[Militant International Review, No 61, Summer 1995, p. 14-17]
More than 100,000 people will participate in Lesbian and Gay Pride in June. This reflects the huge confidence that has been built within the lesbian, gay and bisexual community over the past two decades. Here Helen Redwood looks at some of the strategic issues facing lesbian and gay activists, and especially the views of leading OutRage! spokesperson Peter Tatchell.
On the surface it seems that we’ve ‘never had it so good’: increased media coverage from TV soaps, relatively sympathetic reporting of newspapers like The Guardian, the higher profile of lesbian, gay and bisexual celebrities, a massive expansion of the gay scene, the lesbian and gay press, businesses and services, all testify to this new confidence and changed public attitudes. This has even been reflected in the courts. Leading OutRage! spokesperson Peter Tatchell reports a reduction in convictions of gay men for consensual homosexual acts by 75% in the past few years.
What lies behind these advances? Where will the struggle for lesbian, gay and bisexual equality go now? How can we achieve real and lasting liberation?
When 4,000 of New York’s lesbian, gay and bisexual community took to the streets in 1969 and fought back in a running street battle against police harassment that lasted several days, they probably didn’t realise they were making history. This action, the famous Stonewall uprising, broke the mould of years of silently borne repression, of the closet, of shame and self-hatred. But the timing, one year after the momentous events of 1968, wasn’t accidental. It was born of a revolutionary wave which was sweeping the world from wars of liberation in Africa and Latin America, to workers’ uprisings in France and Czechoslovakia, to the black civil rights movement in the USA and ‘black power’, to the women’s liberation movement.
This revolutionary mood inspired the lesbian, gay and bisexual community no less: a new consciousness was born, of ‘gay pride’ and ‘coming out’. And vitally this new movement began to re-draw the links between the movements for socialism and sexual liberation, identifying the roots of gay oppression in the class system itself, for example in the Manifesto of the Gay Liberation Front.
This continued and developed throughout the 1970s and in the first half of the 1980s. Lesbian and gay issues were forced onto the agenda of the left-wing movement which developed within the Labour Party and trade unions, many of which adopted policies in favour of gay rights and developed self-organised groups.
Paradoxically however there have since been major changes in the way that lesbian and gay activists relate to the left and the labour movement, and how much they see any perspective in those movements for advancing their interests. This is connected with the shift to the right in the leadership of the labour movement, with the ideological effects of events like the collapse of Stalinism on the credibility of socialism and, so far as the lesbian and gay communities are concerned, with major differences in how lesbian and gay oppression is experienced by middle class and working class people.
These factors in turn have propelled to the forefront lesbian and gay campaigning groups like OutRage! and Stonewall; the first concentrating on direct action and dramatic stunts, the other focusing on lobbying across the party spectrum.
Lesbians and gays of course have no reason to have the slightest confidence in Tony Blair’s ‘New’ Labour to advance their interests. Tony Blair proclaims himself ‘gay friendly’ but allows Labour MPs to vote against an equal age of consent for gay sex, including front bench spokesperson David Blunkett. (If these MPs had just abstained then the vote would have been won). His enthusiasm for competing with the Tories to be ‘the party of the family’ and his trenchant defence of the two-parent heterosexual family is hardly ‘gay friendly’.
But if the Labour Party has abdicated from the struggle then so too have the trade union leaders. What campaign was carried out to win an equal age of consent? What was done about trade union sponsored MPs who voted against an equal age of consent? What has been done to seriously tackle discriminatory employers? Nothing whatever.
This abdication from struggle has therefore left a vacuum, into which have stepped the direct actionists of groups like OutRage! and Lesbian Avengers, and the respectable lobbyists of Stonewall.
Lesbians and gays of course have no reason to have the slightest confidence in Tony Blair’s ‘New’ Labour to advance their interests.
Leading OutRage! spokesperson Peter Tatchell spells out the frustration with ‘straight’ organisations, including the official labour movement: “We have got virtually nowhere in terms of getting the straight establishment institutions to address the question of lesbians and gay men. Nearly all the improvements in the lives of homosexual men and women have been due to institutions that we have created for ourselves such as lesbian and gay switchboards, social centres, employment and legal advice centres, AIDS and bereavement helplines. Faced with the intransigence of many straight social institutions the lesbian and gay community should welcome heterosexual allies but never be dependent upon them … we have to rely first and foremost on our own self-help efforts”.
On the other hand, the more ‘respectable’ lobbying organisation Stonewall enjoys the support particularly of the rich and famous, but also sections of the community who believe that ‘wining and dining’ those in positions of power and influence provides at least some way forward. In a recent newsletter Stonewall claims considerable progress on a number of small legal reforms. But when it comes to key issues like the age of consent, their lobbying and cross-party campaign failed, in part because it relied on the opportunistic support of Tory MPs like Edwina Currie, who had previously been happy to vote for the homophobic Section 28. And what’s really changed in the day-to-day lives of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals as a result of all this? The gay-bashing continues. Headteacher Jane Brown is still being pursued by Hackney Council over a matter which has been linked to her sexuality. Lesbian and gay workers still face the sack if they come out; and gay teenagers are still made to feel like criminals and deviants because of the discriminatory age of consent. Respectable lobbying and petitioning of those in power doesn’t shift the social and political relationship of forces in society – the very forces which underpin sexual oppression.
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Moreover, a gulf of class-interests lies between rich and working class lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Rich lesbians and gay men do suffer the general repression of sexuality, but they have much more ability to escape it’s brutal reality than do working class lesbians, gay men and bisexuals. They do not have the same worry of losing their livelihood because of their sexuality, they can escape into the world of cafe bars, exclusive clubs and a wealthy lesbian and gay social circle. They do not live on estates where you have to be careful about your sexuality not becoming common knowledge to avoid the insults from kids as you walk through, to avoid the bricks through your windows, and the painting on your walls, to avoid your children being victimised at school.
The idea of a uniformity of interests between all lesbians, gay men and bisexuals also lies behind the idea of the ‘pink pound’. In the last few years, spotting a new ‘niche market’, small and big businesses have suddenly become ‘gay friendly’. This will undoubtedly have a knock-on effect on attitudes generally. But the extent to which the exploitation of what Peter Tatchell calls “queer spending power to pressure business to adopt pro-gay policies” is highly debatable given that the majority of lesbian, gays and bisexuals are working class and suffering the same mass unemployment and falling living standards affecting other workers.
Even supposing Stonewall were successful in persuading enough MPs to vote through anti-discriminatory legislation, would that really stop prejudice and discrimination? Has the Race Relations Act stopped racism? Has the Equal Pay and Sex Discrimination Acts wiped out sexism and the oppression of women? Far more than legislation is needed. This is where the direct action groups step in. Their agenda is not just legal reform, but as Peter Tatchell says: “Change in the law is not the same as ending homophobia – that’s why OutRage!’s central focus is a cultural revolution in social attitudes towards homosexuality … the end goal for OutRage! is not equality; we want queer emancipation”. And their strategy is to “put homophobics on the spot by publicly exposing and embarrassing them”.
But just how far has the ‘in your face’ campaign of OutRage! been the motive force behind a quite marked shift towards more acceptance of homosexuality? Will these shifts in attitudes continue and be permanent?
According to Peter Tatchell “nearly all our advances have been won through extra parliamentary protest and grass roots community activism”. The change in attitudes is “largely due to a combination of individual lesbians and gay men coming out and challenging prejudice of those they come into contact with.
“The other big impetus for change has been the growing public visibility of lesbian and gay issues which have been brought about partly through media reportage of lesbian and gay social events and political protests. In the longer term even negative coverage helps soften public opinion – the more people hear about and discuss gay issues, the more they get used to them; that makes them less unusual and threatening”.
But is this sufficient explanation? Would it have been possible to make the progress referred to above to the same extent if not for wider social factors?
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These changes in public attitudes towards homosexuality have not been forced by an obvious mass movement, but because of a massive shift to the left in social attitudes in the 1980s on abortion, on trade unions, on divorce, on women’s rights and so on.
That’s not the whole story of course. Prejudice and discrimination don’t evaporate without being challenged – no gains would have been made but for the self-organisation of the lesbian, gay and bisexual community, but the biggest opportunities come at times of mass upheaval. The most positive and comprehensive resolution in support of lesbian and gay rights was passed at the 1985 Labour Party conference against the background of the miners strike. Significantly this resolution went through with the backing of the NUM, not least because of the concrete solidarity built during the miners strike through ‘Lesbians and gays support the miners’. But we need to go further than this. We need to look at what underpins prejudice in society and consider under what conditions prejudice rises and falls. Tory attacks on the gay community over the last 15 years are not out of the blue, but are directly linked to the war of ideas they have been conducting to justify the dismantling of the welfare state and all the other attacks on working class living standards.
Part of this campaign has been to promote the traditional nuclear family as being the bedrock of society without which life as we know it will disintegrate. In promoting the ideology of the family, they have attacked other ways of living, including single parents and same sex relationships. Little surprise then that alongside this campaign the Tories attempted to issue guidelines banning lesbians and gay men from fostering and adoption, and enacted legislation which re-classified everyday contact between consenting gay men as serious sex offences.
But beyond the fight for immediate reforms, and to throw back Tory attacks, we need to debate out a long-term strategy for lesbian, gay and bisexual liberation. In doing so, it is necessary to analyse the basic social structures of sexual oppression, in particular the family as it exists under capitalism. Can we achieve lesbian, gay and bisexual liberation without changing the system?
Peter Tatchell’s view is that: “Capitalism does rest very heavily on the model of the heterosexual family. However, though it would be very difficult, it would not be impossible for capitalist society to restructure itself around an alternative model.
“One of the remarkable features of capitalism has been it’s adaptability – instead of refusing to change and therefore risk revolutionary insurrection, capitalism has usually and somewhat reluctantly preferred to make concessions rather than oppose social reform and risk provoking it’s overthrow”.
Peter is forthright in setting out the strategic consequences of his views. “Although socialists ought to be committed to lesbian and gay liberation because of their general commitment to end social injustice, there’s no necessary correlation between the goal of socialism and queer emancipation. There’s no automatic link between the economic basis of society and it’s ideological and cultural institutions; if state ownership of the means of production automatically ended homophobia then all those countries which abolished private property should have been the most pro-gay – in fact they tended to be most violently anti-gay”. He therefore concludes that the struggle for lesbian, gay and bisexual liberation “does not need to be linked to the struggle for socialism”.
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Why is the fight for lesbian, gay and bisexual liberation intimately linked to the fight for socialism? How should we reply to Peter Tatchell’s correct point that societies in which capitalist rule was overthrown, i.e. in Stalinist states like Russia, eastern Europe and China, did not uproot homophobia and sexual repression?
First, as Peter Tatchell points out, the oppression of lesbians, gays and bisexuals is linked to the existing family system, and thus to women’s oppression. The existing family form has a vital function under capitalism, as the site for every aspect of the reproduction of labour power – from rearing children to the mundane tasks of ‘domestic labour’ such as preparing food, washing clothes etc. It also has a central ideological and cultural role as an instrument of repression and social control. In theory, capitalist social relations – the profit system – could exist without this family structure. But it would mean an enormous upheaval: it implies a transformation of relations between the sexes, it would mean a socialisation of existing domestic labour.
In other words, if the existing bedrock of the nuclear family were destroyed, it would imply an enormous transfer of economic resources to working people and away from profits, as more of the tasks of child care and the other functions of the family were provided by society as a whole. Peter Tatchell is surely one-sided to describe the family as an ‘ideological and cultural institution’ separate and apart from capitalism’s economic base. Of course it is an ideological and cultural institution, but it is not simply that.
Now, there are indeed contemporary complications to the bare bones of this argument. While relying on the nuclear family, modern capitalism has, through the massive entry of women in the workforce, partially undermined it. More and more children are brought up by single parents and lesbian and gay couples, more people live in one-person households and there is dramatically more space for sexual relations outside marriage. These changes have not, of course, brought about the kind of socialisation of child-care and domestic labour which could radically change the overall structure of the existing family system – indeed such provision, especially for single mothers, is fiercely contested by capitalist political forces.
In other words, it is far too simple to say that capitalism could dispense with the present family setup: it would require social and economic changes of literally revolutionary proportions. A capitalism which revolutionised the family structure would be a capitalism which liberated women: the logic of Peter’s argument is that not only lesbian and gay liberation has no necessary connection with the overthrow of capitalism, but neither does women’s liberation. We come back to this argument below.
There is another factor which has to enter any reasonable calculations about capitalism and the family. We are talking not about capitalism as an abstraction, but the real crisis-ridden system which exists. If capitalism were able to develop harmoniously for the next 50 years, developing a massive welfare state and universal prosperity, then maybe major transformations in the family system, including the socialisation of domestic labour and childcare, could occur. Such an imaginary prosperous capitalism could solve many other social conflicts, and indeed a good part of the historical justification for socialism would disappear. But it won’t happen: capitalism will remain crisis-ridden, conflict-ridden and repressive. It will not create the social and economic space for ending lesbian and gay oppression, any more than it will create the space for ending racism.
The second aspect of the interconnection of socialist struggle with the fight for sexual liberation is the simple strategic one. Peter argues that socialists should support the fight for lesbian and gay liberation because of their commitment to human emancipation and social justice. And, with the exception of a few Neanderthals, so they will. But where will the forces necessary for earth-shaking changes of revolutionary proportions come from? Who has the social weight? Only the working class, the overwhelming majority in society, can make such a decisive breakthrough.
After 1917 capitalist rule was overthrown in a series of countries, and with the exception of some progressive measures taken during the early Bolshevik regime, they did not liberate lesbians and gays – far from it. At one level of course we can point out that these were not socialist societies, but Stalinist, repressive caricatures of socialism. That is true, but doesn’t deal with a crucial point. A democratic socialist system would create a society based on social solidarity and egalitarianism: it would unleash tremendous creative energies in every walk of life. But to imagine that it would immediately transform all social relations and attitudes is utopian and un-materialist Uprooting sexism and homophobia would be a prolonged task, but one made more straightforward by the destruction of sexual oppression’s material roots. Democratic socialism is a necessary precondition for the destruction of sexual oppression, precisely because, as we have argued, it would break the economic and ideological constraints which reinforce the nuclear family as the ‘normal’ form of family organisation, creating a new diversity and range of choices for how people develop their sexual and kinship relations.
Peter Tatchell’s argument could be extended on a series of issues, even if he personally does not accept such an extension. Is racism connected with capitalism? Reactionary nationalism and ethnic conflicts? The destruction of the environment? And is it just a coincidence that all these things exist within a system based on individual greed, privilege and hierarchy?
Lesbians, gays and bisexuals need to link our battles against day-to-day discrimination with the battles facing the working class as a whole. Direct action can highlight prejudice but cannot substitute for the main task of taking our campaigns into the unions, workplaces and communities, showing how prejudice and discrimination breaks the unity we need to combat the attacks on living standards by the bosses and their government, and is therefore against the interests of all working class people. It means that we need to link the struggle for real sexual liberation to the task, as we argue in our pamphlet Out, Proud and Militant, of “rebuilding a strong labour movement, which will unite the struggles of all oppressed sections into one struggle – to take power away from the rich and to give it to ordinary working class people”.
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