I’m very fortunate I suppose, that I stayed with Unite despite its political failures in recent years — I had been wondering about switching to a union that’s kept faith with socialism but this week, I found myself very glad I’m in Unite. Four unions – ASLEF, the Musicians’ Union, USDAW and Unison have stated an intention to boycott the Labour Women’s Conference this year — because it’s only for women.

I know, just about every blogger in my sector of activity has written about it already but I have something to add. Firstly, it’s hard to count the number of ways this Labour government has failed us in recent years. If ever we needed someone to speak up for us in the Labour Party, it’s now. If I was in any of those unions that had decided not to bother, I’d be getting in touch with my rep right now.

I’d like to ask you if you’re in any of those unions. Are you going to ask them why you’re paying union dues, when they have decided to leave women in your workplace with no representation at all at the women’s conference of the current party of government?

It’s hard to think of a worse dereliction of duty, so please don’t let it pass.

Telling day at Telford

Here’s what I would like to add to the discussion. I went to the Labour Women’s Conference the year it was in Telford, when Corbyn was the party leader. The instructions from the party had been that each branch could send delegates according to the size of their branch, but that one should be BAME, and one ‘LGBT+ or disabled’ – I think that’s how it was phrased and my goodness, it’s incredible how many branches went for the ‘T’, and sent a male trans person along. I couldn’t help feeling lesbians must have been somewhat under-represented.

Why do those unions think T is the only thing that matters? Sure, represent them – along with everyone else – if they’re suffering discrimination, but the women’s conference is about women. Female people.

I remember standing in the foyer waiting for someone when I arrived at that conference. There was a glass escalator and as I stood beside it, thinking about this and that, I noticed the legs coming down the escalators beside me. Most of them looked as TU women’s legs usually look – jeans or black trousers and trainers but quite regularly, I’d see a pair of court shoes and stockings coming down the escalator. I’d look up and see – yep. A male.

It annoyed me a bit because it felt as though the transwomen were there to drag us all back into the 1950s – a very good illustration of the theory that ‘gender identity’ is at least in part a fondness for old fashioned sex stereotypes. Not the most helpful presence at conference.

It came back to mind later in the conference hall, when I found myself counting the number of males going up to speak on the main stage. My count reached six quite quickly – one of them was Jeremy Corbyn making a guest appearance and, to his credit, he did act like a guest, and he did speak about issues of genuine concern to women, and what he proposed to do about them. None of the other males did. They either talked trans, or just talked for the sake of talking. I could not see that they added anything useful to a women’s conference.

Materialist Left in Manchester

The other point I’d like to make is that trade unions were a topic of discussion at the Materialist Left Conference I went to in Manchester recently. We had been thinking about the fact that many people seem to think the oppression of women is a myth, or that it’s a thing of the past. In her speech, Professor Mary Davis, who has written extensively on trade unions, said we need to investigate and talk about modern sites of women’s oppression, and she identified trade unions as a likely place to start looking. Women are in the majority in many unions, and yet most of them dropped women’s rights without hesitation when the clash between women’s rights and trans demands came to their attention and worse still, some exhibited quite extreme bullying behaviour if any of their women continued talking about their sex-based rights.

I immediately thought of Kathleen Stock, who was hounded out of her job at Sussex University a few years back for offending the trans lobby – shocking enough in itself, that a philosophy professor should be blamed for asking questions about anything – but what was truly terrible about it was that her union didn’t just fail to defend her, they joined in the hounding.

The Materialist Left published two of the three videos of speakers. The third could not be published because the speakers were trade unionists, and very quickly decided by the reactions they got, that their unions would give them a hard time if they were seen speaking at a conference that stood for women’s rights — so it didn’t take long at all to prove Mary Davis’s point.

So please, if you are a member of ASLEF, the Musicians’ Union, USDAW or Unison, get in touch with your rep or your union HQ right now, and ask them what they mean by refusing to represent women at such an important event, and how on earth they thought that was okay to do that.

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