"Let’s build on the brilliant Jo Cox women’s programme with leadership schemes for gay, trans and BAME activists"

Excellent article by West Ham CLPer, Rohit K Dasgupta, on LabourList today. 

"This is an exciting time to be a Labour member. The latest Survation polls puts us ahead of the Tories. Members are enthused and confident about the upcoming local elections in May 2018 and, in between all of this, Jeremy Corbyn has announced the democracy review.

The review, launched formally in November, will be a consultation to address how members can be democratically involved in the party and its structure as we prepare to form the next government.

At the very outset this is a mammoth task but its overall goals towards accountability, transparency and representation of all party members is welcome. I was recently at the launch of the BAME Labour consultation in London where I made a plea: the party has made great strides towards equality issues but we need to do much more.

As an openly gay and Asian Labour activist I have often found myself in groups where one or another part of my identity is seen as problematic. Our identities are not mutually exclusive but rather they are inextricably linked. Whilst I have faced racism in mainstream queer spaces, I have often also had to face homophobia in “safe” BAME spaces. I think the current democracy review gives the party an opportunity to shine a lens on these issues.

I propose that this can be done in four ways.

Firstly, the party already has a long established mechanism of all-women’s shortlists to address the issue of female representation in Parliament. Most recently AWS has also been used successfully in the selection of council candidates.

Positive action is useful as an affirmative action to bridging inequalities. If we are able to do this for gender, I would suggest that the party also takes into consideration race and sexuality in selections. It would be useful to point out at that this should not equate to making sure a BAME candidate is included in the longlist of parliamentary selections, as is currently done. That is simply not enough and for many CLPs it is as a tick-box exercise. I was surprised at the recent council selections for Newham in east London, where I belong, when the regional party did not even collect demographics related to sexuality.

Whilst positive action is a good thing and can open the door, the real test would be for actual training and mentorship. Trade unions have come out in support of making sure more working class voices in parliament and providing mentoring. We need similar training and mentorship for LGBT and BAME candidates. The Jo Cox women in leadership program has shown what a good training program can do. It is time for Labour to invest in similar programs. How about a Bernie Grant leadership program or a Chris Smith leadership Program?

The only way we can make our politics and political leaders truly representative is by investing. This is a good time for the party to invest in its socialist societies and liberation groups and ensure they are producing the next generation of leaders from under-represented communities. I would also suggest that this kind of training should involve bursaries and grants for working class and disabled candidates to help them participate.

The third point is to make the change at the grassroots level. The party needs to ensure that liberation groups and officers are given more power. All CLPs now have a women’s officer who is a voting member of the executive. Why are the LGBT and BAME co-ordinators not given the same status within our CLP executive and given equal voting rights?

This would increase accountability and help grow liberation groups. For many of us LGBT and/or BAME young people, we are conditioned to believe that politics is not for us. This must be challenged and it has to come from the very bottom. Socialist societies can also play an important role in this. Through affiliation with CLPs they can make sure that local parties remain progressive, inclusive and committed to equalities. Affiliation will also encourage more members of under-represented groups get involved within.

This brings me to my final point, of how to ensure grassroots engagement is beneficial for liberation groups. Let’s make it easier for people to join them when they join Labour. If members indicate they are BAME, LGBT or disabled they should automatically be made members of these groups. It took me almost five years to understand how to join BAME Labour.

This should be a turning point for us in Labour. The Tory government is in a mess, we have a very large and active membership base whose power we need to harness in the next election. For a truly democratic, progressive and transparent voice; we must embrace intersectionality and give all liberation groups that extra push to make sure our party is representative of the plurality of its membership.

Dr Rohit K Dasgupta is a lecturer at Loughborough University. He was Labour’s candidate for East Hampshire in 2017. 

https://labourlist.org/2017/12/lets-build-on-the-brilliant-jo-cox-programme-with-leadership-schemes-for-gay-trans-and-bame-activists

More men called John run big companies than all women

Not that there is anything wrong with being called John (obviously) but this blatant sexism and inequality is a nonsense. It is also simply bad for business if you exclude half the world from the the potential pool of talent to recruit from. The picture above is from America. In the UK there are 17 of the top 100 FTSE Chief Executives called John and only 7 women bosses.

Who runs Britain? 51% of population are women. But women make up only...

A lot has been achieved in the last 100 years with regards to equality but there is still a long, long way to go.

The Church of England and Marriage

The Irony. Hat tip Stroppy on FaceBook

Take a stand - Defend equality

Over the course of time we get used to it.

(Guest Post) “It” being a methodical onslaught on privileges (such as free comprehensive health care), freedoms (such as the freedom to live with the ones you love where ever they may come from in the world even if you earn less than £18,600 per year) and our rights.

Sometime last year the Government issued their now (in?) famous “Red Tape Challenge”. As part of this, one of the proposals was to repeal the Equality act 2010.

This suggestion prompted a deluge of responses from across the Country to leave the act alone. The act was brought in at the end of the last Labour Government after a tortuous amount of consultation and involvement stretching over years.

The new coalition government in their infinite wisdom started swiftly to make the changes by simply failing to implement sections of the Act (protection over Dual discrimination) http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/equalities/equality-act/faq/ and watering it down where they could (the move away for the requirement to equality impact assess policy changes to simply paying “due regard” to equality).

However on the 15th May this year, it seems clear that it was time to focus on our rights. Issuing a double whammy of two sets of consultations on repealing two sections of the equality act, removing equality act questionnaires and reconsidering and reviewing the Public Sector Equality Duty the proposals have explicit intention to scream out:

· Tribunals have no place in preventing future discrimination

· People making allegations of discrimination have no place demanding that they should be protected from harassment

· People making allegations of discrimination have no business asking for answers from their respondents before their day in court

· The Public Sector Equality Duty has no place in making sure that unfair and discriminatory decisions don’t take place.

The organisation I work for has set up a website for people in Northamptonshire to respond to the proposals here [http://defendequality.co.uk] but if you live outside Northamptonshire you can learn more about the proposals and find a suggested set of words to complain to the Government Equalities Office on both enforcement@geo.gsi.gov.uk and thirdpartyharassment@geo.gsi.gov.uk

Don’t forget to write to your local MP. You have until 7th August 2012 to take action. If you don’t ... you very well might regret it.

(Guest post by Anjona Roy: photo Kelly)

A Man's a Man for A' That

Tonight (January 25) is the anniversary of the birth of Scottish Baird, Rabbie Burns and is the traditional time to mark his life with poetry, haggis and a glass (or three) of whisky. However, like many people I will be celebrating his life over the weekend. My Father was born and bred in Scotland and he loved to read Burns and recite out loud. While I must admit to being at times somewhat linguistically challenged at some of the poetry, I don't think anyone with any social conscious cannot fail to be moved at the simple beauty and meaning of his language in A Man's a Man for A'That and not understand its message of liberty, equality and universal human rights.

(It helps of course if you have a 18th Century Scots/ 21st Century English dictionary)

Hat tip "The Macalmans" check Youtube version for some "Notes for the Sasunnach and other strange folks" i.e dictionary of some of the more unusual words.

The Newham homophobe and the real Gestapo

It seems that former Councillor and religious fundamentalist Alan Craig has got bored with stirring up religious hatred over so called “Megamosques” and has now started picking on Gays and Lesbians. In an article published on his blog (and to its shame The Church of England Newspaper) he has compared Gay and Lesbians activists to Nazi, storm-troopers and to the Gestapo (Hitler’s secret Police).  He even uses the term Gaystapo.

Now, it is a free country and he is perfectly entitled to hold such medieval views on homosexuality no matter how abhorrent all right minded people think of them. But to accuse them of being Nazi's and Gaystapo is not only an unforgivable insult to the memory of the tens of thousands of gays who were gassed and murdered in Concentration camps during World War 2 (see picture above) but in the lead up to Remembrance Sunday it is also in my view a slur on British war dead.

Such as Squadron Leader Roger Bushell (left) who was part of “The Great Escape” and one of the 50 unarmed allied airman shot in cold blood by the real Gestapo - or British Special Operation Executive heroine Violette Szabo (right) who was brutally tortured by the Gestapo and later murdered in a Nazi death camp.

Nazi's and the Gestapo in particular were quite simply utterly vile and utterly evil monsters. To compare Gay activists with such psychopaths in order to score cheap political points is just repugnant. To compare them with the animals who murdered war time British heroes and heroines is a disgrace to their memory.

Craig thinks that his sort of Christianity in this country has a hard time. I can agree that sometimes people of faith are seen as easy targets for unnecessary mockery and ridicule. But as pointed out in the comments on his blog, no-one in recent history has been kicked to death in Britain just for being a Christian. While time and time again we see that Gay people are targeted, beaten and murdered just because of their sexuality. Craig doesn’t appear to care that publically denigrating Gays in such a way may result in further bloodshed. Since he must know that expressing his views in such ways will be counterproductive to his "cause" I am forced to conclude that this is actually all about Craig. He is just a self seeking publicist who will do anything, no matter how revolting, just in order to draw attention to himself.

On lighter note here is a link to the video I took of Craig when he was soundly defeated as a Newham Councillor and Mayoral candidate last year. The ordinary people of Newham showed him what they thought of his extremism and bigotry.