Tag: oppression

Women’s Safety Must Not Be a Tool for Racism

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (19.5.26) keeping-up the assault of the Left against the far-Right, following the previous Saturday’s excellent Palestine Solidarity/Stand Up To Racism demonstration in London, overwhelming the much-reduced far-Right “Unite the Nation” march called by the Islamophobe, Tommy Robinson. Plymouth has a range of fascist and racist organisation competing against each other for pride of place, pretending to demand protecting of women and children from refugee men whilst, in practice, working alongside white men with convictions for abuse. The Left is also in their sights, our charge of racism having a serious effect upon their credibility and support. We must not be complacent and must increase and deepen our efforts until they are off our streets. The next counter demonstration is next Monday.

Unedited version below, or expand the pic for the published version.

Women’s liberation would benefit men. Working class men, at least. The ability of the Bosses to pay women less than men for doing the same work, having the same or even more skills but being denigrated, denied recognition and  prevented from rising-up the management hierarchy, harms everyone…except the bosses. Unequal pay holds down the general pay-rate. Any excuse is used to hold down wages in order to increase profits, including ideas that women are not worth as much as men.

Women’s oppression, the consideration of women as less than men – weaker, more emotional and therefore fickle and untrustworthy – is increasing again in Britain. After a few decades of winning better women’s rights at work and at home, there’s now a push back. And misogyny is the hard end of this – male hatred of women – a political campaign for male supremacy overwhelming the online Manosphere and poisoning young men’s minds.

Sexism doesn’t make sense. If women had the same rights as men, men would be freed from the results of women’s oppression. If we broke the stereotypes assigned to gender roles we could be honest about our emotions, we could share responsibilities, mix our teams and, oh yes, increase the rate of pay for all, setting the bar at the highest common denominator, not the lowest.

Women in the UK still get paid on average of 18% below men’s pay rates for work of the same value. Trade unions still shout about this. The essential priority for campaigners for women’s rights is correctly focussed upon male coercion, sexual abuse and rape. It is estimated that up to 900,000 people across the country experience sexual assault each year, including attempted rape and penetration. Much has been done to strengthen laws against sexual violence and yet it is widespread, less than 3% of reported rapes ending up in a successful prosecution and punishment. 

Predatory abusive men have little to fear. One-in-three women in the UK experience an average of 7-years of domestic abuse at the hands of their partners, statistics that hasn’t changed for the past 50 years. Around 90% of rapes are committed by people known to the victim, often by someone who the survivor previously trusted or even loved. Rapists are usually friends, colleagues, clients, neighbours, family, partners or exes. 

Sexual abuse happens in every community. In England, where more than four out of five of the population are white-skinned, this means that the vast majority of sexual abusers are white men abusing white women. 

Yet a new campaign group, publicised by the Plymouth Herald, is calling for action against Black men. “Women Reclaim The Streets Plymouth” (WRTSP) is claiming that our streets have been made unsafe by immigrants seeking to abuse women. 

WRTSP states “We will feel safer on the Right than the Left always, with rising amounts of illegal undocumented men coming here on boats and the amounts of rapes and murders by these men We Stand (sic) together for closed borders and the illegal undocumented men send (sic) straight back.”

They have no evidence, and as such this is hate speech, a hate crime, promoting fear and racial hostility through the false claim that asylum seekers are responsible for a rising number of rapes. 

They wrongly raise the threat of “stranger danger” when women and children are most likely to be abused by someone known to them. Their propaganda is placing women and children at more risk, intentionally or not, implying that family and friends are always safe.

This outcry against asylum seekers and young refugee men as rapists is being fomented by organised fascists. The misogynists who hate women also hate Black people. The ultra-nationalists framing patriotism as white-supremacy are waving flags to intimidate ethnic minorities. The men in high-viz jackets waving Union jacks with the Reclaim the Streets group outside Theatre Royal last week have amongst them thugs convicted for violence against women. 

These racist groups are planning a series of local protests against refugees, starting next Monday. They threaten to hold more demonstrations outside our primary schools, claiming to “protect our children” and targeting local Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) as if they all house illegal refugees. Their sheer ignorance is jaw-dropping.

Far-right organisations are springing-up across the city, competing with each other for pole position as the most racist, the most patriotic. They plan to protest outside the Plymouth Courts at a hearing of Black men of a sexual attack. Yet all six cases of serious rape and abuse of women heard in Plymouth last year had no such protests outside in the cause of keeping women and children safe – all six were white men – no protests to keep us safe from them, was there?

Women’s safety must not be a tool for racism. Women and children are at risk from low wages, insecure housing, inadequate access to support and benefits as well as sexual abuse. Women are at risk from the sexism and misogyny in our general culture. Women’s sexist oppression and abuse cannot be defeated through the racist oppression and abuse of Black men. We must counter these racist demonstrations and honestly campaign for women’s liberation. 

For a Party of the Working Class

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (22.7.25). I found myself in the interesting position of not being able to write this as part of any official mainstream organisation. It is the rule of the Trade Union Congress that representatives can only support the Labour Party. And it is the general policy of lobby and campaign groups not to be directly associated with any political party. There’s a dilemma. A new party of the working class will need affiliates from the broad progressive movements. Campaigns will have to pin their political colours to their masts and produce a confederation tied to a set of principles not unlike organisations of the working class across Europe and beyond. It demands an ideological and constitutional change away from the cosy neutrality of post-war reformism. All that is over and gone. The need for a new working class party is the result of the end of the old order and norms.

The working class needs a new Party. The level of representation of working class interests in the UK Parliament is as low as that if the 1910’s. Multi-millionaire career politicians preside on all sides.

The working class – those of us wholly reliant on wages and/or top-up welfare benefits – number 2/3rds if the population – at least 40 million people in England & Wales. Parliamentary decisions, over spending policies and laws governing our behaviour and beliefs, are made in the interests of the super-wealthy and their corrupt capitalist system.

We, the majority, have little voice. Our political representatives have a basic salary of at least twice the average wage, and can take additional jobs kowtowing to the corporate lobbyists. They oppose the regulation of working conditions, wages, housing conditions and rents, health standards and utility costs. Their talk of freedom is of the individual right to take liberties on charges and levels of exploitation to maximise profits, not the freedom from poverty and oppression. And now, the support for Israel amidst genocide, and rearmament towards a third world war is linked with widespread funding of individual MPS by Israeli lobby groups.

These self-interested politicians hold the Houses. 

Starmer’s Labour (and Blair’s before that) place growth in profitability way above the eradication of deprivation. The highest utility costs in the western world and poorest State pension, attacks on the paltry incomes of people with disabilities, blaming migrant labour despite their gross levels of cheap labour and servitude for the middle classes – that’s not a party for workers.

The Tories, from Thatcher to Cameron, Johnson to Sunak, mercilessly plundered the British Exchequor to enrich and engorge the billionaire class at the expense of every public service and all the essential needs of workers, whilst cutting their own tax liabilities to a minimum. 

The Liberals, yellow Tories now useless, devoid of that one chance at coalition given the lessons of when they threw working class students into decades of severe debt, capped redundancy pay, privatised Royal Mail (look how that worked-out for jobs and public services) and forced through cuts to health and welfare to expedite the new Age of Austerity. Not on our side.

And Reform UK, another Party of and for the Establishment, lead and funded by multi-millionaires and supported by rabid right wing billionaires based in the USA and Russia. For Farage’s patriotism read representation of the ultra wealthy, tax cuts for the rich, full privatisation of the NHS with further cuts to the new dilapidated public services, and spend tax money on war instead whilst destroying democracy and dividing working class communities through rampant racism.

As for the Greens, their broad church approach suggests workers and socialists are included yet, in practice, when running a Council in Britain or part of a coalition in Europe, they act purely on behalf of capitalism and attack workers on strike, reneging even on environmental promises.

None of these Parties represent or even care about working people. In our fragmented and polarised society, those with money are looking after themselves and their own at the expense of the many.

A Party of and for the working class would ensure class principles of collective organisation and solidarity, challenging the vast inequalities so apparent across the UK today. Taking hold of the resources of the world’s 6th richest economy, a government placing need above profit could redistribute our wealth to benefit the vast majority. 

In this world of plenty there should be no poverty, and therefore no billionaires. The super-rich can be legally bound to pay their taxes, to cap their prices, and to produce for the common good. The principles of working class solidarity would end Austerity, fight racism and welcome refugees, oppose oppression of minorities, fund welfare instead of warfare and militarisation of society, and take urgent action on climate change.

This is no dream world. The proposal for a new working class Party is on the table, and across the country, enthusiasm for these policies has already found electoral support at or above voting preferences identifying Labour, the current party of Government.

Everywhere, workers are demanding change – real change. In the absence of a progressive left-wing party, workers are turning to Reform UK as a protest vote despite its obvious contradictions. But this acceptance of racism and division is the greatest threat to our future safety and security.

The unity of the working class has to be created by the working class, organised and combined. 

Whilst Corbyn and Sultana have broadcast the call for a new Party it is up to ordinary workers of all communities and occupations to make it happen and decide its purpose and policies. 

A working class party, interpreting and realising the socialist call in the 21st Century, is now an urgent necessity: a society formed from the efforts each person according to their abilities and providing to each according to their needs. It’s time!

Transphobia is a Threat to all who Seek Equality

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment article in the daily Plymouth Herald (22.4.25), opposing the Supreme Court (little new there) but feeling quite inadequate in expressing the pain and fear the Court cast over the Trans+ community, with shades of 51st State and an escalation of the ideological far-Right “anti-Woke” propaganda permeating everything and everywhere. How any socialist can condone any oppression of any minority is unfathomable. The contorted argument that oppressing Trans-women strengthens the rights of cis women is unconscionable. That socialists have to be Tribunes of the Oppressed at all times is unquestionable. Trans+ Rights Now!

The published article:

Women are still oppressed. On a global level, women suffer systemic abuse as second-to-fifth-class citizens or slaves, their burden of service denying choice, autonomy or agency. In Britain one-in-four women will experience an average of six-years of domestic abuse, with 2 women being killed by their partners or close relatives each week, sexual abuse overwhelmingly residing inside the family.
In the workplace, women are still not assured of equal pay and the low-pay across all care jobs is excused by the absurd caricature of the female sex as delicate and gentle, unfit for managerial roles and decision-making.
Women’s oppression is systemic, society maintaining values that demand men are outward, active and physical whilst women should be domesticated, passive and emotional. These absurd stereotypes damage us all and have long been challenged by feminists and disproved by our social experiences. Non-binary and Trans-people have always existed across all societies through all the ages.
The Supreme Court decision to decree that we are all defined by our birth genitalia is a serious set-back to women’s liberation from oppression. To limit sex-based protection to only those born “female” is an absolutist statement that denies the variance of biological characteristics in our species. It defies science. It is a ratcheting-up of State oppression not only of a small minority of humanity but all of us.
Any and all oppression limits workers’ rights and divide us one-against-the-other. Trade unionists in well-organised workplaces have long challenged sexism, opposing all oppression and demanding human rights for all. We oppose this legal change which empowers the most bigoted and reactionary beliefs and sentiments, all of which encompass misogyny.
Little wonder that it is the far-Right who have most loudly applauded the judgement, with a sudden outpouring of anti-Trans hatred.
It is a reactionary political judgement, no doubt pushed for by Starmer’s government and unworthy of any independent judiciary, but loudly applauded by right-wing politicians including Farage and Badenock. They stand with Hungary’s far-Right Prime Minister Viktor Orban who enshrined anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ constitution alongside Putin’s homophobic laws. They mirror the vicious bigotry of the fascist AfD Party in Germany. They emulate the politics of President Trump seeking to outlaw medical sex-change alongside his crusade against abortion rights.
In essence, the imposition of binary gender identity places women back into the repressive primary status as baby-makers and feeds the power of the male-supremacists. It restricts what control each of us has over our own bodies, not just in how we appear but which of our feelings are legitimate.
Human biology is non-binary. As any biologist will admit, humans have a variety of chromosome classifications: XX, XY, XXY XXYY and all manner of variation which is why, in science, sex isn’t classified as binary. Genitalia at birth can be ambiguous. You can’t have a binary classification system when there are more than two configurations! That’s why Trans-women are women!
Transphobia is a threat to all of us seeking equality and the end to oppression. Look back at the laws and social attitudes against homosexuality in the 1960’s, now recognisable as extreme prejudice. The damning of those of us with gender dysphoria will once again be condemned in time.
In the meantime, this Supreme Court ruling has reduced Trans+ rights in the UK, Trans people now unable to make equal pay claims and excluded from single-sex spaces that confirm their true identity.
Luckily, Trans+ people, trade unionists and most of the socialist left have risen to immediate protest against the ruling with tens of thousands on the streets last Saturday. This debate isn’t over, the fight for universal human rights continues.

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The Divide and Pride

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment in the daily Plymouth Herald (25.6.24) which cut-out all the references to the Pride LGBTQ+ links that I wrote about. My purpose was to promote Pride whilst linking the reason for both gender oppression and other oppressions as doing a job for the bosses. Perhaps the editor didn’t get it, or perhaps the subject was seen as too delicate, or perhaps even too political. I simply don’t know, but if there is such fear in mainstream publication, its worse than anything I wrote about.

Trade unions exist because of the power imbalance between business owners as employers, their managers and supervisory staff, and the the workers who produce the goods. It’s a universally experienced pyramid of power.

The tension that exists, exists because when workers combine together we can create a power equal to or greater than The Boss. When we are treated like slaves, paid subsistence and ordered to undertake gruelling and unhealthy work we can unite, stop working, go on strike and show the employer that nothing gets done without us. 

We have bargaining power because, when work stops, so does the profit for the business owner. 

Indeed the greatest threat to profit is workers united in defiance. So employers worldwide have learnt the myriad of ways to divide and rule the workforce, and indeed, our communities.

For so long as we fret over each others’ differences and seek individual superiority based upon personal characteristics, there can be not unity. Division and competition in the workforce only ever benefits the bosses and their bigoted courtiers.

The employing class uses oppression to hold down workers’ confidence to fight for our rights by dividing us each from the other. Women continue to be paid less than men for the same work, the false ideas of femininity as emotionally weaker and less able than men still fed into workplaces to stoke competition and division. Sexual and gender superiority are tools of control, encouraging violence and domestic abuse. 

Bosses also always promote nationalism, even losing profit to give workers time off to watch the national football team play in the final. Nationalism tells workers we have more in common with our bosses than we have with the same workers from another country or even an associated rival business – such jingoism is an essential prerequisite for putting us into uniforms and sending us to war. 

Racism is encouraged to boost individual self-importance and prevent unity in struggle. White skin in the workplace remains a symbol of entitlement over those of colour, said to be “different” or “other”.

The categories proposing superiority and inferiority have differing roots but are all linked. There is no hierarchy of oppression. Those seeking personal power continue to campaign to cancel human rights across the board. 

Sexual and gender superiority is heavily promoted. So to consider the demand for women’s liberation as vital whilst collaborating with the continued oppression of trans-women simply maintains the power that prejudice wields over everyone.

We each have unique characteristics. We appreciate the family and friends we love, accepting of a wide range of sexual preferences and gender identities. Whilst the ruling class continues to present only heterosexuality as “normal” if not “god given”, we love and care for our relatives and friends who are gay or lesbian, bisexual or abrosexual, aromantic or asexual, transsexual or Queer – the term reclaimed by the LGBTQ+ members who have redeemed it from its use as a homophobic put-down and excuse for violent attacks – but  non-heterosexual and straight-gender characteristics are still portrayed as outside “the norm”.

The shift in social attitudes and acceptance of differing gender identities has been fought for through generations of struggle, and continues to be challenged, especially in the workplace. Trade unions have had a key role to play in championing the right to determine and express ourselves without prejudice or oppression in the workplace. Unity is strength.

It is little wonder then, in this period of heightened political debate, that the racist, sexist, white-supremacist millionaire profiteers and business owners are pushing “anti-wokism” to win the votes from those who want to bolster themselves and the power of prejudice at the expense of others. 

Campaigns have challenged oppression and won time after time. The Capitalists learn to adapt to the general consensus, only to then create new divisions, new demons they can intimidate us with. They seek to incorporate and commodify everything we do, but will destroy anything they can’t control. A pertinent example is of the arms manufacturers who are trying to sponsor our schools and universities, campaigns and community activities. Their purpose is to normalise an inhuman culture of individual competition, social conflict and imperialist war all based upon pre-judgement of “The Other” as lesser, invalid or inhuman.

This week’s Pride celebrations, and the Pride Month of June offers a voice to all the oppressed locally and internationally, and offers a powerful wedge against prejudice in the workplace.

Trade unionists are Woke to the core! When at our best we not only fight for decent jobs but for decency in the workplace, organising always against all oppression.