Could the return of hard-left political culture to Labour drive women members away? 

The British far left’s problem with women is researched, documented, supported by evidence and has launched a thousand feminist studies theses. Gerry Healy of the Workers’ Revolutionary party was accused of rape and sexual harassment by 26 women party members in 1985. His sect included Corin and Vanessa Redgrave. When Healy died in 1990, according to Nick Cohen writing in the Guardian, Ken Livingstone was on hand at the funeral to dismiss the attacks on women as lies spread by MI5 agents who wanted to ‘smash the organisation’.

Then there is the accusation of rape against ‘Comrade Delta’ in the Socialist Workers’ party by a woman member in 2010. Comrade Delta, a member of the SWP central committee, was ‘investigated’ by his fellow committee members, and the woman’s claim was dismissed. The case split the SWP down the middle.

The Socialist party, formerly the Militant Tendency, was famous for its negative attitudes towards women and ‘bourgeois feminism’. If you reduce all political questions down to the class struggle, then ‘women’s issues’ become a distraction from proper revolutionary activity. The far left, with its machismo, its fetishism of the industrial proletariat, and its workerism, has been no friend of women, or feminism, since Karl Marx fathered an illegitimate child with his housemaid Helene Demuth.

But what of the hard left, within the boundaries of the democratic socialist left? Here the story is more complex. Much of political culture is alienating to women, with unsocial hours, confrontational debating styles, drinking culture, and sexist attitudes, but this cannot be ascribed purely to the left. The hard left sits on what former Independent on Sunday political editor Jane Merrick has called the ‘spectrum of intimida-tion’.

Culture and attitudes can be just an oppressive inside the Tories (Road Trip) or Liberal Democrats (Chris Rennard). The macho culture in-side the parliamentary Labour party, with its late-night drinking in the Strangers’ Bar, and its trips to Soho karaoke bars. Local authority La-bour groups with deals done in male-only environments. The alacrity with which male ‘socialists’ in the Labour party have embraced Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton, backing the rich white guy over the candidate who could become America’s first woman president.

For Labour, the issue is more one of hypocrisy. Whatever lip service towards feminism is paid by earnest young men of the hard left, little of substance has changed since the days when Labour women made the tea and served the sandwiches. Women may occupy more leadership positions, as members of parliament and councillors, but they are still subjected to a different standard and more abuse because they are women.

Some on the hard left have made common cause with, and march alongside, Islamist groups. Meanwhile, the Muslim Women’s Network UK wrote to Jeremy Corbyn to demand an inquiry into ‘systematic misogyny displayed by significant numbers of Muslim male local councillors’. The response from Labour was dismissive to the point of brushing it under the carpet (or asking a woman to).

The Stop the War Coalition stirs up hideous verbal attacks on women Labour MPs for their votes in the House of Commons. Women Labour MPs are singled out for misogynistic attacks via social media. When a sister such as Jess Phillips speaks out on sexual harassment, she is inun-dated with hate material, filling her inbox and Twitter feed with bile.

Every advance has been hard fought. All-women shortlists were challenged in the courts in 1996 by two Labour party members under the Sex Discrimination Act, who won their case. In 1997, a record 101 Labour women were elected to parliament. It is obvious that all-women shortlists have a significant role to play, yet they are still deemed ‘controversial’.

So the Labour party has no reason to relax on its treatment of women. It has just elected two men to the leader and deputy leader positions, despite a range of brilliant women to choose from. Members in London chose the man over the woman to be mayoral candidate. Inside the con-stituency Labour parties, the influx of new, enthusiastic members and supporters has created some tensions with established members. The new-er members have not grown up with the debates around women’s rights and women’s representation, and there are examples of ‘culture clash’ between old and new.

The issue is that many of the new ‘hard left’, like the old ‘far left’, see the world in terms of black and white. Certainties abound. It is a politics of simple slogans and anyone who disagrees is a ‘Red Tory’. This is antipathetic to supportive dialogue and discussion. It goes against the supportive culture which abounds in most women’s organisations. Your local CLP is a far from safe space.

The real danger is not that Labour becomes a rape-cult like the WRP, or protects rapists, like the SWP, but that the low-level sexism and op-pression turns women away. That would mean that, while many brilliant women candidates will survive the selection process to become elected representatives, many more will not bother. We cannot afford to lose women’s talents and women’s voices, or for women to be a minority within Labour.

If Labour is ever to claw its way out of its current hole (27 per cent in the latest polls) it will be by enlisting the support of women. But women’s support is not unconditional. Women need to see a party that looks and sounds like them, and addresses their concerns. The Labour party, in all its bearded glory, talking to itself about Trident and the Falklands, has some way to go.

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Photo: Dominic Campbell