Marxism and Gender Identity Ideology (6) – what it demands

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EPA source BBC

Yesterday I listened to part of a podcast that discussed the view that the gender critical movement was over because the gender identity ideology had peaked.  The claim wasn’t convincing and today I woke up to an Australian judge deciding that sex is “changeable and not necessarily binary” with the BBC pointing to its worldwide implications.  In Australia the Prime Minister has claimed that there is an “epidemic” of violence against women, something akin, then, to the reported levels of violence against women in Ireland.

It is wryly amusing to look at the number of changes to the photographs used in the BBC article, illustrating the old proverb that a picture paints a thousand words.  While this post was mainly written long before the court decision, I can’t help noting a couple of things about the photographs used above and other media material on Roxanne Tickle.

First, Tickle is clearly a man. Second he would appear to have women supporters. That some women are happy to undermine their own sex-based rights is not exactly news but it does reinforce the view that the struggle for women’s rights doesn’t pit women against men but is one critical part of a general struggle against all oppression and for a new society that this blog argues is socialism.

Gender Identity ideology has some bizarre consequences, as we noted in previous posts and I wrote before this recent event, including that the intimidation of women defending their sex-based rights is somehow progressive.  Rejection of the idea that men can become women and entitled to the rights of women is claimed to constitute oppression, with the consequence that women can thus become the oppressors of certain types of men.  Discrimination against women cannot be measured, in fact cannot even be conceived since gender identity is everyone’s ‘true self’, whatever that is, something outside our material reality and social interaction as we noted when we tried to work out exactly what gender is.

Feminists who oppose gender identity ideology are criticised for focusing on body parts, such as the male genitalia of transwomen, even as this ideology leads to women becoming ‘menstruators’ or ‘cervix owners’.  When not so described, they are totally erased and described as ‘pregnant people.’  Even the British medical journal The Lancet referred to ‘bodies with vaginas’, ‘birthing parents’ instead of mothers, and breast milk as ‘human milk’, before having to apologise.  Johns Hopkins University in the US defined a lesbian as ‘a non-man’ attracted to a non-man’ before again having to retract.

Despite the insults, censorship and objectification of women into body parts, the assertion of the impossible – that ‘transwomen are women’ – is often accompanied with the demand to ‘be kind’, in other words accept the ideology because the feelings of a group of men, many with a sexual fetish, have their feelings hurt.  Diverse groups with little in common but an irrational ideology defend it and ignore the fetishism of many men claiming to be women.

It is instructive to note part of the Australian court proceedings that held out the criteria by which it appears we can decide that some men are actually women. Tickles’ lawyer asked the woman who was CEO of the women-only social media app the following:

“Even where a person who was assigned male at birth transitions to a woman by having surgery, hormones, gets rid of facial hair, undergoes facial reconstruction, grows their hair long, wears make up, wears female clothes, describes themselves as a woman, introduces themselves as a woman, uses female changing rooms, changes their birth certificate – you don’t accept that is a woman?” 

Since no amount of surgical or medical treatment, including cosmetic surgery; dressing up, wearing lip stick and dresses; self-description, using women’s spaces or changing the text of a piece of paper, changes one’s sex, the answer was ”No.”

It has often been noted that the gender ideology movement has achieved success rapidly, coming to public consciousness relatively recently and without the long struggle engaged in by gay men and lesbians.  Trans people are held up to be particularly oppressed, vulnerable, and marginalised and politicians who are asked to explain their support for the ideology’s demands often fail to answer questions by immediately stating their unique vulnerability and marginalisation as if this covers all the issues.

This movement is portrayed as a ground-up, grass-roots movement for liberation yet it has powerful support and achieved its success in part because of support from some who are very definitely not oppressed.  This includes the corporate executives of some very large companies, and their HR departments and Diversity and Inclusion policies, employed to burnish their PR and boost the bottom line.  (Becoming less popular precisely because it doesn’t).

It has had the support of prominent politicians such as the Joe Biden who, in his first day in office as President of the United States, stated that ‘transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time’, issuing an executive order instructing federal agencies not to discriminate on the basis of gender identity.

State bureaucracies such as the NHS now pretend women inhabit men’s bodies, which is an impossible way to consider human health.  A whole book has been written on how the pretence that there is no difference between male and female bodies (making the male one the default) has affected many areas of women’s lives, including most obviously their heath.  

Well-funded NGOs such as Stonewall spread the message through awards to businesses and organisations that adhere and implement the ideology, including awards to such progressive organisations as MI5.

It has achieved it successes not through mass demonstrations and civil disobedience but through lobbying the powerful and through policy capture.  In other words, through bureaucratic means, for which shutting down questions through the mantra ‘no debate’ is perfectly suited.  It has inspired legislative changes erasing the importance of sex and imposing gender identity that have been introduced under the radar with most people unaware of it happening or innocent of the consequences.

The British National Health Service is a good example of the consequences of the intrusion of this ideology and its regressive consequences.  The Cass Report into the treatment of young people with difficulties attributed to gender identity was a stinging rebuke of gender identity ideology, recording many of the damaging consequences of its intrusion into health care.  These include the lack of evidence for puberty blockers and opposite sex hormone treatment, which may have permanently damaging and irreversible effects that vulnerable young people may easily be unable to fully appreciate.  Cass noted the fear of some clinicians of working in the area and the lack of evidence for the ‘gender affirming’ approach.

Six of the seven gender clinics involved refused to cooperate with the inquiry in supplying data and information on their patients and treatment, raising suspicions that what was being practised had more to do with ideology than best treatment for the “various combinations of confusion about sexuality, psychosis, neurodevelopmental disorders, trauma and deprivation, forensic issues and a range of other undiagnosed conditions” (Transgender Trend). Without shame, the supporters of the ideology have attempted to discredit the evidence behind the report, without success.

Finally, in the ’Weekly Worker’ series of articles on transgender rights that we have occasionally referenced, the author notes that a socialist response will have to be one that is not grounded on ‘trans’ as an independent single issue and/or on the politics of anti-discrimination and ‘rights’.

He states that “I think that the political nature of this positive approach has to be one which stresses the commonality of the oppression of trans people with other experiences of oppression and exploitation, rather than stressing the difference.’  Yet, even with that approach, the claims of Gender Identity ideology must be assessed and challenged.  When it impacts on the rights of women to their detriment, even this mistaken approach must look at what commonality of oppression exists – how does defending the reality of sex against a false and spurious claim that men are oppressed by not being recognised as women constitute any sort of oppression?

The ‘Weekly Worker‘ articles repeat again and again the paucity of the distinct demands from the ideology’s movement that socialists can support or that are not already common currency, such as against discrimination for anyone diverging from sexist stereotypes.

Others are explicitly rejected: ‘Trans rights activists have identified doctors’ ‘gatekeeping’ access to drugs and surgery as an aspect of their oppression. But self-diagnosis is not always the right answer.’  (An unacknowledged hole below the waterline for the whole ideology since it rests totally on acceptance of the word of those making claims to belong to the other sex).  In relation to the Tavistock gender clinic, it notes ‘some evidence of belief by some children and parents, shared by some staff, that a trans outcome for the children involved would be preferable to self-acceptance as gay or lesbian.’

The demand for adequate health care by trans activists is a common need for all working class people unable to pay directly for satisfactory services, while the particular and specific demands of gender identity ideology are reactionary.  These demands involve access to women’s places in society including toilets, changing rooms, rape crisis centres and refuges, hospital wards, women’s prison estate, and participation in women’s sports where men’s physique gives them an advantage.

In all these cases women’s comfort, privacy and safety are compromised and considered irrelevant to the demands of men identifying as women, justified on the grounds that not all men are violent predators.

This simply ignores that violent and sexual crime is overwhelmingly carried out by men and that women are unable to identify which men are not disposed to carrying it out.  Since there is no evidence that transwomen are any different to the general male population in this respect, it cannot be claimed that transwomen are not a potential threat.  The argument for transwomen in women’s spaces is therefore one that applies to all men. The view that men and women should ideally be able to share all public spaces might be made a reality when the reality of this pattern of criminal behaviour is changed.

These demands also include opposition to ‘conversion’ therapy for children reporting their belief that they are trans.  These young people have many other difficulties that might explain their symptoms of unhappiness, stress and depression etc. These include puberty and the accompanying anxiety arising out of their sexual development, or their autism, eating disorders, or simply finding their attraction to the same sex. Instead it is demanded that their claims to be trans are immediately affirmed without consideration of the potential for this self-diagnosis by immature young people to be the result of social contagion, peer pressure from friends or social media, or arising from any of their other comorbidity conditions.

Once again, the world is turned upside down.  The therapeutic approach of watching, waiting, and talking over young people’s feelings of alienation – to get to the root of their distress, whatever it might be – is damned as ‘conversion’ therapy.  Yet the radical medical and surgical treatment that can involve the removal of perfectly healthy tissue; consumption of puberty blockers and opposite sex hormones, which have known significant risks to long term health and fertility – this is supposedly not conversion treatment but ‘affirmative’ treatment when what is really being affirmed is gender identity ideology.

There is nothing progressive about any of this.   We have gone from men claiming to be woman, claiming and replacing their places in society, to the idea that it is impossible even to tell the difference between a man and a woman (courtesy of the head of the International Olympic Committee).  Despite this we have a left captured by identity politics, or influenced by liberal and hollow claims to oppression, that defends this nonsense and attacks the rights and essential existence of half the human race. When challenged it often responds with angry and empty insults. It is a big part of the problem.

Back to part 5

Forward tom part 7

Sticking it to the Russians

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When the Ukrainian regime first accepted responsibility for the invasion of the Kursk region of Russia the justification was that it was simply giving it to the Russians as the Russians had given it to them.  And this, as far as it goes, is perfectly true.  This will not give its supporters in the West any pause for thought that this equality might mean that both sides are equally reactionary.  When one of the early apologists for the Ukrainian state justified support for it and its alliance with Western imperialism and NATO, he said that:

‘To describe the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, in which the latter country has no ambition, let alone intention, of seizing Russian territory, and in which Russia has the stated intention of subjugating Ukraine and seizing much of its territory – to call this conflict inter-imperialist, rather than an imperialist war of invasion, is an extreme distortion of reality.’

He went on to justify the supply of western weapons to Ukraine with the argument that:

‘Since the Ukrainians’ fight against the Russian invasion is just, it is quite right to help them defend themselves against an enemy far superior in numbers and armament. That is why we are without hesitation in favour of the delivery of defensive weapons to the Ukrainian resistance.’

“Defensive weapons” became the loophole through which this support for western imperialist intervention was smuggled in – ‘we must also oppose the delivery of air fighters to Ukraine that Zelensky has been demanding. Fighters are not strictly defensive weaponry, and their supply to Ukraine would actually risk significantly aggravating Russian bombing.’

This loophole has now been ripped apart to reveal wholehearted support for western imperialism, with the provision of main battle tanks spearheading the invasion of Russian territory; ATACMS /HIMARS/ storm shadow missiles hitting targets inside Russia; special forces troops on the ground ensuring their successful operation; attacks on Russian territory including on radar stations that warn of nuclear attack from the West; and now the F16 fighter planes that were claimed to typify a non-defensive weapon.  By its own admission Ukraine and Western imperialism is on the offensive

The British Ukraine Solidarity Campaign has been urging its government to supply more military material than it has, in effect criticising one of the most hawkish western imperialist powers from the right – for not being aggressive enough! According to its earlier analysis the war is an imperialist proxy war and they should now be opposing the Ukrainian state and western imperialism.

They cannot because they will not, and they will not because they have decisively placed themselves as the ‘left’ of a pro-imperialist alliance.  This formal and informal coalition has far, far stronger partners than them, from the imperialist states it calls on to arm Ukraine to the reformist left that is reformist precisely because it will never break from its own imperialist state.  It does not have the political tools to explain its capitulation and navigate its way out of it.  It can currently damn this imperialism for its role in perpetrating genocide in Palestine while urging it to greater action in Ukraine, as if it had a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality, a good side and a bad side, that will sometimes play a progressive role in advancing the interests of the working class.

It has hooked itself up to Western imperialism with excuses that by supporting the Ukrainian state it is supporting the Ukrainian people, while it disregards altogether the class nature of the state and of the different classes within it.  By this logic we are now witnessing the invasion of Russia by the Ukrainian people.  Given that the invasion is led by the most effective units of the Ukrainian armed forces, which are also among the most rabidly nationalistic and reactionary, we should also be hearing its support for the working class Russian conscripts fighting them.

We don’t because the reality of Ukraine has exposed the hollowness of its claims to victim status.  It chose to build a large army trained by NATO and to allow the CIA to camp in its territory in order to assist its covert actions against Russia.  It chose to seek NATO membership and float the idea of stationing nuclear weapons on its territory. 

Whenever it is not urging increased intervention by its own imperialism the pro-war left is dispensing analysis oblivious to its meaning.  Even in the paragraph quoted above, it is noted that Russia is ‘an enemy far superior in numbers and armament’.  Left to itself, Ukraine would have already sued for peace.  That it has not is because of the support of Western imperialism, and just as the war continues because of imperialism so is the nature of the war determined by it.

The Western media portrays the Kursk invasion as an ‘incursion’ even as it celebrates the magnitude of the territory conquered as much larger than that won by Russia over many months in the Donbas.  It claims that the Western powers that finance and plan its war; that trains its army; provides the weapons, targeting and intelligence for its attacks on Crimea and Russia, had no knowledge of the invasion.  Only the ignorant or stupid could swallow this nonsense. We are expected to believe that Ukraine has not told the US and NATO of its invasion when it is supposedly required to tell them how far it can fire its missiles. NATO helped plan its 2023 offensive, so the idea it has not done so now – peddled by the Western media – simply exposes its output as propaganda.

A western-planned invasion of Russia using US and German armoured vehicles, and British main battle tanks has crossed another Russian red line, just as many earlier ones have been erased.  There is no reason to believe that this is the last, while such a course leads to a world war and a descent into hell.

The pro-war left feigns concern for the Ukrainian people while more of its young men try to escape from being sent to the front, recruiter’s vehicles are burned, and it faces into a freezing winter with a power system mostly destroyed.  Instead of supporting the end of the war it rows in behind its own imperialism’s increasingly belligerent prosecution of it, using Ukraine as its proxy.

This support for continuation of the war is in the interest of neither the Ukrainian or Russian working class.  It is not even in the interest of the Ukrainian state that is now bankrupt, in hock to western imperialism, and denuded of people and territory it will not get back.  The Russian state has no interest in a forever war on its doorstep, or any peace deal that sees NATO camped in whatever is left of Ukraine and that is only a temporary respite before another NATO inspired conflict is provoked.  Just like the previous Minsk Accords experience.

The only player that has an interest in continuation of the war is Western imperialism, which has no concern to end the bloodshed, as it has demonstrated in its support for the Zionist state in Palestine. But as we have argued, one other minor performer has evinced no interest in an end to the war without Ukrainian victory.  Why would its position be any different, having hitched itself to Western imperialism?

The Ukrainian regime is now claiming that its invasion is intended to encourage negotiations, which Russia has said are impossible while its territory has been invaded. The invasion is an initiative born of approaching Ukrainian defeat that it cannot escape, from ‘an enemy far superior in numbers and armament.’  Either Western imperialism accepts this prospect and tries to extract something from it or it escalates and crosses more red lines and brings hell closer.

Socialists should be supporting the end of this war and opposing the supply of weapons and troops to Ukraine and Eastern Europe as a whole.  If they continue to support it, their claims to socialism will be a case, not of wearing the emperor’s new clothes, but of wearing the uniforms of the armed forces of western imperialism.

Anti-racists in Belfast push back against the fascists

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A week after a far right rally in the city centre led to an impromptu march to South Belfast, and attacks on ethnic minorities, the far right thought that it could cement their success with a rally in the same place the following Friday night.

Their initial Saturday rally was already small but grew when it passed through some working class loyalist areas and headed for the areas with a more prominent ethic minority presence.  They were eventually stopped, not by the police, who limited themselves to a stationary presence, mainly to defend the Islamic Centre, but by residents of the lower Ormeau Road, a mainly working class nationalist area.

The following week there were numerous attacks on ethnic minority businesses and individuals, mainly in Belfast and mainly in loyalist areas, but not exclusively so.  The far-right rally drew some attention world-wide with pictures of racists waving British Union flags and Irish tricolours, with comments about how the infamous religious division in Ireland had been overcome.  In fact, the appearance together of Irish fascists and Irish loyalists is not something to write home about, but media pundits couldn’t resist commenting and far right bloggers around the world couldn’t help claiming an historic success.

The Belfast racist’s attempt to repeat their success on Friday night was an ignominious embarrassment.  An acquaintance of mine mentioned that he had gone into Marks & Spencer for a cut-price sandwich and had gone out the back door to have a look at the racist/fascist/loyalist admixture, only to find twenty or so guys, some with Glasgow Rangers football tops, wondering why they were so few.  In the end there were less than 100 facing a counter-demonstration of around 1,000. 

The counter-demonstrators had much fun chanting:

We are Many

You are Few 

We are Belfast

Who are You?

and

There are many, many more of us than you

There are many, many more of us than you

There are many, many more

Many, many more

Many, many, more of us than you

The following day thousands of demonstrators took to the streets for a demonstration to the same site in the front of the City Hall.

The actions of the residents of the lower Ormeau Road and the mass anti-racist demonstration has gone a long way to putting the racists and fascists back in their box, but there are many reasons not to think that this particular struggle has been won.

First, the Belfast events were part of a series alongside far right attacks in Britain and follow similar attacks in Dublin and across the Irish state.  In both of these the scale of attacks were much larger and broader.  The killing of three young girls blamed by far right rumours on a Muslim immigrant was the occasion for the attacks in Britain and these in. turn were the catalyst for the Belfast attacks.

The Belfast demonstration was attended by some far right protestors from Dublin, including from the Coolock group that had rioted to prevent the creation of accommodation for asylum seekers in the area.  Dozens of arson attacks across the Irish state have been made on such prospective sites and a major riot in Dublin in November followed an attack on young children by a man originally from Algeria.

Just as the attacks in Britain and the south are not new, neither are attacks on ethnic minorities across the North of Ireland, which became more frequent recently.   Most of these are in unionist or loyalist areas because demographic decline has meant that accommodation is more available and less expensive, while property for new ethnic shops is also cheaper.

For many older people the sight of significant (but still tiny) numbers of ethnic minority people is still in some ways remarkable.  It’s a bit like seeing young people wearing GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) tops in places where previously even someone suspected of being a Catholic would have been in mortal danger.  It is visual confirmation of the relative decline in the unionist population and increase in the nationalist one, alongside their greater political and social prominence.

These working class Protestant areas would once have been full to the brim of a monocultural population which considered itself the rightful subjects of the state who could look down on the Catholics as second class citizens.  Against this, a significant number of Protestant workers were consciously non-sectarian and anti-sectarian but they did not define the tone of the neighbourhoods, especially during the Orange marching season.

Racism therefore has two reasons to be more prevalent in loyalist areas – ethnic minorities are more prominent, and loyalism has always been based on supremacism – expressed in sectarianism – for whom racism is not exactly a distant cousin.  Nationalists have in the past looked to the black civil rights movement in the US as analogous to their own discrimination and resistance and have looked upon racism among loyalists as confirmation of their own world view.

So, no one on the counter demonstration or the following day’s anti-racist march was wearing a Rangers top whereas there were many GAA tops and a few Glasgow Celtic shirts.  There were many Palestine flags and at least one Irish tricolour, while at one point a large part of the crowd was singing a song in Irish.  There was also a noteworthy republican presence on the Friday night counter demonstration.

This is not at all to suggest that the counter demonstration was a purely nationalist one or that the Saturday demonstration was either, even if the political speeches were by Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the People before Profit MLA from west Belfast.  No one on either demonstration would have considered it to be a nationalist one and it identified itself repeatedly in chanting that it was anti-racist and anti-fascist. No one, however, is blind to the obvious facts, including that the racist demonstrators waved union flags and posters and the previous Saturday’s racist march was made up of loyalists that the fascists from Dublin could ‘unite’ with.  The PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) has stated that loyalist paramilitaries have been involved in the recent racist attacks.

There is thus some irony in the numerous placards and repeated declarations on the Saturday demonstration that it was in support of ‘diversity’ with one placard saying that Belfast itself was built on it. I doubt that any of the demonstrators expected their diversity to include their fellow demonstrators to be wearing Rangers or Linfield tops or waving Union and Ulster flags, or politicians from the DUP to be speaking from the back of the lorry.

Of course, when demonstrators talk about diversity they mean opposition to discrimination on grounds of race or sex or sexual orientation etc. and not politics, but this shows that politics is central and focusing on diversity erases this centrality.

One example was a young woman holding up a home-made placard telling the racist demo ‘check your privilege’.  If she had checked the racist demonstrators herself she might have noted that there wasn’t much evidence of privilege.  In general the rioters have been poor, ignorant and frequently quite stupid.  Of course they have been white, but so were the vast majority of the anti-racists.

A number of speakers pointed out that the racists are scapegoating asylum seekers and refugees for the failure of governments and their austerity policies.  They pointed to years of Tory austerity and to Starmer’s promised continuation of it, but these are not the only offenders.

These culprits are now offering their own law and order solution to racist violence and the main Muslim speaker at the Saturday rally, Raied al-Wazzan, Vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Council for Racial Equality, called on everyone to support the police – the police that had just failed the previous week.

In Britain various police forces have been proved again and again to be racist and misogynistic while they have been embroiled in scandal after scandal including corruption and spying on left wing organisations.   In the North of Ireland they have an even worse history, including collusion with the loyalists that are now behind the racist attacks.

The call for the police to protect ethnic minorities from racism at least reveals that the immediate question is one of physical self-defence and the solution to that was demonstrated by the lower Ormeau Road residents.  Workers should organise to protect their own communities and by involving the targets of racism themselves.

This was something that wasn’t argued for at the rallies despite repeated chanting and invocations that “When migrants’ rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back.”  Lots of slogans about fighting back but zero calls or steps at the rallies to begin organising it.  Instead, there were a number of calls for Hate Crime legislation to be introduced, which is a call for increased police powers, a step to close down free speech and a weapon that will be employed against the left and defenders of women’s rights.

While we had many pointing the finger at politicians who had sowed the seeds of racism by blaming refugees for poor public services that they had been responsible for reducing, there was not a murmur at Sinn Fein who had a speaker at the Saturday rally.  Not only has Sinn Fein imposed austerity in the North, while washing its hands of responsibility by blaming ‘London’, it has formed a partnership with the DUP that jointly dispenses little more than slush funds between republican supported and loyalist ‘community’ organisations that provide power and prestige to loyalist groups.

In the southern Irish state Sinn Fein has followed the example of the Tories and Labour in Britain, and Fine Gael and Fianna Fail in Ireland, in presenting refugees and immigrants as a problem, as something to be reduced and a population of the undeserving that must be expelled as soon as possible.

Sinn Fein’s new policy of an audit of services etc. in working class areas so that a rationale can be provided to prevent accommodating refugees within them is further pandering to racist opposition.  Applied in the North, the current areas of highest refugee populations would likely fall foul of a Sinn Fein ‘audit’.  You will not be surprised that this new great policy of Sinn Fein was not proposed at the Saturday rally.

There was only one discordant note from a speaker at the rally, when the NIPSA union leader and Socialist Party member Patrick Mulholland, noted that racists had waved both union flags and tricolours while they carried out their actions.  This resulted in a few grumbles from some in the crowd but has the unfortunate quality of being true.  Irish politicians and some left nationalists have complained that this is a misuse of the national flag and the racists and fascists have no right to it. Their problem is that the racists and fascists have as much reason to claim to be nationalists as any of the other nationalist organisations.

The strength of the anti-racist and anti-fascist movement was on display in Belfast over the weekend – its numbers, its enthusiasm and its determined opposition.  Also on display was its weakness – its reliance on the state and police, the hypocrisy of many of its adherents, the poverty of its immediate organisational objectives and weakness of overall political alternative.

The answer to racism and fascism is not ‘diversity’. Like gravity, such diversity exists anyway and will continue to exist whether celebrated or not. What matters is not that we are different in many ways but that we have cause to unite; the grounds for this unity is where our interests lie and that must be our central concern.

A New Popular Front for Ireland? (3 of 3)

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AFP

A final argument in support of the New Popular Front approach is to argue that the key task of the day in the class struggle is to stop the far right, and this the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) has done.  How else was it to be done in the circumstances?

One way this has been put is to say that:

‘If the left had not voted for Macron candidates in the second round, it would have meant an overall majority for Le Pen. Just listen to the relief expressed by ethnic minority people on TV in the Republic Square last night. They were terrified at a Le Pen government moving aggressively against so-called bi-nationals. Stopping a Le Pen government makes a real difference. Counter-posing mass struggles or street mobilisations as an immediate solution to defend black or Arab people is just demagogy.’

Let’s get some things out of the way first – ‘Just listen to the relief expressed by ethnic minority people on TV in the Republic Square last night’ is not enough, not nearly enough, to join that fear and then surrender political principle and independence.  If this is a guide to the rationale then it is woefully weak; the fight against the far right will be advanced by militant action based on socialist politics, not fear driving the working class into the arms of the main bourgeois parties and through them the French state. Were the far-right an immediate fascist danger it would be because this state, and its political class, had decided that fascism was required, in which case allying with this class in order to preserve the current state would be an obvious disaster. 

Let’s note the admission in this article of the price paid for this ‘success.’  First, that the NFP propped up the Macron bloc to the extent it could, and ‘we should not forget her (Marine le Pen) group topped the vote share, and the increase in her party’s seat tally is still historic.’  In other words the far right still gained and the main bourgeois parties that paved their way received protection by the intervention of a ‘united left’.  These are the circumstances that facilitated the rise of the far right previously, that precipitated the crisis, and which – despite the NFP ‘success’ – still. persist.  A ‘success’ which reproduces the threat at a potentially higher level is not a success.

So, what about the claim that the need for ‘mass struggles or street mobilisations as an immediate solution to defend black or Arab people is just demagogy’?  Well, since right now mobilisation and struggle will continue to be necessary, seeking these is clearly not demagogy and do not cease to be of primary importance because there is an election.  What about the NFP not being counterposed to these steps?

Well, since the NFP has failed to achieve a majority there will be no governmental programme that will offer an alternative to either the main bourgeois parties or far right and there will be no governmental endorsement of the physical or legal protection of black or Arab people.  The NFP is not going to mobilise workers to protect them as it isn’t going to organise workers defence groups to defend itself.

The failure to win governmental office may cause some demoralisation – or at least demobilisation – of NFP supporters, especially if the whole cobbled together alliance breaks up and erstwhile allies denounce each other for the failure. Even if this proves not to be the case the need for a robust alternative to be built will be no clearer or nearer to creation by it being asserted that forces like the SP, Communist Party and Greens will lead it.  They will not. An alternative to them will remain to be created but cannot if the priority becomes an alliance with them against the far right. Acceptance of the NFP argument would mean that the far right would have achieved the removal of an independent socialist left, one not wedded to defence of the French state and bourgeois democracy.

What about the claim: ‘Key point: Without the formation of the NFP, no defeat of Le Pen.’  The argument is that had the left decided not to unite it may have been unable to weaken the far right as much as it did, but the argument also entails the strengthening of the Macron bloc as just as necessary to this outcome.  It could therefore equally be argued that supporting this bloc from the start through an alliance in the first round of voting might have achieved the same result.

That this would obviously be rejected then as now can only be because this mainstream right was not and is not an alternative to the far right that could be supported – except that it then was supported.  Why not in the first round if was acceptable in the second?

Some appreciation that there would be a day after the election should have prevented support for the Macron bloc in the second round, a bloc that they now claim they do not support in power today; except this is precisely the argument against the whole NFP project.  The fancy that it is about stopping the far right, and that this is what matters, dissolves when the election is over and you’re back to square one. Short cuts do not take you to your destination.

In so far as the creation of left unity did evoke enthusiasm and activity it is an exercise in misleading and miseducating those who became active: that their activity on behalf of a cobbled together programme and alliance of forces without any real socialist alternative is a step forward.  Support for this alliance will not withstand its fracturing, and at worst lead to yet another round of claims that what is needed is left unity of those who are ultimately united only in acceptance of the French capitalist state and not to any working class alternative.  It is not enough to be ‘active’ – the political programme that you struggle for is decisive in whether it advances the working class cause.

The article referenced states that ‘this week the big issue is what next’; surely a question that should have occurred to the supporters of the NFP beforehand, but which then elicits the observations that the NFP is set for splits, and its left under Melenchon is not a democratic alternative.  One starts to wonder why it is necessary to argue against a ‘united left’/NFP when even those who support it admit it isn’t actually united and isn’t very left?  Why would socialists want to continually repeat this failure?

As for the far right itself, the article notes that: ‘although the RN has been pushed back, their position has still been strengthened compared to the previous parliament. An unstable period with no majority and various stitch-ups means they can frame it as the caste ganging up on the true defenders of French identity. So, it could still provide them with plenty of space to build their forces.’  In other words, the far right may continue to advance while the left fails to hold together because it substitutes opportunist electoral alliances for working class struggle – for the building of a stronger working class movement.

Building a stronger working class movement out of what exists and arming it with socialist politics – that recognises the independent interests of the working class – is the alternative.  This does not rule out agreements or temporary limited alliances with others opposed to the far right, but it rules out subordination of socialist politics to a cobbled together alliance that supports the main bourgeois parties and the state.  Agreement must be based on a refusal to do so, and if such agreement is not achievable then any other more limited agreement must be based on concrete actions.  Where no agreement can be reached this does not exclude participation in specific joint activity and mobilisations while retaining an independent policy.

*                  *                   *

If we return back to Ireland, we also return to the working class movement as it is, one that has been wedded to social partnership with the main bourgeois parties and Irish state for over a generation, for so long it is no longer discussed.  The trade unions are politically dead, and its bureaucracy is in bed with the state because it provides them with a comfortable home.  The massive growth of the working class has been driven by multinationals, but the leadership of the unions has a policy of not building the movement within them.  The Irish left has given up challenging this situation and while it will support individual strikes etc. it has no campaign against the bureaucracy.

Without a revitalisation of the working class movement the (genuine socialist) left in Ireland will remain weak, and while much of what exists of it is unusual in that it claims to be Marxist, the actual politics it argues is not very different from left social democracy.  What is broadly called the left hasn’t grown in twenty years as the table below, taken from this site, illustrates:

It could reasonably be argued that the Irish Labour party isn’t left because it has always allied with Fine Gael to get into office, but one could say something similar about the Greens and we know that Sinn Fein’s whole strategy is the same today.  Excluding them would not change the picture of a failure to grow, although what it would show is that the label ‘left’ is pretty meaningless.

Creating a working class alternative will not start by cobbling together any arrangement of these in an Irish New Popular Front that will be neither left nor very popular either.  As an electoralist initiative it fails on even electoralist grounds.  For the pragmatists these last three posts could have been ignored and only the table above provided to make the argument, but that’s the problem with the Irish left: it’s primary weakness today is political not electoral.

Back to part 2

A New Popular Front for Ireland? (2 of 3)

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– Demonstration against the extreme right in the presence of the new Popular Front – 15/06/2024 – France / Paris – Place de la Nation a Paris, manifestation contre l extreme droite. PUBLICATIONxNOTxINxFRAxRUS OlivierxDonnarsx/xLexPictorium LePictorium_0293005

Supporters of the New Popular Front in France start from the view that the task of the day is to defeat the far right while in Ireland it is to defeat the mainstream right.  In the first, alliance is made with the mainstream right and in the latter with the non-mainstream right that still parades a certain amount of fake radicalism.  Since neither the mainstream right or its fake radical opposition will break from capitalism the left makes compromises that it really can’t deny because it has accepted that the task is to defeat the far right, in the case of France, or the main right wing parties in the case of Ireland.  Since it is the mainstream right that has facilitated the rise of the far right in both countries the left has allied itself with the cause of this rise in France and discredited itself as an alternative.  In Ireland, the logic of the proposed policy is the same but simply lags behind France in its development. This is all pretty straightforward.

The following problems arise.  In order to create a left majority, the idea of ‘the left’ is expanded to include anyone opposed to the far right/mainstream right who proclaims itself as in any way left or socialist.  This includes those who have been in government and who have attacked the working class when they were there; for example the Socialist Party (SP) in France and Sinn Fein in Ireland. 

Since the world is full of parties with socialist or communist in their name that are anything but, it is necessary to know how to determine who exactly is a socialist.  In the case of the SP and Communist Party in France this is relatively easy – they have been in government and made it clear that they will defend French capitalism.  In the case of Sinn Fein, they have also been in office and present themselves as the most enthusiastic defenders of the institutions that are the product of a ‘peace process’ set up by British and US imperialism.  Sinn Fein’s claims to socialism are threadbare to non-existent.

Acceptance of any of these parties’ bona fides means that you join rejection of any coherent definition of socialism, ally with parties that defend capitalism and thus all of its consequences, and means that you then cease to offer genuine socialist politics. This is not because you have proposed some joint action for a specific purpose but because you propose to enter into a government with them with the pretence of a radical or socialist programme. This is not a policy you can turn off and on, becoming true to your claims in-between. This is not a slippery slope you can climb back up, but a result of the slippery slope you have already descended.

The use of words such as ‘radical’ or ‘left’ to justify alliances that cannot be described as socialist, as if there was something other than socialism that offers adequate answers and promises a different society, is one illustration. One consequence is that being on the ‘left’ becomes decisive over being socialist, with the latter robbed of any distinct meaning; all necessary because you have admitted that there is a task more important than fighting the capitalist system and socialism. This task, or ‘stage’, amounts to defending the so-called democratic version of capitalism from the far right, or ending years of the mainstream parties in office without ending the system they represent, as if they were the problem and not an expression.

The far right in France, and main bourgeois parties in Ireland, are here to stay in the foreseeable future, so the argument that there should be an alliance between the ‘left’ and the mainstream bourgeois parties in France, or a ‘left’ in Ireland that includes Sinn Fein, will hold as long as they do. This means that uncompromising opposition to both is fatally undermined and the rationale for an independent socialist alternative is permanently suspended.

The fundamental problem is therefore that the task of organising and politicising the working class to defend its own separate interests as understood by socialists is subordinated, if not entirely dispensed with, in order to defend a particular form of capitalist rule in France, while in Ireland it is to pretend that the latest generation of ‘radical’ nationalists are a genuine alternative to the rule of their historical equivalents.

We see this again and again in the politics of the ‘lesser evil’ – in relation to the war in Ukraine as well as opposition to the far right.  It is not an accident that the New Popular Front in France and united ‘left’ in Ireland support the imperialist war. The view that the separate organisation of the working class under socialism is the only safeguard against the far right is forgotten.  The view that the prime task is not to defeat the far right or replace one bunch of nationalists with another but to advance this organisation and politicisation is opposed.

Attempts are made, in relation to both France and Ireland, to claim that the policy of a popular front is part of, or at least not incompatible with, this sort of organisation but the alliance with fake-socialists and mainstream bourgeois parties makes such claims impossible to sustain.  This is fundamentally because of the second problem with the whole idea, which is that these left fronts are not about the mobilisation of the working  class but an electoral alliance.  The mainstream bourgeois parties might tolerate temporary expressions of mass support for an alliance with themselves but will never support an independent mobilisation of the working class, because this would have to involve opposition to them to be genuinely independent.

In France the previous Socialist Party government of François Hollande used the state to attack French workers mobilising against its anti-working class policies.  Sinn Fein has no tradition of independent working class organisation and even during the height of mass participation in the struggle against British rule in the North, when it wasn’t trying to manipulate it and subordinate it to its armed struggle, it repeatedly went behind the back of the mass struggle to negotiate in secret with the British state.

Today, People before Profit repeatedly declares that it supports ‘street politics’, and that while ‘a shift left will strike fear into the hearts of the establishment and the very privileged elite . . . . Our best defence against them is mass mobilisation from below on the real issues and injustices faced by ordinary working people.’  Supporters of the NFP in France point to the mass demonstrations in support of the NFP as showing the compatibility of mass struggle with electoral alliances.

Paul Murphy argues that ‘to overcome their opposition and actually implement the ecosocialist change necessary to resolve the crises faced by people would require a left government basing itself on people-power mobilisation from below.’  In reality, street politics, pressure from below, and ‘mobilisation from below’ in support of a left government are all precisely acceptance of the subordinate position of the working class to a left alliance and a left government.

A current within People before Profit put it well when it said that ‘Electing former traitors to disappoint workers is not a good strategy. Thinking that any amount of protest “from below” can make these snakes anything other than what they are is magical thinking.’   This applies to Ireland as much as France.

Paul Murphy stated that ‘I lost count of the number of times people said to me during the recent election that no matter who they vote for, nothing seems to change. I can’t blame them.’  However, instead of arguing that voting for an alliance that will include Sinn Fein is the answer he needs to explain to workers that the only way to change society is for the working class to do it itself, certainly not to promise that he and his organisation will to do it for them.

The whole article by Murphy makes it clear that radical change, sometimes even called socialist change, is to issue from a left government, to come down from on high with all the benefits of its manifesto to be acclaimed by a grateful working class; forgetting all the lessons of history and all the teachings derived from it by Marxists.  Governments don’t rule, classes and their states rule.  This is why Marxists call for workers ownership and control and a workers’ state, not a bunch of left politicians surrounded by the levers of office to be used through a capitalist state and bound by and to the economic power of the capitalist class.

Promising to achieve the change set out by PbP from a left government is actually worse than the misadventure of the NFP in France.  In France the excuse is that the enemy is at the gate, even if it fails to realise that its other enemy is inside the gate with it.  In Ireland, PbP are promising not only that it will thwart the far right but will transform Irish capitalism as well – and with Sinn Fein!

Sinn Fein has demonstrated with its new policy of opposition to the accommodation of refugees that it will continue moving to the right, which PbP can follow by pursuing its ‘left unity’ or reject by tearing up its electoralist strategy and looking for an alternative. The new SF policy is really a two-fingers to its proposal and flushes any pretence it could be part of any genuine left project down the toilet.

‘Street’ politics, ‘pressure’ and ‘mobilisation from below’ of a top-down project to deliver radical change for the working class is not new. It is not the working class achieving its own emancipation.  It is the working class being employed to support someone else doing it for them; feeding it the illusion that the capitalist state is the vehicle for its delivery.  It makes its activity subordinate to the politics of the left alliance, just as in France today the working class is subject to the machinations within the NFP and the vetoes of discredited politicians such as Holland, once so decisively rejected he didn’t bother standing for President a second time.

The alternative of independent working class organisation and action is not difficult to understand.  It is very difficult to achieve, but then liberation and emancipation by the state is impossible.  Sinn Fein is not going to become a genuinely socialist party and the Irish civil service is not going to deliver an Ireland of equality and working class power.  No amount of PbP TDs will make it happen.  The history of class struggle across the world is littered with self-declared socialists who promised to deliver for the working class but didn’t understand that what they promised could only be delivered by the working class itself.

Back to part 1

Forward to part 3

A New Popular Front for Ireland? (1 of 3)

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It’s not often that in politics you get to carry out an experiment that will tell you what will happen if you propose to take a certain course of action, but that is what we have with the proposal for the Irish Left to copy the creation of the New Popular Front in France.

People before Profit have proposed that a left pact that includes Sinn Fein should stand as an alternative alliance to the current Fianna Fail and Fine Gael government that will seek a new government mandate later in the year.  Its TD Paul Murphy has explained that a new mandate ‘would be a ‘disaster’, further ‘ratchet up’ the ‘scapegoating of asylum seekers’ and ‘embolden the far right even more.’   In this, the left should ‘take inspiration from the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) in France.’

There are so many issues with this it is difficult to know where to start; but let’s start with the most obvious.  In France the NFP was put forward as a way to stop the election of a far-right government of the Rassemblement National (RN).  This has involved an electoral alliance of the NFP with the main French bourgeois parties in which left voters were asked to vote for these parties where they were placed second in the second round of voting. Just like in Ireland, this alliance claims that it has been the policies of these parties that has helped incite and support the far right in the first place.

So, in Ireland, an alliance with the main bourgeois parties in France is held up as the example to follow in order to defeat the same main bourgeois parties in Ireland.  It might be claimed that this is not what is meant by copying the NFP example but that is only true if you ignore the politics involved, and politics is what it’s all about.

At a very basic level the proposal is all about what you are against and not what you are for, a common charge against the left by the right that the left continually confirms.  The far-right offer an alternative, even if it is reactionary and built on lies, while the main bourgeois parties offer the status quo, which includes all the powerful and hegemonic political, economic and ideological forces in Ireland and the world.

When faced with the slender possibility of presenting its own alternative government following the elections the hastily constructed joint platform of the NFP in France has been no help; the main point was purely negative – to allow the creation of a pact that would stymie the far right.  The NFP includes the very parties who led to the collapse and discrediting of previous left governments composed of the Communist Party and Socialist Party.  The former is now a shadow of its former self while the latter has been allowed to climb back up from its utterly discredited rule between 2012 to 2017 under President François Hollande, also back from the dead and part of the NFP.

With stopping the far-right as its prime and overriding purpose, there can be no objection to further capitulation to the main ‘centrist’ parties, which suffered the biggest defeat in the elections and to which the majority of the French public is bitterly opposed.  Now, along comes the united left to form an alliance to prop it up.  While the left in Ireland portrays the French elections as a victory for the left it ignores that this was a victory (of sorts) of an alliance with these discredited bourgeois parties, which have an effective veto over the formation of any new government.

What now remains to be determined is the exact configuration of the caretaker government cobbled together from the fragments of the NFP and bourgeois centrists before the next presidential election in which the far-right will then again claim to be the only real alternative to the rotten establishment.  Such are the fruits of short term surrender of principles, or opportunism as it has long been known as.

The relevance to Ireland is clear enough.   The left alliance proposed by People before Profit only has the remotest credibility because it must contain Sinn Fein, so this party must be called ‘left’ because it can’t be called socialist, which shows how this is a purely relative term, loaded with ambiguity and therefore dangerous in application.

The political experiment I alluded to at the start of the article also relates to the fact that Sinn Fein is already involved in a coalition government in Ireland, and with one of the most backward and reactionary parties in Europe.  What’s more, the DUP and Sinn Fein seem to get along famously, with differences not over fundamental policy but just how the sectarian pie is carved up between them.

The Stormont regime is a now a byword for disfunction and incompetency, but these are just expressions of its sectarianism.  This sectarianism has made it easy for Sinn Fein to join with the DUP in imposing austerity while trumpeting the fact that it is now the leading party in the whole rotten edifice.  Widespread acceptance of this arrangement has been possible mainly by portraying the North as a place apart with different rules that don’t apply in the rest of the country.

People before Profit thinks it can form an alliance with Sinn Fein in the South, telling it that its project of a coalition with Fianna Fail (FF) or Fine Gael (FG) would face a veto on any radical change.  It has sought to persuade SF that its attempts to make this work have failed, including its overtures to convince FF & FG that ‘you were not advocating a radical left programme’, and its ‘reluctance to clearly oppose the government’s scapegoating of asylum seekers.’  Yet this is the party that PbP portrays as ‘left’ and a vehicle for radical change!

It’s not even that PbP is promoting this with its eyes closed – blinkers maybe – but even the most blinkered can’t ignore the hypocrisy of Sinn Fein and its talking out of both sides of its mouth; one of the reasons its vote fell so far from expectations in the recent local and European elections.

Everyone knows that Sinn Fein was expecting to be in government after the next general election, with the prime candidate for partner being Fianna Fail, one of the evil twins that are the target of PbP and which it regards as the over-riding priority to defeat. If this strategy, its record in Stormont, its promise of good behaviour, and its failure to challenge the scapegoating of asylum seekers; if all this is not enough to expose the real character of Sinn Fein then we must ask the question – what compromises are PbP prepared to make for an alliance with it?

If there are none, is this because the joint platform will be so anaemic, the politics of SF and PbP are so similar, or because the priority is to get FF and FG out so it doesn’t matter?  If there are compromises to be made, what are they?

Forward to part 2

Marxism and Gender Identity Ideology (5) – Believe as you’re told

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It’s always been said that if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big one.  The more outrageous the better. It immediately requires a big denial that itself feels like it is making a big claim.  A big lie also has numerous and wide consequences, so denial equally requires a lot of follow-through.

For many people the social opprobrium of denial is enough to impose silence and there are lots of incentives to keep schtum, including entreaties to ‘be kind’, be ‘on the right side of history’, not to be a bigot – or what seems to work better – not have anyone call you one.  And so many people on ‘your side’ seem to go along with it, and so many not on ‘your side’ seem to be against.  Anyway, it all involves a small number of people so let’s not get exercised about it.

An additional factor is the temptation not to think too hard about it all, lest you end up having the debate in your head that you have been insistently told you can’t have outside it. The ‘no debate’ mantra of some trans activists thus functions at two levels.  It immediately fences off from acceptable discussion disagreement with the view that men can become women – and in doing so claim all their rights – and treats such disagreement as akin to racism or homophobia. The assertion itself is therefore free from questioning.

Since there is now a fashion for the introduction of hate crimes in certain countries, the subjective views of those carrying out alleged criminal acts are also taken into account; meaning that what you think can also be taken as an aggravating factor and in effect become an ancillary crime itself. We are not quite in ‘thought-crime’ territory but we are definitely in the land of ‘impure thoughts’, so you must not only do as you are told but believe it as well.

I have written before that this ‘no debate’ mantra is the cause of the ‘toxicity’ of the (non) debate, so is largely the result of the virulence of tans activism.  Of course, this is a product of the preposterous nature of the claim itself but the consequence of this combination – of the outlandish claim and command to agree – results in the anger of those critical of the claim, and their exasperation at those who just want to ignore it, or turn a Nelsonian eye to the whole thing.

Again and again, however, the ideology hits you in the face, with the claim to be a uniquely vulnerable and marginalised minority clashing with the obvious support accorded to it by the state and other institutions.  Often, when it does, it’s because the consequences of the claim once again conflict with reality.

Let’s take an example I came across in the past week.

My wife was asked to complete a survey originating from Kings College in Britain, the purpose of which was stated as follows:

‘We would like to invite you to participate in this online survey which will explore how anxiety, emotion and wellbeing are experienced in the body after primary breast cancer and in secondary breast cancer. Before you decide whether you want to take part, it is important for you to understand why the research is being done and what your participation will involve’

‘We know that many people struggle with their mental health after primary breast cancer and in secondary breast cancer. Breast cancer and our emotions are also both rooted in the body. However, research has not yet explored how people feel emotions in their body during and after breast cancer, and how this can impact people’s general wellbeing.’

The survey is designed to take about 30 minutes, so not a quick on-line poll: ‘The purpose of the study is to understand how interoceptive sensibility – how someone feels able to sense their internal bodily sensations – impacts people’s experiences of mental health and wellbeing after primary breast cancer and in secondary breast cancer.’

By way of context, Cancer Research UK records that there are around 56,800 new breast cancer cases in the UK every year and that it is the most common cancer in females with around 56,400 new cases every year (2017-2019) but not among the 20 most common cancers in males, with around 390 new cases every year (2017-2019).  This translates into an annual death toll among women of 11,415 and among men of 85 with a mortality rate of 33.9 and 0.3 respectively. This means that women account for over 99 per cent of deaths from breast cancer.

So, if men can also suffer from breast cancer and it is not a women-only disease, perhaps we can accept the use of the word ‘people’ in the survey from Kings College.  What is hard to accept is one of the questions at the start of the survey, which I captured on my phone and the range of potential answers expected and requested:

Question and permitted Answers:

If we were to be (very) charitable, we might say that the survey is about subjective responses to having had or still having breast cancer and that it is a valid objective to distinguish, and then compare, the subjective response of women, men and trans individuals. The permitted answers forswear the outer reaches of trans ideology by lumping together a number of ‘identities’ and excluding the myriad of others of uncertain number.

In doing this however, we would have to ignore the biological basis of cancer and that the overwhelming risk attaching to it is not ‘gender’, whatever that is, but sex.  We would also have to pass over the recognition by the survey’s authors that the study already recognises the primacy of biology by stating that ‘Breast cancer and our emotions are also both rooted in the body’ and that ‘The purpose of the study is to understand how interoceptive sensibility – how someone feels able to sense their internal bodily sensations. . .’

The problem is that the question is designed to find out not only what ‘gender’ someone thinks they are but what sex they are, and if someone were to reasonably state that non-binary/genderqueer/agender/gender fluid are not a sex then the question is at best ambiguous. At worst it is an invitation to accept gender identity ideology; that all the answers are equivalent and gender = sex and there are more than two.  If you don’t accept this equality then you would be entitled not to answer the question on the grounds that you do not have a gender identity.

In this case, from any scientific perspective, the survey is flawed. And in any case, anyone studying the responses who thinks ‘I don’t know’ is a valid answer to the question ‘how do you personally describe your gender’ has a big problem. Is the respondent stupid, confused or does she or he think that the question is stupid or the result of confusion?

Occam’s Razor would lead one to the conclusion that the survey is an example of gender identityideology positing the salience of self-ID to the feelings of women who have or are suffering from cancer. Does this matter?

This is often the question used to puncture opposition to expressions of gender identity ideology.  In this case the scientific soundness of the survey is called into question by mixing incommensurate concepts.  The introduction of the survey, on the stresses of having cancer, to be read by participants before they complete it, is keen to avoid causing further stress, advising ‘that you contact your GP in the first instance.’  One wonders how a question relating to a disease that by over 99 per cent affects women could put this category at the bottom of eight when attempting to identify its public.

Perhaps this will also be excused as a mistake, but that would be to deny the claims of gender identity ideology for which such a question is totally appropriate and absolutely necessary.  Don’t ask why, because that is to presume an explanation that itself presumes reasoning that itself must be open to interrogation, and that would require a debate.

Back to part 4

Forward to part 6

The Northern elections point in only one direction Or do they?

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There are three take-aways from the Westminster election in the North of Ireland.

First, Sinn Fein continued to make progress, defending its existing eight seats, including securing bigger majorities in a number of constituencies, and making gains in others that promise two more in the future.  It sealed its position as the biggest party in the Westminster elections, to rank alongside earlier local and Assembly successes, although small comfort for its failure in the local and European elections in the South a month ago.

Second, the Alliance Party, as the main face of ‘others’ in the North – neither Orange nor Green, Unionist or Nationalist – lost one seat and gained another, so stood still with a small drop in the share of the vote of 1.8% on the 2019 election.  The ‘Alliance surge’ has stopped surging.  At 15% of the vote it does not come anywhere near marginalising the sectarian division and the basic conflict over the existence of the Northern state.

Thirdly, and most dramatically, the  DUP lost three of its eight seats, very neatly lost another in East Derry and saw a dramatic fall in its majority in East Antrim.  It lost from all directions: from the Alliance Party, Ulster Unionist Party and the uber-unionist TUV.  In the case of the last, the defeat of Ian Paisley junior brought a smile to most faces in spite of the identity of the victor, such is the likeability of the loser.  Even some of his colleagues were reported not to be too displeased. The only real bright spot was securing the seat of its new leader in East Belfast.  A fall in the share of the vote of 8.5%, or a proportionate fall of 28%, is a disaster.

So what does it all mean?

Some nationalist commentary repeated familiar lines about ‘the writing on the wall’ and ‘the arrow pointing in one direction’ into the ‘inevitable future’ (Brian Feeney in The Irish News) – all references to the writing pointing to a future united Ireland.  Unfortunately it’s not so simple, even for the biggest party.  It won 27% of the vote, and when you factor in the lowest turnout for a Westminster election in the history of the North of 57.47%, we can readily see that 15.5% of the electorate does not a revolution make.

Over 42.5% found no reason to vote, which undoubtedly reflects a number of things, including apathy in constituencies in which a nationalist candidate hasn’t a chance, but even in the 2022 Assembly election, with a more proportionate system, Sinn Fein got 29% in a 63% turnout, or 18% of eligible voters.  In this election the pro-united Ireland vote was just over 40%.  If this is the writing on the wall, the wall is far away, the arrow points to a very long road, and the inevitability of a united Ireland is not quite the same as that of “death and taxes.”

Sinn Fein continues to advance in the North without any justification deriving from its now long record in office at Stormont.  The latest reincarnation of devolution managed to set a budget for departments without agreeing what they were going to spend it on – what were its priorities?  It spent plenty of time passing motion after motion lauding all sorts of good things with zero commitment to doing anything about them, while utterly failing to account for the public services it has been responsible for.  These, such as the health service, have fallen into a crisis worse than anywhere in the rest of the UK. 

For Alliance, its still second order existence testifies to the inability of the status quo to satisfy Northern nationalists or provide evidence that Unionists really are as confident that the state is as British as Finchley.  Its existence at all, however, is held to define what is necessary to change this status, which is not simple growth of Irish nationalism.  Convincing the ‘others’ of a united Ireland is argued as the key task for nationalism, which must include current Alliance supporters.

In this, Sinn Fein is not succeeding, in fact it doesn’t realise it isn’t even trying.  It continually berates other nationalist parties, especially in the South, for not joining ‘the conversation’ on a united Ireland, and calls out the necessity of planning for it; as if talking about it brings it any closer never mind making it inevitable.  It’s like being lifted by the cops who want to have a conversation with you – where you do all the talking.  Where are Sinn Fein’s plans?

The biggest issue however, that has signalled a step to a united Ireland, has been Brexit, and it is this that has done to the DUP what it did to the Tories in Britain.  While the victory of the TUV was most obviously a result of the failure of the DUP to prevent ‘the Irish Sea border’ that resulted from Brexit, it also lost because it lied about its deal with the British government that would supposedly make it disappear.

The Alliance victory in Lagan Valley was partly due to the constituency MP Jeffrey Donaldson being sent for trail on sex-offence charges, but this copper-fastened a prior loss of personal credibility as author and prime advocate for the deal.  With the Brexit disaster in the background every credible opposition to the DUP looked that bit more attractive and its most vocal supporters, such as Ian Paisley and Sammy Wilson, suffered.

The local political commentator Newton Emerson noted that the DUP losses in very different directions made it difficult for the DUP to know where to pivot.  This dilemma exposes the real demoralisation within unionism that sought to strengthen partition by supporting the UK leaving Europe but found itself inside a part of Ireland less aligned with the  sovereign power.  There is no mileage in continuing to fight it, so they won’t follow the TUV in doing so, but this means that it remains exposed to this more rabid unionism with only the old age of its leader Jim Allister as the pathetic hope of future redemption.  

It can keep quiet about the whole thing and hope it disappears as an issue but there are at least three problems with this.  First, its opponents will remind people, people will remember DUP stupidity themselves, and much as Keir Starmer might try to ignore it and think he can evade its worst effects, it’s not going away and neither are its effects.

A bit like the election in Britain, a thoroughly boring campaign had some more noteworthy results.  The stasis, if not stagnation, in politics within the North continues but events elsewhere are not so stable and have their effect.

UK elections – who needs a majority?

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The Labour majority of over 170 seats with only 34% of the vote is the lowest-ever winning share.  With around one third of the vote it gained two thirds of the seats. The turnout of around 60% was a drop from 67% in 2019 and the second lowest since 1918, meaning around 80 per cent of those eligible to vote didn’t vote for Starmer, whose personal rating is a net minus of 6.  Even in his own constituency his vote fell dramatically, by 15.6%.

His victory is due to the Conservatives having their worst ever result.  Polling indicated that 48% of those intending to vote for Labour were going to do so mainly to get rid of the Tories.  Had the Reform Party not existed, and its reactionary support voted Conservative, it would have beaten Labour by around 38% to 34%.  Yet for receiving 14% of the vote Reform got around 1% of the seats.

From this, two things are obvious: the British electoral system is a fraud with scant claims to democratic legitimacy and Starmer’s Government has the same lack of popular foundation.  The bourgeois media can’t ignore all this completely but can be expected to move quickly on.  One only has to recall that Starmer’s Labour received less votes than the supposedly disastrous Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 and 2017 to appreciate the treatment the media would dish out to the lack of legitimacy Starmer’s result would be accorded had Corbyn still been leader. In 2024 Starmer’s Labour won 9.7m votes with 33.8% of the vote while in 2019, in Labour’s supposedly worst result ever, Corbyn’s party won 10.2m votes with a share of 32.1%.  In 2017 Corbyn’s Labour won over 3 million votes more than Starmer did today – 12.9m as against 9.7m.

It is estimated that a quarter of 2019 conservative voters switched to Reform while the Liberal Democrats achieved their best ever result by surfing the wave of getting the Tories out by targeting their seats in the south and south-west of England.  Labour also benefited by the collapse of the SNP vote in Scotland following 17 years of failed SNP rule and the scandals that have engulfed the leadership of the party.

The short-sighted and primitive call from some on the left who simply called for the Tories to be kicked out has been exposed for the worse than useless advice that it so obviously was.  Everybody was out to get the Tories , and the election revolved around their losing it rather than Labour winning.  As we have seen – the Labour vote went down.

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The Labour slogan was the vapid and vacuous one-word ‘Change’.  The bourgeois commentariat has welcomed it as a change from the incompetence, chaos and instability of fourteen years of Tory rule and a return to the previous, apparently boring politics.

True to their superficial appreciation of events, or at least as they recycle them for the consumption of the population, this ignores the commitment of Starmer to essentially continue with Tory policies.  This includes a commitment to ‘growth’, to retention of the commitment to reducing the debt over five years; minimal increase in taxation; resolution of the problems of the NHS; commitment to increased defence spending, and a promise not to reverse Brexit in his lifetime.  He has also committed to come down hard on immigration and to do so more effectively than the Tories.

How growth can be achieved without investment (increased borrowing and therefore increased debt); without a larger workforce (while reducing immigration), and without expanding either the domestic market (through pay increases Starmer has vowed to oppose) or the export market (while never rejoining the EU), is left unexplained.  It all looks exactly like the situation created by the Tories but without smug incompetence of Cameron, the wooden hopelessness of Theresa May, the performative chaos of Johnson, ideological blinkers of Truss, and the MBA qualification in cluelessness of Sunak.  All Starmer brings personally is his own brand of dislikeability and penchant for lying on the scale of Boris Johnson.

Normally a new right wing government with a mandate would be able to wield their electoral victory as a weapon against workers, through restricting public sector pay, reducing public services and welfare, and increasing taxation.  Given Starmer’s short but filled-to-the-brim history of U-turns, it would not be a surprise to see him attempt to impose austerity on public sector pay, reduce the scope of state services such as the NHS, increase taxation, take yet more reactionary measures to be seen to reduce immigration, and attempt unsuccessfully to get something meaningful from the EU in terms of better market access.  None of this will lead to significant additional growth.

Brexit is an issue that will not go away even if all the parties try to ignore it as they did in the election; just as the proxy war against the biggest nuclear arms power in the world was also ignored.  The previous election that promised that Brexit would get done resulted in it not getting done, thus not addressing all the problems created.  The lack of strong support for Starmer’s government will matter when he is called upon to do so.

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Starmer managed to maintain the support of most of Labour’s voters while pivoting to the right, to win over disenchanted Tories and others simply wanting rid of them without caring particularly over who replaced them. This having been achieved, there is no reason for any of them to offer his Government any continuing support.  Even his claim to introduce integrity into government after years of Tory sleaze looks like previous broken promises given his huge catalogue of gifts and the sponsorship of his party and colleagues by private corporate interests.

His support for Brexit will anger the majority of Labour members and supporters who oppose it and who will see more and more evidence of why they are right to do so.  A harder line on immigration will do nothing to improve growth, will antagonise some supporters and will legitimise those on the right, including the Reform party, which is in second place in almost 100 constituencies, the majority of which are held by Labour.  Reform has already demonstrated that its rabid xenophobia is more convincing and attractive to reactionaries than that of the Tories, and this will apply to Starmer’s reactionary nationalism.  Pursuing the same policies will engender the same problems that brought down the Tories and the same vulnerability to right wing competitors, who will always be able to out-bid its reactionary solutions.

The Liberal Democrats did not increase its share of the vote but had its best result because it targeted Tory seats.  An anti-Brexit policy could protect those gains while targeting Labour supporters opposed to Brexit and Starmer’s continuing demonstration of its failure.  The Green Party also increased its vote and became a more credible alternative, even if its gains in two Conservative seats demonstrates its essentially petty bourgeois character and opposition to any sort of socialism.

Unfortunately, the pro-Palestine candidates elected are not a coherent left alternative while fortunately the false and fraudulent alternative represented by George Galloway was defeated.  The battle for the socialist movement is not through creation of yet another electoral alternative but assisting in the working class resisting the policies of Starmer’s government and defending its interests.  Only by working class resistance and a movement created out of it could an electoral vehicle be constructed as a subsidiary part of the movement.

The Conservative Party has lost many of its most rabid pro-Brexiteers and will always come second in competition with Reform on the basis of opposition to the EU.  Just as with the Labour Party, sooner or later being a bourgeois party will mean having to represent its interests, which means reversing Brexit.  This applies to the Liberal Democrats as well so that a party realignment to achieve this will have to take place.

Only the rabid reactionary nature of the Reform membership can hobble its further development or blow it up. There is no point in the traditional conservative section of the Tory party seeking any sort of accommodation with it, yet there is no point in the reactionary petty bourgeois sections of the Conservative Party and the Reform Party remaining separate.

The results of the election; the economic challenges facing the new government and resistance to it; and the proliferation and confusion of party supports, all point to a political realignment.  A real socialist alternative cannot be declared or created out of the organisations that exist but likewise can only come to the fore as a result of developments in the class struggle, arising as a result of working class opposition to the the new government and its attempt to carry through the failed policies of the Tory government that has just been humiliated.  A cause for some optimism. 

French elections: when Left unity is not such a good idea

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The second round of the French parliamentary elections on Sunday will determine whether the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) of Marine Le Pen will be able to win enough seats to form a majority government or perhaps do so in coalition with others.  Stopping this has become the priority for the French left, which has united in a New Popular Front, recalling that of the original in the 1930s.  It consists of La France Insoumise (LFI) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Socialist Party (PS), the French Communist Party (PCF), Greens and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA).

To secure the defeat of RN, third placed candidates of the NPF have pulled out in favour of Emmanuel Macron’s bloc of supporters.  Left unity against the far-right has thus also meant arms-length unity with the discredited Macron Presidency.  While this alliance has placed opposition to RN as the key issue, his defeat has been the stand-out message of the results.

The growth of the Rassemblement National and vote for the New Popular Front demonstrates that the people have given their verdict on Macron’s increasingly arrogant, unpopular and discredited Presidency.  By withdrawing in his favour the NPF has accepted fundamental agreement with him, or rather, agreement on fundamentals.  The unity achieved means that this encompasses almost all the left, from the utterly discredited Socialist Party to the New Anti-capitalist Party, which proves that its anti-capitalism is purely rhetorical, never mind socialist.

The Left has once again chosen what it considers the lesser evil on the basis that parliamentary elections are the litmus test of politics: that which will ultimately determine your political stance.  When the choice has to be made, this Left has decided that there is no such thing as an independent working class politics separate and opposed to all varieties of capitalist political movements.  The lesser evil is indeed evil, one that the Left has embraced just as the majority of the French people have rejected it.  Marine Le Pen can now argue that only she is implacably opposed to what the majority has also decisively rejected.

Support for the discredited ‘Republicans’ of Macron’s Ensemble is justified by the threat of the far right and the idea that liberal bourgeois politicians are principled and reliable defenders of bourgeois democracy.  This means that the Left has embraced the primacy of defence of this democracy, with its dependence on the power of the capitalist state; the influence of money and capital over political decision making; the exclusion of any sort of economic or social democracy; and the acceptance of the capitalist system, with all its inequality, oppression and violence.

Were the Left seeking to protect the limited democratic rights allowed by this democracy, that permit the working class to more freely organise, it would have understood that the weapons required to defeat the far-right lie not simply or mainly in parliamentary elections, but in the organisation and political mobilisation of the workers’ movement.  Such a political mobilisation of the working class is opposed by its ‘republican’ allies.  If, or when, the choice comes down to a militant working class or the far right these republican defenders of ‘democracy’ will ally with the far right against it.

The Left’s political opportunism, the surrender of political principle for short term advantage, in this case the possible defeat of far-right Rassemblement National, will not make up for its subordination to the republican friends of capitalist democracy and the exposure of the feebleness of its opposition to the discredited and unpopular Macron Presidency.  The policy of short term gain fails to recall the observation that the long term for the opportunist is just a long series of short terms.  Lesser evil follows lesser evil . . .

The New Popular Front naturally forms its alliance on the basis of supporting the French imperialist contribution to the war in Ukraine, the provision of weapons to Ukraine and of French troops within the war zone – calling them “peacekeepers” changes nothing.  Its programme fails to denounce the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and of course fails to call on French workers to stop the delivery of arms to the Israeli state.  As we have said, the political mobilisation of the working class movement is not part of its policy.  If it were Macron and Ensemble would be repudiating its assistance. The NPA project of an alliance with bourgeois democracy requires a bourgeois programme.

There is nothing very much new in this New Popular Front, the Left in France has been supporting the lesser evil for a long time, each time delivering another iteration; a lesser evil groundhog day, or déjà vu all over again, as it may be put.  Starting with the 2002 Presidential election run-off between right-wing candidate Jacques Chirac and the neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Left responded by endorsing Chirac as a defender of democracy against Le Pen. It was such a success we are here again with the Left defending the establishment while the far right adopts the mantle of opposition.

That this policy is a clear failure should by now be obvious, but that would be to mistake the purpose of the policy, which is not to promote independent working class politics but to maintain bourgeois democracy and to be the Republic’s loyal opposition.  Such a policy puts this left in opposition to the working class and makes it prey to the contradictions of capitalism, which currently involve imperialist war in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, the militarisation of France and the bill for it to be paid by its workers.

The New Popular Front is unwilling to challenge capitalism, supports imperialist war, restricts itself to vacuous moralising when faced with genocide and will shatter itself when the bill is forced upon French workers.  The logic of its position is to join the discredited bourgeois forces inside a government, which would bolster the credentials of Rassemblement National and demoralise its own supporters, as some of its constituent parts have already done.  It will no doubt go down singing its lack of regret as it repeats the failed policy of the 1930s original.