[Socialism Today, No 20, July-August 1997, p. 17-20]
The anti-Tory electoral tide swept into parliament large numbers of MPs from oppressed groups, including high profile successes for gay MPs Stephen Twigg – who defeated Michael Portillo – and Ben Bradshaw, who saw off the homophobic Dr Adrian Rogers, president of the Conservative Family Institute. Margaret Creear asks whether this will lead to positive changes for lesbians and gays.
These events confirm and will probably reinforce the positive shift in social attitudes of the last few years. They also reflect the more open discussion of sexuality and the relative confidence of gay men, lesbians and bisexuals as a result of struggles against discrimination. Chris Smith is the first openly gay MP to hold a Cabinet post.
One of the pressing issues now is legal reform. Labour has promised a vote in this parliament to equalise the age of consent – the issue is already being taken to the European court by a gay man called Chris Morris. The government has been vaguer however over the repeal of Section 28 of the Local Government Act, which prohibits positive images of homosexual relations in schools. But it is a measure of the extent of social change that the British Medical Association now strongly supports the repeal of this law.
Another area of discrimination which has received recent publicity relates to partners and parenting. The lack of recognition and equality, both legal and social, given to same sex relationships has led to many anomalies and a great deal of distress.
Rights relating to both social and private housing are affected. Same sex partners of tenants can be evicted on the death of the tenant with no right to succession. Similarly, evictions have been threatened against the partners of elderly people who require residential care. (If the person needing care is the sole owner of a private house, the house can be sold and the partner evicted to pay for care – unlike married heterosexual couples). There has been a trend towards recognising unmarried heterosexual couples and same sex couples as having the same rights – four out of five local authorities in Greater London now allow succession of tenancy. But such rights should not depend on where people live – a consistent national policy should be adopted. Further areas of inequality involve the rights of same sex couples to adopt or foster children, and for unemployed lesbians to have children by donor insemination.
Much of this inequality would be challenged legally by a rights bill or amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act. Other contentious issues such as the ban on gays in the armed forces don’t require legal change. They are administrative rules. But legal and administrative changes in the armed forces would only be the beginning of the battle considering the macho, bigoted culture which exists in the armed forces. In fact this highlights the limitations of legal or administrative change. It is important in recognising and lifting some of the oppression of particular groups but it doesn’t mean that equality is established. In this case, legal and administrative changes would only be a first step towards changing the culture of a prejudiced and discriminatory society, prey to the moral panics generated by the mass media – especially the tabloids.
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Political activity in the lesbian and gay community is at a low ebb. Many feel that parliamentary lobbying can be left to pressure groups like Stonewall, and that Labour is likely to change the law without any need for mass mobilisation. Although Labour is committed to limited legal changes, such changes may well suffer from a lack of priority and a wariness about causing controversy and offending the right.
In some ways, it must seem to many middle class lesbians and gays that life is improving and limited reforms would complete the process. One of the reasons for this is the development of the ‘pink pound’.
It is estimated that the market amongst gay men in the UK is worth about £6 billion. The number of gay bars has increased from 38 in 1981 to 107 in 1996. Many small firms and consultancies now target gay men. The attitude of big business is ‘why antagonise a section of society when you could make money out of them instead?’ – the commercialisation of sexuality rather than its liberation.
As in the case of women, blacks and disabled people, a range of social and cultural centres, helplines etc. have been established which offer recognition and an income to some of the most articulate and well organised leaders of the community. Capitalism has a long history of attempting to undermine dissent by incorporating a layer of leaders. However, such projects are constantly under threat from withdrawal of funding. The continuing attack on public spending will affect not just the specialised services for gays and lesbians but also, especially for working class gays and lesbians, the day to day quality of their lives.
The medium-term prospect under this government is for a growth in economic and social instability – both because of objective circumstances in the world and British economy, and because of the policies Labour will follow. This is likely to undermine the economic position of middle class lesbians and gays. Moreover, as the social and political situation becomes more unstable, there is likely to be an increase in propaganda campaigns by politicians and the media to divide opposition to pro-capitalist policies, by scapegoating specially oppressed groups.
Even in this period, when there have been advances in social attitudes, there is still a large residue of bigoted attitudes. One in three gay men are likely to experience violence in their lives. Many more experience prejudice, bullying and discrimination which undermines confidence and quality of life. It would be very tempting for the Tory right to once again seek to find a base for itself by whipping up these prejudices. We saw under the Tory government how, in their search for support in the wreckage of their economic and social policies, the Conservatives turned to the most backward layers who resent change and hanker after old certainties.
The Labour Party has always lacked a clear understanding of the ideology of capitalism. It tends to see the institutions through which capitalism imposes its rule or organises itself as a class, such as the social institution of the family or the different institutions of the state, as neutral, eternal or personal. It doesn’t recognise the origins of prejudice and tradition and the way in which capitalism manipulates them for its own ends. Now that Labour openly supports capitalism there is even less incentive to put an alternative to capitalist ideas.
Blair talks about ‘family values’. He says that his adherence to and support for the traditional nuclear family doesn’t mean intolerance towards their arrangements. But it does by implication. And as social and economic instability increases, the Labour government will seek to explain problems in terms of the breakdown of the family, irresponsible personal behaviour etc. to deflect anger from the government and the social and economic system it rests on.
This confusion, about what’s natural and personal and what’s socially constructed in the interests of a particular economic system, lies behind the fact that Labour traditionally allows a free votes in parliament on legislation such as abortion rights and the age of consent.
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What role will MPs from the specially oppressed groups play as these developments take place? Many women, gay or black MPs now in parliament, have been affected by the right-wing developments of the 1990s – and have come to the conclusion only modest change can be achieved. Some of the women MPs were involved in the Labour Women’s Organisation (LWO) in the past, but at the same time supported the right in its attack on Liverpool city council, opposed the mass anti-poll tax movement which mobilised thousands of working class women and co-operated in the witch-hunting of socialists and the stifling of democracy. Throughout the 1980s, however, the LWO was on the left-wing of the labour movement supporting socialist policies and the liberation of the majority of women – not just a few who could find positions for themselves in the present system.
Stephen Twigg’s political origins lie in the National Organisation of Labour Students and the National Union of Students, where he did battle on behalf of the right-wing Labour leaders to ditch any commitments to improve students living conditions. More recently, Twigg was involved in organising evidence against socialist Liz Davies, selected by the local party but then dropped by Labour’s National Executive Committee, as a parliamentary candidate in Leeds North East.
The leadership of the Labour Party has deliberately fostered a number of MPs who can give the impression that a greater measure of equality has been achieved, whilst for the mass there has overall been little if any improvement. Such MPs, unless they break with right-wing ideas and move into opposition to the system, will end up policing the very groups they came from and whose struggles they owe their position to.
How then will the gay, lesbian and bisexual movement develop in the future? General optimism about change in the lesbian and gay communities has led to a more passive attitude, and a decline of self-organisation, mass campaigning and political activity in general. But a degree of confidence remains, as a result of more open discussion and changes in social attitudes.
A particular achievement of the 1980s and ‘90s, for example, was that workers organised in trade unions, who also experienced special oppression such as race, gender or sexuality and who felt their specific interests neglected by the leadership of the union, set up self-organised groups. These have played an important role in changing attitudes within the trade union movement – an important vehicle for change. They have also reinforced and given an organised expression to the idea that collective action, self-organisation and involvement in class politics – rather than lifestyle politics – represents the most positive way forward.
Self-organisation within the trade union movement is particularly positive when seen in the context of possible future developments. The decline in activity in the gay, lesbian and bisexual movement reflects an overall decline in activity in other movements – and particularly by organised workers. In periods such as the 1970s and 1980s movements fed off one another and were influenced by developments in the working class. For example, from 1968 onwards there was a radicalisation internationally of the working and middle classes. Alongside this, not always sharing an identical pace or time span, the struggle of specially oppressed groups developed. Many such movements had a cross-class character and focused on legal or administrative reform. They were accompanied by massive protests around single issues such as that which developed in opposition to US imperialism’s intervention in Vietnam.
As the class struggle developed and the power of organised workers became clearer, socialist ideas were popularised and this was reflected in all the cross-class and single-issue movements. A section of the movements around race, gender and sexuality identified with the anti-capitalist analysis and programme of socialism. In Britain in the early 1970s sections of the gay liberation movement supported the struggle against the Industrial Relations Act and the struggle which led to the freeing of the Pentonville dockers. This trend continued throughout the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s to some degree or another. In 1984-85 gay and lesbian groups attended the demonstrations organised in support of the miners.
Today there are lesbian and gay campaign activities around legal reform and local issues, such as the defence of youth workers in Bradford. But as the social and economic crisis unfolds, and the hoped-for reforms prove inadequate, hundreds of thousands of gays and lesbians will be compelled to take action both as members of a specially oppressed group and as working class people.
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One of the reasons for the current low level of struggle, the rightward move in the labour movement and the vagueness of an alternative to the current system, is the collapse of Stalinism. Marxists did not regard the Stalinist regimes as socialist. Although they rested on a planned economy, they were ruled by bureaucratic elites who had the lifestyles of Western capitalists and stamped on any independent organisation of the workers. They certainly weren’t socialist democracies where working class people owned and took all the decisions about the direction of the economy and social policy. Nonetheless they represented, particularly because of the hostility of the capitalist governments towards them, the possibility of an alternative economic system to capitalism. Although the overall effect of their collapse has been negative and disorientating, it has removed an obstacle. The bureaucracy which ruled Eastern Europe also relied on traditional bourgeois ideology about the family and personal relationships – and imposed them in Russia after the initial freedom and equal rights of the period immediately after the revolution. In the past, anyone who tried to persuade young gays and lesbians that socialism was relevant to their struggle would run up against the reply ‘it hasn’t liberated people like us in Russia and Eastern Europe’.
It is up to socialists to offer an alternative, to explain the link between class exploitation and the oppression of specific groups in society. A class analysis which doesn’t recognise the special oppression many working class people face won’t answer all their questions. Class exploitation is the basis of capitalist society but it maintains itself in power and can additionally exploit particular groups economically through stoking up prejudices, pretending they have a ‘natural’ base and dividing the working class.
We saw in the 1980s how the right was able to use the meagre provisions for specially oppressed groups to attack ‘loony’ left councils. Their real aim was to attack the working class and opposition to Thatcherism. They had some success because those councils refused to go on the offensive and fight the government, to provide for everyone the most basic essentials of life, such as decent housing, jobs and good education.
Insecurity and fear, a shortage of the basics of life, allow the right to peddle the old prejudices. The battle against homophobia involves economic policies which secure these and an ideological battle to combat prejudice and unite the working class, the radicalised sections of the middle class and specially oppressed groups in a common battle against capitalism.
The dominant mood may be of a guardedly optimistic ‘wait and see’, but the ideological ground can be forged now and a battle conducted wherever openings appear to attack a system which has blighted so many millions of lives.
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