Dedicated Follower Of Fashion by Les May

I STARTED reading the then Manchester Guardian in 1960 when I started work and for the first time had the money to buy it. For forty or so years, during which it changed dropped the Manchester bit, I was a loyal reader, but somewhere around 2000 I finally tired of its increasingly uncritical feminism and stopped buying it.

The final straw was an article about a couple of women who claimed to have ‘taken on’ the builders. It turned out that one was an academic and the other a student and they had worked on a site for all of a fortnight in the middle of summer. In other words not exactly a lifetime working outside in the middle of winter. More like a fortnight in the sun and then back to a nice warm office or lecture theatre for the cold wet weather.

Though Suzanne Moore, with her ever so predictable man bashing columns, has never been one of my favourite journalists, but I certainly warmed to her comments; ‘the cult of righteousness that the Guardian embodies’ and ‘lately it has been hard to define what the Left consists of beyond smug affirmation’ in a piece entitled Why I had to leave The Guardian.

Moore had written an article which, as well as being in her usual man bashing style, complete with references to ‘the patriarchy’ and ‘who the real enemies are’ (a.k.a. Men), included the comment that some women ‘were uncomfortable with people being able to self-declare as a man or a woman – whatever their biological sex – for all sorts of reasons.’. It also referred to the ‘disinviting’ of Selina Todd, a professor of modern history at the University of Oxford, who was due to give a polite two-minute speech of thanks at an event at Exeter College, on the grounds that she had addressed a meeting of the group Woman’s Place UK, which was formed in 2017 after proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act.

This was too much for the sensitive souls at The Guardian and 338 of them took exception to it in a letter to the editor.

So long as the fashion amongst those who like to call themselves ‘of the Left’ was that women, however privileged, were to be seen as the most oppressed creatures in the world, Moore was never short of a market for her wares. But then being ‘trans’ knocked women off the top spot and suddenly Moore found some of her views were unfashionable. Hence the letter.

A friend recently suggested that Labour’s poor showing in the recent election might be because working people had no time for the world of identity politics which has become the go-to issue for many would be activists on the Left. Is it just coincidence that when they were Labour leadership candidates Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey signed up to a pledge put together by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights? Perhaps working people just have different priorities.

You can find Moore’s original article here:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2020/mar/02/women-must-have-the-right-to-organise-we-will-not-be-silenced

And her version of the spat at The Guardian here:

https://unherd.com/2020/11/why-i-had-to-leave-the-guardian

For a quite different take on The Guardian look here;

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/05/05/the-ugly-truth-about-the-guardian/

NV can no longer embed links in the text of articles. To use these links copy the full text of the link into your browser (Startpage, DuckDuckGo or Google) and search in the usual way.

Boris Johnson started International Women's Week by claiming he's a feminist !

by Andy Wastling

(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang [1] by Andrew Wastling

THREE days after International Women's Day and the night before Mothers Day his police are directed to brutally attack peaceful female protestors. Johnson's actions seem to be totally out of step with his alleged aspirations or intentions?

This week parliament will vote on Priti Patel's new policing law, effectively destroying the right to protest.Our democracy ( such that it is !) is being gradually eroded as this rogue and toxic Westminster cabal drives towards an increasingly neo-fascist and authoritarian state. This is an existential struggle between the forces of progress and the sinister forces of reaction. One the British working class seem destined to lose if we do not rise from our political torpor and apathy. In Greece , Spain , Italy , Germany and France the workers have been on the streets in force for many months. Governments should be afraid of their people not the other way round.

A peaceful vigil in Manchester by the Emmeline Pankhurst statue passed entirely without incident (despite the background presence of two police vans full of overtime eager GMP officers). The women behind Right To Walk MCR had originally also hoped to hold a covid safe vigil but following conversations with Manchester City Council and GMP were told that they would also receive fines if it went ahead. Despite GMP's dicktact telling protestors that they were unable to proceed with a vigil for Sarah Everard and #ReclaimTheseStreets as well as a virtual online event .The restricted and entirely peaceful , disciplined and socially distanced vigil took place as indeed also happened in Nottingham, and Birmingham, as they did elsewhere outside of the capital with no police harassment or intimidation whatsoever.Right to Walk Manchester have published an Open Letter online demanding an : Everard's Law. From stricter punishments for harassment and catcalling, to better lighting and increased security cameras, our ambition is to create safer communities so that women are more protected. Can be signed at : Petition · An Open Letter for Everard's Law · Change.org

A demonstration has been called at 5pm, tomorrow ( 15 March ), Parliament Square , London And no doubt further national and local vigils and protests are being organised this weekend Cressida Dick, speaking about Sarah’s murder days ago, expressed her shock and said our job is to patrol the streets and to protect people. But at this vigil, her officers did the exact opposite. A petition calling for her to go can be signed below.

https://r.ippl.es/cressida-dick-resign/

APPENDIX:

(1). (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang was written by Heaven 17 members Martyn Ware, Ian Craig Marsh and Glenn Gregory and included on their 1981 debut album Penthouse and Pavement. It was the first single released by the band. In the lyrics fascism and racism are described in an ironic fashion, using the lexicon of funk music.

******************************************************************

The Acceptable Face Of Prejudice by Les May

WHEN Davina McCall tweeted: 'Female abduction / murder is extremely rare. Yes we should all be vigilant when out alone. But this level of fear-mongering isn’t healthy. And men’s mental health is an issue as well. Calling all men out as dangerous is bad for our sons, brothers, partners.' she found herself being attacked by people eager to prove the equivalent of ‘black is white’.

As I pointed out a few days ago in the past eleven years an average 28% of killings of women were by someone not known to them compared with 51% of killings of men. In the same period on average more than twice as many men were murdered each year than women, 408 men and 189 women.

When I read that some of the responses referred to ‘an epidemic of violence against women’ I thought that either the definition of violence had been subtly changed whilst I wasn’t looking or the people who were making them were talking about something other than the seemingly random killing of a young woman which had prompted McCall’s original tweet.

What is not in question is that over the same 11 year period where the killer was known to a male victim in 6% of cases the killer was a partner or ex-partner, but where the victim was a woman the killer was a partner or ex-partner in 60% of cases. In spite of their marked asymmetry what these figures demonstrate is that violence leading to death is not exclusively the preserve of men. Some women are violent too and no amount of excuses designed to exonerate them will change that.

A common assumption is that domestic abuse is also something which is exclusively carried out be men. But the term itself embraces all forms of abuse within a domestic situation irrespective of the relationship between perpetrator and victim. A more useful approach is to examine ‘partner abuse’ which occurs within/between married or cohabiting couples.

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that for the 12 months ending March this year 4% of people aged 16 to 74 were victims of partner abuse, e.g. non-physical, threats, force, sexual and stalking, on one or more occasions. A frequent complaint by women eager to over egg the pudding is that there is under reporting to the police of such incidents.

Not subject to this complaint as they were collected from a random sample of adults by means of a questionnaire, are data taken from the Home Office Statistical Bulletin published in 2012. This does not report sexual abuse and stalking by partners separately from the domestic context, however it does report non-physical abuse, threats and force by partners and it shows that 5% of women and 3% of men reported one or more such incidents in the previous year. It also reported that 24% of women and 12% of men claimed to have experienced at least one incident of non-physical abuse, threats and force by partners at some time in their lives between the ages of 16 and 59. What is clear is that women as well as men abuse their partners; only the extent of abuse differs. Vague talk about ‘changing the culture’ or demanding that misogyny be made a hate crime whilst always insisting that men are the problem and women are the victims, will not change things. It is no more than the socially acceptable face of prejudice. Similar levels of prejudice on the basis of skin colour would result in howls of protest. If we are shocked that 1 in 20 women experience abuse by a partner in any one year, we ought to be equally shocked that 1 in 33 men experience the same. If we are shocked that an average of 52 women a year die in random attacks we should be equally shocked to discover that for men the figure is four time higher at 209.

****************************************************

J.K. ROWLING & tyranny of historical processes

ON the 10th, June 2020, J.K. Rowling Wrote about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues:

'But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces.'

She added: 'The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim. I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people. All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.'

Evolution of Fashionable Addiction in the Cultural Realm

When I read the above address from a children's author of which I must admit to having only read the occasional oddments in newspapers, and I haven't even seen any of the associated films related to her work; I was drawn back to George Orwell's essay 'Inside the Whale' written in 1940. Orwell was then aware and worried about the poor state of English literature and he wrote of the period: 'Symptomatically, that is more significant than the mere fact that five thousand novels are published in England every year and four thousand nine hundred of them are tripe.'

Back in 1940, Orwell was clearly as pessimistic, as J.K. Rowling seems to be today, and he felt the writer was living in 'an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction'. He believed that: 'As for the writer, he [sic] is sitting on a melting iceberg: he is merely an anachronism, a hangover from a bourgeois age...'

A few years earlier in 1936 Orwell clarified the problem while reviewing 'The Novel Today' by the Marxist critic Philip Henderson, when he wrote that the official 'art for art's sake' school was finished and it was then being replaced by two gangs of extremists: 'Both the Catholic and Communist usually believe, though unfortunately they do not often say, that abstract aesthetic standards are bunkum and that a book is only a "good" book it it preaches the right sermon. To the Communist, good literature means "proletarian" literature. (Mr Henderson is careful to explain, however that this doesn't mean literature written by proletarians; which is just as well, because there isn't any.)'

Sermons and the Winter of Anarchistic Free Thinking

In that bleak world of 1940 with the bombs falling, the year in which I was born, Orwell pinned his hopes on Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer' and a novel 'With No sermons, merely subjective truth'

Orwell during the war regarded Henry Miller then as the best bet in the circumstances: 'a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceper of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses.' Not very edifying but once read never forgotten; J.K. Rowling is clearly a much more fragrant specimen and one more easy to get behind in the battle against the current cancel culture fanatics. For freedom of expression is under attack now just as much as it was in the 1930s when the Marxists held the sway; today it is now the obsessive identity politicians cracking the whip, and as a consequence writing and literature is suffering under the current historical process.

Nowadays though, it's not just the general message which is under threat from the 'cancel culture' clans, but anyone can pulled-up for some throwaway remark: a recent example is J.K.Rowling for mentioning 'Never trust a man in a dress' in her book 'Troubled Blood[' a 900-page novel that is said to be Dickensian in its scope.

Nick Cohen in The Spectator [15/09/20] reviewed Ms. Rowling's sin thus: 'Troubled Blood is a 900-page novel that is Dickensian in its scope and gallery of characters. Strike and his business partner Robin Ellacott are hired by a middle-aged woman to investigate the disappearance of her mother in the 1970s. Detectives at the time thought Creed had killed her, but no one knew the truth and the woman’s body had never been found. Strike and Ellacott investigate Creed, but then they investigate a good dozen others. You have to search hard to find a justification for the belief that the book’s moral 'seems' to be "never trust a man in a dress". But then relentless searches for the tiniest evidence of guilt are the marks of heresy hunters.'

The trouble is that this kind of censorship is that it is not just the preserve of the usual suspects among the political authoritarians on the left and the right. Curiously, the socalled libertarians at the 'anarchist' Freedom Press have been vigously rooting out dissidents who have supported people like Helen Steel and J.K.Rowling. Dave Douglass, an anarcho-syndicalist, and in August 2019 a member of the Friends of Freedom Press, was told by the secretary of the group Steve Sorba that he had 'had embarrassed his fellow Director colleagues by favouring a booklet which questions some of the stranger aspects of gender politics'. Dave was then encouraged to spare his colleagues blushes as directors of Freedom Press and to step down.

The Freedom Press directors have had a troubled history since it was found that Secretary Sorba had been been running the show without reference to his fellow directors, and even placing the names directors on the Company's House register without their knowledge. Since that was discovered and exposed on the NV Blog, Secretary Sorba is believed to have cleaned-up his act.

The Seed within el Culo de un Burro

There was a time more than two decades ago when the anarchist newspaper Freedom had a good reputation for being courageous, controversal and a kind of political Daniel in the lion's den, but that seems no longer to be the case. Its current publishers seem shy and quite willing to censor folk, and to court any fashionable fad no matter how despicable.

When a few years ago two distinguished academics and historians, David Goodway and Peter Marshall, gained entry as directors of Friends of Freedom Press it was thought that things may improve. Alas, it has not really happened. Not only was Dave Douglass effectively shown the door by Secretary Soba, but the rest of the directors have not covered themselves with glory and their committee seems to continually side with censorship and the prescriptions of the cancel culture.

In 2005, David Goodway wrote 'Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow - left libertarian thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward' which tried to show that anarchistic forms and projects can be discovered within the structures of everyday life if we seek them and that these 'seeds beneath the snow' should be thrown into relief and promoted by anarchists. It is a seductive theory and can easily be shown to have some credibility substance by focusing upon the ordinary and everyday activities of 'people's methods' which Orwell himself had long ago advocated as a form of common place sociology. In 1967, Harold Garfinkel had even introduced what he came to 'ethnomethodology' [people's methods], which became a form of response to the then conventional sociology of Talcott Parsons with social action theory and structural functionalism.

Colin Ward had long ago criticised British anarchists for being too obsessed with history when he thought they would do better by focussing on a more sociological approach. The work of Colin Ward is very popular in Italy, and the original author of the novel 'The Seed Beneath the Snow'* Ignazio Silone is Italian. But Goodway and Peter Marshall are themselves both English historians, and both are historians presenting artful historical naratives. Now Silone was one of those writers who Orwell in 1944 said belonged to the school of foreign writers who are 'what one might call concentration-camp literature' in that they had seen and understood totalitarianism from the inside. In his book Silone has the seed hidden from the police by the peasants, not beneath the snow, but up the culo of a donkey. It is perhaps a more approprate place since neither of the two historians on the Friends of Freedom Press directorate have covered themselves with glory.

* The Seed Beneath the Snow, the final novel in The Abruzzo Trilogy, follows the fugitive Pietro Spina as he refuses to accept the conditions of pardon for his transgressions against the fascist state and flees to the mountains. As in Fontamara and Bread and Wine, Silone achieves a rich harmony of allegory and realism in his portrayal of the cafoni of Abruzzo and their struggle for freedom. An extraordinary, unburnished vision of the conflict between good and evil, communicating to its reader, in the words of F. W. Dupee, “Silone’s deep integrity, his sufferings and aspirations, his radical sense of the world’s wrongs.” ****************************************************************

The Wrong Colour Of Black? by Les May

IN November 2018, I wrote an article for Northern Voices with the title ‘The Silent Sisterhood’. It raised the question of why feminist politicians and journalists had so little to say about the plight of Asia Bibi, a poor Christian woman who had fallen foul of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws, had spent eight years in jail, had finally been declared innocent by the Supreme Court, and was still being held in custody so that the court’s decision could be ‘reviewed’ as a sop to the mobs demanding that she be hanged.

As I pointed out at the time there has never been any shortage of white, affluent, western feminists ready to discover examples of ‘misogyny’. Just another case of selective outrage it would seem. Is it going to happen all over again with the Black Lives Matter supporters displaying their own unique brand of selective outrage?

On Tuesday a 22-year-old woman died of severe injuries in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh after being gang raped. The same day another 19-year-old woman died two weeks after she was gang-raped and strangled by upper caste men. Both were Dalits and in India's caste-based hierarchy Dalits are ranked the lowest and have been referred to as ‘untouchables’ in the past. Last month, a 13 year old Dalit girl was raped and murdered in the same state. Last year, two Dalit children were allegedly beaten to death after defecating in the open.

As with religious minorities in Pakistan where Christians like Asia Bibi are persecuted and young Hindu women forcibly converted to Islam before being married to older men, India’s caste system is structural discrimination because although in both cases technically illegal, it is built into the fabric of those societies.

Concern is expressed about Facebook, Instagram and Twitter becoming echo chambers reinforcing the existing attitudes and prejudices of their users. We hear nothing about how the choice of issues by the mainstream media determines what is ‘news’ and what is not; what causes outrage and what does not. We all know and can remember the name of George Floyd because his murder has been extensively covered in the press and on television. Unlike the USA, India and Pakistan are not part of the affluent West where ‘people are just like us’ and those of us who happen to have been born with a white skin can be made to feel guilty about events which happened a long time ago and in which we played no part.

Will anyone be asked if they will ‘take a knee’ in memory of these two young Dalit women; will some ‘Royal’ chip in his four penn’orth? I doubt it; selective outrage is the order of the day!

*****************************************************************************

Narcissism is not a Third Gender

             by Arthur Brick & friends 

                  

Editorial Note:  We publish the report below after

some consideration.  It raises some serious questions

about the standards of debate on the libertarian left.

We have long been aware of a deficiency among the
British left with regard to addressing truth to power,
but we would have expected the anarchists to hold to
a better quality of journalistic standards.  Yet, our
experience has been that the anarchist media blog put 
out under the title 'Freedom News' has a sadly depressing
tone in the way that it has become a mere megaphone for
a 'trans' tendency, and is too fashionably trendy 
for its own good.  The small 'Solidarity Federation' grouping 
has become yet another addict to this politics of the absurd,
its members Ron Marsden and Phil Dickens are mentioned below 
in dispatches: we know nothing of Mr Dickens but Mr Marsden
was in attendance when 'Arthur Brick' was roughly removed by a gang from a  meeting discussing blacklisting at the Liverpool Anarchist Bookfair on the 7 April, 2018.  

Knowing Ron Marsden we are not surprised to learn that he was cagey and even furtive about supplying help to this victim of discrimination & blacklisting.  

Sitting next to the passive Mr. Marsden someone tried hard to get 
the exclusion of 'Mr Brick' discussed, but to no avail.

This silencing of free debate is becoming a cancer that lies at the
heart of the politics of the far left in the UK.

*****************************

Open letter to Sol Fed’s Keyboard Warrior from 'Arthur Brick'& friends:

Phil Dickens: 'The conflicted tax collector'?

THIS article is in relation to the use of abusive terms adopted by some left wing and anarchist political groups to put down anyone who does not take their opinions on the subject of transgender seriously.  The name calling and abuse of socialists, anarchists, activists etc. living outside their freaky social scenes is a way of them avoiding debate, through fear of their claims being scrutinised.
The article also deals with a pretty insignificant group called ‘Sol Fed’.  We are not sure what they are federated to, as they are almost invisible on a street level, yet they do a great job of discrediting class politics with their absurd adoption of transgender identity politics.  So here we will shed a light on the keyboard warrior.

I was recently asked by a feminist friend of mine if I knew an individual named Phil Dickens. I should point out that Phil Dickens is already a somewhat conflicted individual and I found it amusing to discover that whilst being an
‘anarchist’ he also works at the tax office!   On the one hand ‘smashing the state’ for purely theatrical effect but on the other being a servile state functionary.  I think we can safely call that contradiction and hypocrisy, but it does reveal the level of insincerity regarding the bogus claims of this keyboard warrior.

2. Response to my question.

I was sent a link to his social media outpourings and decided to challenge
him. No sooner had I done so, Phil Dickens blocked me and backed out of answering my question.  After further investigation it would appear that
SolfFed has no platform in which to redress the behaviour of its members.
For example there are no positions in the group such as regional or
national secretary in which you can voice your concerns.

Ron Marsden of Manchester Sol Fed was asked about this when people wanted to address the behaviour of Liverpool SolFed member Pablo who disrupted a blacklisted workers meeting, as it was considered somebody attending did not hold the correct opinions on gender self identification (such was the outrage he saw fit to disrupt the meeting).  This is covered in depth in the booklet 'Shit Wigs and Steroids'.

1. Phil Dickens post and my question.  This makes any external or internal grievance of Sol Fed members go unanswered or conveniently ignored.  Any ‘difficult issue’ is swept under the carpet with the hope it will not raise its ‘ugly head’.  So when we see these ‘members’ (scuse phallic pun!!) advertise ‘women’s meetings’ but are also calling women TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists) in public, how are we to take that?

It could be said the SolFed is nothing more than an obscure social group with
a supposed ’workerist’ base. Its older members seem happy with its utter failure to grow into anything meaningful but lets put that comical issue to one side.

However, the issue here is that the term TERF is aimed at women, which is an
affront to working class women who have suffered at the hands of men.  What we are seeing displayed by Liverpool SolFed who perhaps number four people is crude bullying of those not towing a line that is being widely scrutinised elsewhere.  Another example of bullying in full effect is when Liverpool SolFed recently ousted one of their own members who sought discussion on the issue. Members of Sol Fed are clearly cowardly on this issue.

It really does show SolFed’s absurd contradiction on women’s rights. It shows the complete denial of women’s voices over their concerns of men identifying as women and, comically, as lesbians.  The use of TERF as a slur by tax official Dickson shows his contempt for those of us not falling into line with the male
perspective that transgender activists peddle.  It looks like Liverpool
SolFed / Mersey SolFed (all four of them) are sinking in the mire of their own introverted identity politics bullshit. The adoption of a pro trans narrative does not seem to be swelling the ranks of their “disorganisation”.  When we see SolFed publishing articles on class and women, we really are left scratching our heads to the clear contradiction and absurdity of their “politics”.

Will Phil Dickens answer this question:

What names have you got for us Northern Working Class blokes who do not swallow the idea that our fathers, brothers, sons can miraculously be ‘actual women’ through the power of thought, medicine, body modification etc.? What you are holding up as transgender, Phil Dickens, as you insult women (with critical opinions), is transvestism,  Autogynephilia* and a whole set of other
issues.  But you are good at calling people things they are not.  If you had a grasp of radical feminism you would see the people you are abusing are not ‘radical feminists’ merely people with the capacity to consider issues well outside of your narrow field of understanding on issues whilst working for the state in your little tax office.

Ron Marsden:  'Hay que malalingua!'

I see you have had 4 views on your Youtube videos.  I think we can help boost that for you.  Being angry on behalf of others, whilst not looking at the issues, leaves people open to responses like ours.  We politely suggest that the 'toxic tax worker' has a read of this:  https://uncommongroundmedia.com/as-a-transsexual-i-support-dr-eva-poen/ the trans activists.

It is easy to overlook the significance of the arguments adopted by these fringe groups, but tomboys are now pushed into identifying as male, effeminate men are getting swept along with the idea they are female, straight men who identify as women claim to be lesbians.  All kinds of absurd ideas and contradictory thinking are marketed as ‘transgender’.  There is a considerable backlash from
many people in wider society against the absurdity of claims from the trans activists.


There has been a substantial ground shift against the claim of transgender activists because what is actually happening is that many of the young people and significantly young women over the last number of years are detransitioning.  The publicity this is rightly receiving are collapsing the arguments that ‘trans activists’ put forward.  Many young people leaving the ‘trans cult’ are left physically and emotionally scarred by the process of conditioning that led them to consider themselves ‘trapped in the wrong body’.  The physical impact on some has had a catastrophic effect.

When we look at the small groups of individuals who claim to be ‘anarchists/ socialists’ etc. who promote the transgender narrative, what we are seeing is the very clear closing down of actual debate on the subject.  One facet of opinion (they want to personally profit from) is ridiculously over emphasized by them, but any challenging opinion of that one facet is shut out.  How can you claim
to support issues around gender but then do all you can to keep the debate massively reduced.

This is done by abusing people who are a part of that debate, dehumanising intelligent people with insults and shutting down supposedly public events like bookfairs, conferences etc.  What we have seen are people like Phil Dickens, Ian Bone, Freedom Press, Simon Saunders, Alice Flebotte, Dave Downes etc. promoting the idea they are concerned about an issue, ‘gender identity politics’,
but under scrutiny, and without doubt, they are showing no compassion or empathy for those who struggle with gender identity issues.

To use 'TERF' to put critics down is beyond sloppy.  It is weak and derogatory.  You have got to hand it to them that they arrogantly believe they can avoid being pulled up on their contradiction and lack of sincerity.  When people take such an abusive line by calling strangers TERFs or bigots etc. they will be in for a shock when their words are drawn into public debate.  We hope to add to this article and we will by looking at particular individuals who hope to avoid any personal responsibility and publicity for the farcical ideology they push from behind their
keyboards.


* autogynephilia

A sexuality that consists of someone being aroused by the idea of themselves being the opposite sex. Not to be confused with transsexualism, which is a medical condition defined by sex dysphoria.

*************************************************

This was written before Covid 19 happened.  As in all negative situations we are seeing positive initiatives come from the chaos:
LGB Alliance https://lgballiance.org.uk/
LGB activists standing up to the transgender nonsense
Boxer Ceiling https://www.facebook.com/BoxerCeili

First meeting of the Northern Anarchist Alliance

ACTIVISTS FROM SOUTH SHEILDS and Sunderland in the North East to Llandudno in North Wales, across to Cumbria in the North West down to Sheffield in Yorkshire and Macclesfield in the Peak District, Telford in Shropshire, as well as Manchester and Salford came together on Saturday the 14th, December to give support for the founding of a new Northern Alliance of Anarchists at the Town Hall Tavern in Manchester.  The original initiative had been rooted in the approach of new group New Offensive, with backing from elements of the old Northern Anarchist Network [NAN]*, but has since been boosted by the support of women associated with the Manchester Feminist Network and the 'MAKE MORE NOISE' network, which made a remarkable debut leafleting at the Manchester Anarchist Bookfair at the Manchester People's History Museum on the previous Saturday (7th, Dec.).

Initially the Northern Anarchist Alliance had been conceived by a few veterans of militant struggle who found themselves in general agreement about the slide of left wing politics in this country into an intellectual and moral ghetto.  Now there is a coming together of distinct forces with roots in libertarian politics, and the trade unions, as well as from a number of social causes concerned about issues of freedom of speech and expression, feminism, and climate issues.  People who are determined to found their politics in the spirit of common decency, openness to debate, and keen to build a culture of ideas based on rigorous empirical analysis rather vulgar dogma.

Discussion at this first Northern Anarchist Alliance event focused on the experiences of the participants in past struggles like the campaigns against asbestos; Olgreave; the Miner's Strikes; Blacklisting in the British building trade; the peace movement; feminism; gender politics; extinction rebellion; bookfairs.  

Practical matters were discussed; such as establishing a  Bank Account and a P.O. Box for better communication.  It was considered vital that we should be in a position to bulk purchase and review literature. 

Consideration was given as to how we should approach bookfairs in future.   It was thought that we ought to question the policy of future bookfair organisers to their ideas on open presentation; free expression; feminism; and openness to debate and controversial ideas.  What about a stall for free expression, or una 'Lucha de contrarios' in the spirit of classical anarchism?  Or a 'DOWN WITH CENSORSHIP CAMPAIGN' drawing on Orwell and Chomsky?

Again the trans-gender row flared up.  We were urged to read the booklet 'Shit, Wigs & Steroids' reviewed on this Blog as 'Bookfairs & Bullshit'.  It details the problems northern anarchists and others have had in recent years at bookfairs,

The event had been publicised as featuring three speakers two, Dave Douglass and Brian Bamford, being formerly associated with the Anarchist newspaper Freedom; in Bamford's case as an editor and with Douglass, until recently as a director on Friends of Freedom Press. Yet, although questions were raised about divisions in Liverpool at the News from Nowhere Bookshop about the distribution of critical literature such as the 'Shit, Wigs & Steroids' booklet, there was little mention of Freedom Press at this event.

We had a working lunch in the Tavern and the food was well received and the ale was very good, as was the service.  Some debate was had about the nature of the Newcastle Bookfair, but it was not thought that it was being based on the spirit of classical anarchism.

The Manchester Bookfair at the Manchester People's History Museum [7/12/2019], had been considered a vast improvement on many of the  bookfairs in the city in recent years: see the N.V. reviews.  This may have been owing to the influence of PM Press which may well have acted as a go-between guarantor to reassure the People's History Museum management that there would be no 'hanky panky' owing to previous history of discrimination by the old local stand-by organising group.   However, it would be very wrong for people associated with the NAN to now pull the ladder up simply because they have gained entry to this event.  The NAN which in the past has been banned ought to show solidarity with other persecuted groups because they above all having criticised others for playing Pontius Pilate in the past, should now stick-up for others.

It was agreed that the next gathering of the NORTHERN ALLIANCE would be in the Springtime of 2020.

 Again the Trans-gender row flared up again.

We were recommended to read “Shit Wigs and Steroids: Book Fairs and Bullshit”. It details the problems northern anarchists and our supporters have had at book fairs. Also it covers the Trans-gender row, both complex subjects but written in a very concise style. Send for your free copy to <brandonacab@hotmail.com>. 

*  http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/p/northern-anarchist-network.html

***************************

Review: The Northern Light Falls on Us

 'NORTHERNESS is an elusive thing to define' so says the playwrite Simon Stephens in the programme to his play 'Light Falls' at the Manchester Royal Exchange.  He says this as the current
Artistic Director at the Royal Exchange is about to step down to go down the London and become Director of the prestigious drama school LAMDA (London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art).  

Ms. Sarah Frankcom caused a bit of a stir in October 2013, when she said that she was ‘throwing down the gauntlet’ on the issue of female casting by choosing Maxine Peake to play Hamlet, and 'There is now a generation of women who are not going to put up with it anymore'.

She was reacting to research conducted by The Guardian in collaboration with Elizabeth Freestone, Artistic Director of Pentabus Theatre, Ludlow.  It seems that in contrast to the situation on stage, figures from Ipsos Mori revealed that on average 68% of theatre audiences are women.  But that when it comes to producing the works of Shakespeare there is an inherent gender imbalance due to the original male only casts, with 155 female characters compared to 826 male characters across the Bard’s plays.

Her experiment using Maxine as Hamlet worked a treat but her more recent production of a female dominated version of Macbeth bewilderingly confusion as did other who came with me and I saw it twice.

Maxine Peake is from Westhoughton, Bolton, and she has been pressed to drop her northern accent for some roles.   

One comment responded to Ms. Frankcom's feminist 'Hamlet' thus:
'That is ridiculous man!  How arrogant of Sarah Frankcom to feel qualified to re-write the work of a genius. Perhaps she should re-pen Beethoven's 9th while she's at it.  It is such a rare treat and luxury to see a Shakespeare play, and I'm sick and tired of the likes of Frankcom trying to give herself a name at the expense of what is a truly genius piece of literature.  Perhaps she'd like to paint the Mona Lisa as a man too.  What a load of self indulgent pseudo-feminist crap. Just give us the art as it was intended.  It really is that simple.  If you don't like it, write your own bloody play!'

But I think the play's writer Simon Stephens is a man.   When he asked people in his research for this play if they considered themselves northern, he said they all did.  When asked how they defined 'northerness', they seemed to hestitate and then suggest it was their capacity to deal with the rain or cold and deal with it with humour:  'We don't like umbrellas, up here.  We just put our hoods up.'

Mr. Stephens, who now lives in London, He claims:  'I think something has happened with kindness in this country.  It seems that suspicion and mockery are the default position in this county.  Kindness has, in a way that has taken me completely by suprise, become a politically default position.' 

 The current play shifts around the North from the high streets of Doncaster and Blackpool, and the farms of Ulverston and the shut-down shops and pubs of Warrington and Durham to Cheshire Plains and the foothills of the Lake Districts and the Yorkshire Dales.  Warrington and Durham he writes:  'shops and bars heaving under the weight of half a decade of austerity.'


Bill Bryson commenting in 'The Road to Little Dribbling' wrote about a Council's lack of funds to afford it to maintain a shrub planter and made a curious comparison with Durham Cathedral:  'Now I'm no expert on the matter, but I am pretty sure that we are a lot richer today than we were in the eleventh century, and yet back then they could find the resources to build something as splendid and eternal as Durham Cathedral an today we can't afford to keep six shrubs in a planter.'

Today we are better at tearing things down than in maintaining things. As when during the time of the last Labour government he had a mad scheme to set up the Pathfinder Initiative to tear down 400,000 homes, mostly Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses, in the north of England - see Bryson.

Bill Bryson can see this decline acutely because he can view it in relief and observe the changes after coming in from the States after being abroad.  Stephen Simon can come back to the North from London and spot 'the seen but unnoticed' features of what's going on in the North. 

The play struggles with the hyper-aspects of everyday life: a middle aged woman has a stroke and dies reaching for a bottle of vodka in a supermarket; a married man attempts to accomplish a three-some; a insecure student tries to please hie older boyfriend; a single mum tussles with the father of her baby.  The roundhouse stage struggles to fit-in these competing elements, and it just about manages to encompass the performances.

******************

  

HYMN to the NORTH

by Jarvis Cocker

Our Father who art down in the pub

Our Mother doing the washing up

Well that was then, an this is now

So you better listen up

Factories lia empty

Manuafacting emptiness

Life still needs to be filled none the less

So go and find something to love

But just promise me this one thing, yes

Please stay in sight of the mainland

I always know you've got to go

I don't want you to go

So before you go, there's just one thing you ought to know, yeah

there's just one thing you ought to know

there's just one thing you ought to know

there's just one thing

just one thing

You can fill your life with love

You can fill your life with hope

You can fill you life with food and drink or whatever floats your boat

I'll be be singing you this song 

There's a million things in store for you just beyond the horizon

But please stay in sight of the mainland

So stay in sight of the mainland

You're wiser than I'll ever be

You're beautiful smart, so funny

You fill my heart, you fill my dreams 

And my only hope is you succeed

my only hope is you succeed

 my only hope is you succeed

you're my only hope

you're my only hope 

 you're my only hope

So please 

Please
Please
Please
Please

Trust and believe

In you and me

Northern lights will guide you home

Northern lives just like you're own

Northern rain turning into a flood 

But Don't forget your northern blood

Do never forget your northern blood

And please stay in sight of the mainland

Yeah please stay in sight of the mainland

Pease stay in touch with me

In this contactless society

Anywhere that you may be

The northern star leads back to me
Yeah the northern star leads back to me

 Yeah the northern star leads back to me

 Yeah the northern star leads back to me

You're my northern star

*******************************

Helen is a feminist who holds beliefs based on basic biology

Backing Helen Steel

Letter

Cath Bann, Rikki Blue, Beatrix Campbell, Kate Evans, Simon Fairlie, Peter Le Mare, Rebecca Lush, Dave Morris, Diana Shelley, Theo Simon, Jo Wilding and 363 others

Last weekend [10–13 May], Helen Steel was forced off a protest walk across moors at a camp organised by the Land Justice Network. This happened not because of anything that Helen had done or said at the actual camp, but because individuals objected to views she had previously expressed regarding the impact of gender identity theory on women’s rights. She was told that a decision had been made prior to the camp starting that she would not be welcome.

Although Helen had been at the camp from the first day, she was only told she wasn’t welcome after the ‘action’ ramble had left the camp – leaving her to walk back across the moor alone. Fortunately two comrades walked in solidarity with her, one of them (like Helen) a founder member of the Land Justice Network.

Whether calculated or not, the impact of this treatment was to give a very public and demeaning punishment to someone who has voiced opinions which differ from those of the activists who inflicted it.

None of the small subset of the organisers who were involved in making this decision were prepared to either publicly explain themselves or to give Helen a right of response.

There were others on the site who shared opinions similar to Helen’s who were not asked to leave.

The claimed justification for treating Helen so shabbily was that she is a hateful transphobic bigot. We do not believe that Helen is a bigot.

Helen is a feminist who holds beliefs based on basic biology, that humans are a dimorphic species and it is not possible to biologically change sex. Her view prioritises objective facts above personal subjective feelings when looking at how we should try to change society and dismantle oppressive social constructs such as gender stereotypes.

This was the third time that Helen has been threatened or evicted from political events in this way and others have received similar treatment.

The idea that questioning gender identity theory amounts to bigotry and ‘hatred’ of trans people is justifying the exclusion of people from the movement. The effect of this is that many are afraid to express an opinion on the issue or even to ask any questions about it, and the end result is that most do not understand different perspectives on the issue.

Progressive movements are supposed to work on the basis of mass participation; it is only through the honest exchange of views and varied life experiences that we are able to understand the implications of power dynamics, policies and laws and able to ensure that everyone’s rights are protected.

It is out of order to single out one individual to be excommunicated, hounded, physically assaulted and humiliated for views which many other progressive people in our radical networks share. No comrade deserves to be treated so shabbily, much less comrades whose commitment to social justice is undoubted and who have suffered so many attacks from both corporate and state power.

This has to stop. It is time to make up your mind. Do you really think Helen Steel is a bigot?

Even if we disagree with some of her views, wouldn’t you agree that her motivation is not hatred, but her experiences of sexism and wanting to dismantle it?

Maybe you need to look into the issues and do some reading and thinking before you can decide. Fair enough. But now is the time to do this.

As we’ve said many times before – an attack on one is an attack on all.

If you don’t think Helen is a bigot then you must acknowledge that the way she is being treated by people in our movement is wrong.

We need to talk about this. It is time to speak up.
www.tinyurl.com/peacenews3272

Editor Response: 

PN did ask the Land Justice Network for a response, but none had been received by the time of going to press.

Review: Transsexuals vs Cocks in Frocks?

 by Les May

 _________________________________________________________________________

 "Shit Wigs and Steroids: Anarchism's (and the left's) Tolerance of Delusion" 

 'BOOKFAIRS & BULLSHIT'

This booklet is an A5 size 24-page critique of identity politics which challenges what it sees as the dominant politics of a 'wannabe' London based elite who are setting themselves up as a mouthpiece for current anarchist thought in the UK.  It claims to be rooted in a northern working-class perspective based on anti-authoritatianism.  It is a collective project that questions what it sees as the 'bogus claims of the transgender headcases' ; it entitles itself under the e-mail address:  newoffensive01@gmail.com

 Price £2 including postage & packing.

_______________________________________________________________________

I WAS asked to review this booklet by someone who had erroneously been identified as the author.  When this came to the attention of the real author he initiated contact with the supposed author, which led to me receiving a review copy.  Any opinions in this review are entirely my own and should not be attributed to anyone else.

Reviewing this booklet is not easy.  It is difficult to discern a linear sequence and it can be read in a number of different ways.  At one level it is one episode of an anarchist soap opera in which the horny handed sons of toil from the gritty north take on the effete, never done a proper day’s work in their lives, London scribblers and their acolytes.  The title says it all ‘Shit Wigs and Steroids. Anarchism’s and the left’s Tolerance of Delusion.  Bookfairs & Bullshit’.

Eager to wash anarchism’s dirty washing in public we get three pages, or should that be six pages, I said it was difficult to discern a linear sequence, of ‘What Happened at the Liverpool ‘Anarchist’ Bookfair 2018’.  Certainly nothing for the bookfair organisers to be proud of.  At this point you realise that the author’s way of expressing things is, shall we say, OTT.  Here’s a sample ‘… his gang of ponces have supported violence against women through attempting to stop free speech in a public environment’.  So far as I am concerned their ‘crime’ is nothing to do with violence against women, it is attempting to stifle debate on transgender issues.  At this point I began to wonder if the author had swallowed the whole of the feminist lexicon.  Here’s another sample which is the title of a booklet the author encourages us to read, ‘Gender is not an Identity, it is a Tool of Patriarchy a Feminist View of Gender Identity Politics’.  Patriarchy, Feminist, Gender all in one sentence, pass me the sick bag please!

Usually when I read this sort of stuff I assume the writer is what I call one of ‘The Leg Over Brigade’, i.e. a man who spouts feminist pleasing language in the hope of being viewed favourably in the amorous stakes.  I don’t think this is the case here, the author seems to genuinely believe what he is writing and I doubt that his overuse of the slang terms for female genetalia as descriptions for people who views he disagrees with, will endear him to many feminists.

Anarchism he says ‘has pretty much become a wendy house for children to play in’.  He means of course the ‘London effete’ version of anarchism and lays at its door ‘authoritarian behaviour, censorship, bullying and (yawn) misogyny’.  These charges are not unique to anarchism, ‘the Left’ is riddled with similar exponents.  ‘The transgender arguments are at best nonsense, at worst (yawn) misogynistic, indulgent and delusional’, he tells us.  Well that’s a point of view, an opinion, an assertion.  This is anger talking.

But if you first strip away the anger, then all of the feminist rhetoric, you realise he has a point, you’ve just got to unearth it.

What this booklet is all about is the proposed changes to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act (GRA) which could move away from medical assessment to ‘self certifying’, and about the people who refuse to engage in discussion about the implications of such a change and want to bully the rest of society into accepting it without question.

I’ve written previously about what I see as the absurdity of a man with a full set of wedding tackle being allowed to claim he is a woman and be housed in a women’s prison, the ‘Cocks in Frocks’ syndrome as the author rather nicely puts it.

What I had not considered is how the 5000 transexual women for whom the 2004 GRA was created, might view self certifying.  It’s an interesting perspective.  The rational, understanding, empathetic way the 14 contributors to this piece have structured their argument and their recognition that whilst it is women who will be most affected, changes to the GRA will affect the whole of society, is an example of how this debate should be conducted.

I found this so striking that I was initially tempted to quote it in full.  I won’t; you’ll have to get hold of a copy of the booklet and read it for yourself. Significantly some of the contributors to this are older women who ‘transitioned’ up to 50 years ago.  Almost all the noise comes from those of university age,

Much of the author’s anger is directed at the politicisation of identity, of irrelevant lifestyle choices, of ‘Look at me, me, me I’m non-binary’ or the way that some people portray individual decisions as somehow taking a radical stance, and think we should all take notice. I’m inclined to agree.  My wife, my sister, my sisters-in-law, my daughters, my granddaughters, couldn’t care less. 

*********** 

An Opportunity for Feminists to Speak Out

by Les May

TODAY the ‘i’ newspaper carried an item which read;

‘Cleaners at HM Revenue and Customs offices are to stage a 48 hour strike.  Members of the Public and Commercial Services union at ISS in Bootle and Liverpool will walk out on 15 and 16 July.  The union wants a £10 an hour minimum and terms and conditions equivalent to other HMRC staff’. (my emphasis)

Many feminists focus only upon any differences in the pay received by men and women.   They want those to be removed but the hierarchies within groups to remain.  That includes hierarchical differences in terms and conditions.

What the cleaners are looking for is equivalence with HMRC staff in the terms of leave and sick pay.   No doubt many of them will be women, perhaps a majority. Is this going to be another case like that of Asia Bibi where the usually vocal feminists remain silent?

https://www.pcs.org.uk/news/iss-cleaners-vote-for-strike-action

I would like to see it mandatory for all employees of a company or organisation to have the same terms and conditions of employment.   If more unions press for this the Labour party may be persuaded to adopt it as something to appear in the next manifesto.

************

May Day Feminists' Fall-Out

Report from Freedom Press:

London: TERFs crash Mayday march

 

News, May 1st

 

Today in London, a group of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) attempted to join the Mayday march with a transphobic banner.

After being challenged by the London Anti-Fascist Assembly (LAFA) and other members of the parade together with two members from Edinburgh Antifa,  the TERFs then called the march stewards who also agreed that their group and their transphobic message was not welcome. LAFA and the march stewards then removed the TERFs from the demo. The TERFs then called the police. Police Liaison officers turned up and the TERF group spoke with them. Cops initially asked the folks to leave the march but the march stewards stepped in to explain that the TERFs were causing the problems. It comes as no surprise that the TERFs were not then asked by the cops to leave, but the stewards were then able to peacefully convince the TERFs that they should leave.
LAFA said in their statement:
” A group of TERFs turned up at the May Day march in London, yelled abuse at a bloc of feminists and sex workers and briefly unfurled this banner.
Comrades from LAFA, AFN groups including Edinburgh Antifa and friends on the demo including queer and trans comrades peacefully stood in front of the banner. The TERFs responded by taking our pictures and attacking us however we continued to hold our ground and resist peacefully. They yelled “male violence” at us despite our group including people of many genders and yelled “racist” at us despite our group including black people, Asians and latinx. mino 

The Terfs called the march stewards on us, telling us they’d remove us but instead the stewards took our side. The march was stewarded mainly by Turkish and Kurdish leftists who’ve seen us at many of their demonstrations and today they responded by showing solidarity with us. The terfs then called the police on us. The police tried to remove us but the march stewards explained to them it was the Terfs who were causing the problems. Together with the stewards including older trade unionists and Kurdish and Turkish comrades we were able to collectively and peacefully remove the Terfs from the demonstration.

TERFs claim to be feminists but they receive funding from right wing extremists, Christian fundamentalists and wealthy individuals linked to pro life organisations. Their aim is to divide and weaken the feminist movement and to divide and weaken the working class. TERFs act in the interests of the bosses and the patriarchy, they are not our comrades, they are enemies of our class and the anti fascist movement and we will continue to confront them wherever we find them.”

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists are no strangers to calling the cops on transgender folk, and today showed that they will do so even when there are other marginalised groups and individuals present. There were “organisations representing Turkish, Kurdish, Chilean, Colombian, Peruvian, Brazilian, Portuguese, West Indian, Sri Lankan, Indian, Pakistani, Bangla Deshi, Kashmiri, Cypriot, Tamil, Iraqi, Iranian, Irish, South African, Nigerian migrant workers & communities plus many other trade union & community organisations.”

UPDATE 3/05/2019
After the Mayday incident, the TERFs proceeded to spread a claim that one of LAFA members racially abused a black woman by using the n-word against her.  A video in proof of this claim was produced.

Since this claim is doing rounds online, we would like to clarify some things.
The video’s audio is very unclear.

A person who holds a degree in linguistics and works full time in the field of morpho-syntaction had run it through the  PRAAT software,  through the spectogram and analysed the formants.  This returned the result that the person accused said “fucking bigot”, and not the n-word. A nasal “n” sound is most similar to vowels and does not show up on the spectogram like the bilabial “b” did. The woman at the video is also a Spanish speaker and does not pronounce the “t” at the end of the word.

Towards the end of the video the black woman says “called me a n*****, called me a n*****”. That’s not the Spanish speaking woman and there are clear accent differences.

The fact that the woman in question said “fucking bigot” and not the n-word was confirmed by several witnesses.

What’s more, the TERFs keep insisting that the alleged abuser is a white man. Let’s clarify this too. She is a cis woman. A woman of colour for that matter, and an active member of several groups. To call her a man for publicity purposes is shameful to say the least.

************

Emperor's New Gender & Liverpool Leaflet

Left click on above leaflet to get clear image.
Last April the above leaflet got a lad thrown out of the Anarchist Liverpool Book fair for distributing it.  Readers must make their own judgement about the issues and intricacies of gender politics.  British Anarchists these days are fragile plants who can't cope with criticism even when it is badly written and poorly produced as above.  Northern Voices stands up for free speech and doesn't take sides in this knock-about stuff.  Life is hard enough without having to obsess about all this trivia with the drama Queens of anarchism.

Another Anarchist Bookfair Drama in Manchester

by Brian Bamford

JUST beyond  the wrestling crowds of the Manchester Xmas Markets and the site of the current play 'The Producers' featuring 'Springtime for Hitler' at the Royal Exchange, in down town Salford on Saturday the 1st, December another knock-about farce took place seemingly provoked by a bunch of political drama-Queens at the Manchester & Salford Anarchist Bookfair.

Based on the info on the Twitter, the website MUMSNET at around teatime on the night of the Manchester Bookfair, set up a thread which opened with the following:

Reports that Helen Steel and another woman were surrounded and physically dragged out of (another) anarchist bookfair for wrongthink

Since the night of the Manchester 'anarchist' bookfair not much else has been in evidence explaining why Helen Steel and the other woman were excluded from this event.  Northern Voices approached the bookfair organisers, and others questioned the Partisan Collective, the managers of the bookfair venue for an explanation, but answers came there none.  What we know of what happened comes mostly from comments on Twitter and MUMSNET.

This year's incident in Manchester follows the series of conflicts at bookfairs that started at the London Anarchist Bookfair in October 2017, when a dispute ensued between certain transexuals and some feminists over the distribution of leaflets criticising proposals in the new legislation on the Gender Recognition Act.  During that case Helen Steel somehow became involved arguing for free speech and the right to debate the issues.

Since that time Helen Steel and others who think like her have been labeled 'TERF's', and it is understood that the Manchester venue 'The Partisan' does not allow space for TERF's.

After the disaster of the 2017 London Bookfair and the later conflicts at other 'anarchist' bookfair's like Manchester, Milan Rai the editor of Peace News wrote an editorial in the December-January 2018 issue entitled 'How to destroy our own movements':
'Activists need to find better ways to struggle with each other and to fight with each other, argues Milan Rai

"People ask me how we would defend the bookfair from a fascist attack, but I’m not worried about them out there. I worry about what we might do to each other in here." – one of the organisers of the London Anarchist Bookfair, on 28 October.
'A few hours later, a group of trans rights activists stopped some feminists handing out leaflets that they found oppressive to trans women. A nontrans woman, Helen Steel, objected to this censorship. 'About 30 trans rights activists then surrounded Helen Steel and shouted at her for having stood up for the leafleters.
'The confrontation went on for a long time. Some people (including members of the bookfair collective) surrounded Helen Steel to protect her from possible assault. An unknown person then tripped the fire alarm, leading to an evacuation of the building.'

The consequences of this conflict between trans-rights activists and feminists still prevails as was evident in Manchester earlier this month.  But it is a symptom of a wider problem of the inability of the broader left to communicate owing to a righteous arrogance which has developed within its ranks.  It is inevitably that today an ideology which roots itself in an orthodoxies such as political correctness and identity politics was bound to suffer from the inconsistencies of its own contradictions.

***********

The Silent Sisterhood

by Les May

Asia Bibi

THERE’s a pub in Slaithwaite, or ‘Slawit’ as the locals call it, by the name of ‘The Silent Woman’. I imagine it has done a roaring trade recently as all feminist journalists and politicians hide there in case someone should chance to raise with them the case of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who has fallen foul of Pakistan’s draconian, but vague, blasphemy laws.

A year ago the Twitterati were obsessing about the self promoting #MeToo movement; Harriet Harman was in full flow demanding anonymous ‘hot lines’ so that supposed male miscreants could be ‘outed’ and Clive Lewis was being pilloried by MPs Stella Creasy, Yvette Cooper, Jess Phillips, Mims Davies, Justine Greening and Guardian journalist Nadia Khomami, about something he said, which none of them actually witnessed.   More recently Boris Johnson was being accused of ‘Islamophobia’ for a comment about some women wearing burkas.

So what have this self righteous bunch had to say about the Asia Bibi case?  Not a lot it would seem.  Whilst they are keen to promote the idea that western women are living in fear of walking down the street in case some man wolf whistles at them, makes some tasteless remark or just says something they don’t like, a poor Pakistani woman who has just had her sentence overturned after eight years in jail with the prospect of death by hanging to look forward to, has been abandoned to her fate by these supposed liberals.

If anyone in this world is a victim it is Asia Bibi.  She picked up a drinking cup belonging to a Muslim woman and was accused of ‘polluting’ it simply by being a Christian woman and hence ‘unclean’.  An argument followed and lead to her being accused of blasphemy.   First she was beaten up by a mob which broke into her house, then she was charged with blasphemy, found guilty and sentenced to death.   This was upheld by a higher court.   Last week this sentence was overturned by the Pakistan Supreme Court which said the women who had made the accusations against her were lying.

What followed was that mobs demanding she be hanged rioted for several days doing what has been claimed to be £900 million of damage.  Imran Khan, the prime minister, struck a deal with the rioters that she would no be allowed to leave the country until the verdict had been ‘reviewed’.  Forcing her to stay in a country where tens of thousands of people want to kill her is inhumane.  Her lawyer has left the country in fear of his life.

I am normally very reluctant to resort to the word ‘racism’ to describe someone’s attitudes or beliefs, but I cannot help noticing that Asia Bibi is a poor, brown, ‘asian’ woman and the women who do the shouting about ‘misogyny’ are affluent, white and western.

The failure of these women to use their positions to draw the attention of the British public to Asia Bibi’s plight is difficult to explain unless they simply do not care, don’t think it will raise their profile in circles which will help them in their career or are afraid that they will be accused of ‘Islamophobia’.

There is one bit of good news. Heywood and Middleton MP Liz McInnes has written to the Minister of State, Mark Field, about this case and asked him to encourage his colleagues at the Home Office to consider the religious elements of this matter before making decisions on asylum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Bibi_blasphemy_case