially conservative views’, with very little sign of people checking together to see if they’re thinking about the same things.

I’m with Mark Serwotka. What the new Party that’s trying to be born needs to do is what the indie MPs did – find half a dozen issues that most of us agree on, and get campaigning on those. The complicated things where views get very personal should have been saved for debates along the way, if / when / after the Party actually managed to win a decent number of seats in parliament.

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