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03/10/2006: "The Red and the Pink"

My old comrade Bat draws my attention to George Galloway's intriguing interview with the Pink News. In view of the extensive left-wing criticism of Respect's apparent lack of enthusiasm for gay equality, it's quite reassuring to see Galloway take a stand on this, albeit a rather equivocal one.

The Respect coalition, however, does not emerge quite so well. What are we to make of GG's comment that "we don't bind a Muslim candidate in Yorkshire to the explicitly socialist parts of our programme"? If Respect candidates aren't bound to the party's manifesto, then why should I want to vote for them? Is the coalition just an ad hoc alliance for the duration of the occupation of Iraq/Afghanistan? Because, based on this interview, it would certainly seem that a commitment to ending the occupation is just about the only non-negotiable issue for Respect. Certainly, as GG makes explicit, there is nothing close to consensus on fiscal policy: "Many of them [Respect candidates] are small business people and wouldn't describe themselves as socialists and are not bound to accept it. And the same goes for other issues including tax and these issues".

But it is surely on gay rights that the CPGB's allegation of opportunism rings most true.

Long a central plank of left-wing policy, this has been quite deliberately cast aside by the Respect leadership, a stance that reached its culmination when the rank & file administered a sound kicking to their leaders at Conference last year for their shameful refusal to include a commitment to gay rights in the manifesto.

Still, though, the Respect website contains no items dealing explicitly with homophobia or discrimination against gays, lesbians and bisexuals - despite hundreds of items dealing with all manner of issues, including quite a few on the 'Mohammad cartoons', which were not of course actually published in the UK.

All of which might be argued as regretable but necessary in an arena where socialists & Muslims are seeking common ground. Altogether more peculiar is the recent near-silence of the SWP - far and away the largest socialist bloc in Respect - on these issues. The only items in Socialist Worker dealing primarily with gay rights this year have been (i) discussing 'Brokeback Mountain' (fair enough, but not, I reckon, as important as the aforementioned issues) and (ii) Noel Halifax's series on homosexuality and socialism.

The final instalment of the latter contains a rather astonishing insight into the SWP's current approach to gay rights, and it's worth quoting at length:

The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement of today is very different from the revolutionary if confused movement of the 1970s. Out goes revolution – in comes Ikea and civil partnerships. Stonewall is the biggest and most prominent gay organisation in Britain today. It is sponsoring a “workplace conference” to be held on 16 March that focuses on themes such as “how building an inclusive environment is good for business”. Guest speakers come from the Royal Navy, IBM and Barclays Bank.

If the mainstream of the gay movement is embracing capitalism and consumerism, on the left we see remnants from the radical past that remember some of that period’s tactics, but forget most of its lessons or context.

OutRage! for example has continued the tradition of shocking stunts and publicity geared events – but without the wider understanding.

It was never the case, for instance, that gay activists in the 1970s (apart from the separatists) refused to support or take part in struggles unless the organisations behind them backed gay rights. If we had taken such an approach, there would have been nothing for us to join or support.

Welcoming arms did not greet the arrival of gay activists on picket lines, demonstrations and such like in the 1970s.

Workers were often homophobic and had to be argued with. We had to fight inside unions to change their policies and practices. But that can only be done when you fight together against the common enemy.

The often used but rarely understood phrase “unconditional but critical support” means supporting people who did not necessarily support you – and supporting them without any preconditions.

CND campaigns had links to the homophobic churches. The Vietnamese struggle had links to Stalinism. But both were supported by most gay activists, because they realised that the basis of any effective criticism had to be from within a common struggle.

Today the most widespread form of racism is Islamophobia and the most important anti-imperialist struggle that in the Middle East. Imperialism and Islamophobia need to be opposed without conditions being placed on those opposing them.

If the gay movement sees itself as just one more pressure group refusing to join in the wider struggle, it isolates itself from potential allies and abandons any wider struggle to transform society.

And this undermines the ability to fight effectively for gay liberation and change the ideas of those involved in the struggle.

The message, then, couldn't be clearer. Never mind the persecution of homosexuals in almost every country in the world; never mind that homophobic abuse is still acceptable in schools, workplaces & football grounds, long after racist abuse was rendered taboo; never mind that the law of this country continues to discriminate against same-sex couples in a manner that would never be permitted with regard to mixed-race couples. The SWP Politburo decrees that your struggle must take second place to the struggle against Islamophobia. And any gay person expressing conmcern about working with homophobic Muslim groups is abandoning the wider struggle to transform society.

As with Respect, I am fairly sure that this opportunistic abandonment of gay issues has alienated a fair few of the SWP's core support as well. But the leadership have clearly decided that they have wrung all the support from the 'gay community' that they ever will, and - much as Nu Labour did with its traditional socialist support - their needs & interests can be put on the back-burner while we court sexy new voters. For Blair it was middle income England; for the SWP/Respect, it's the fast-growing Muslim population. But unlike the Nu Labour 'reformers', who plausibly assumed that thjose to the left of Blair would continue voting for him for want of a valid alternative, gay voters do have alternatives. The Greens, the Lib Dems and even (spit) Nu Labour seem more willing at least to pay lip service to equal treatment for same sex couples.

A temporary alliance built on rough agreement about foreign policy, but absolutely no agreement on domestic economic or social issues, seems to me to have little future. More worrying for the SWP, though, should be this question: when the war ends, and the Muslim electorate moves on - who will be left of the Left?