Why Is The Left So Narrow-Minded?, by James Draper

Like many of my friends, I consider myself to be on the political Left, oppose our current foreign policy in the Middle East, and support Jeremy Corbyn’s Leadership of the Labour Party. However, very few of those friends also support withdrawal from the European Union, oppose modern feminism, or question the theory of anthropogenic global warming, and many are hostile to those who do. I often find that those claiming to be the liberal, diverse, progressive voices in Western politics are much more intolerant than their opponents.

Too many times, there has been an implication during and after the EU referendum debate that the 52 per cent who had voted Leave had been naïve, ignorant or racist, as if the Remain campaign had been uniquely free of dodgy statistics and of misleading information. Not only is this deeply insulting and patronising, but it does not reflect my personal experience. I was originally in favour of the EU. I loved the idea of nations trading and cooperating to find solutions to common problems. If I could have seen a glimmer of hope that the EU could reform, then I would have gladly voted Remain. But I could not keep deceiving myself. 

The EU has not guaranteed peace in Europe: it played a role in initiating the recent trouble in Ukraine. It is not a friend of the poor and vulnerable: it is heavily influenced by big banks and corporations, and has caused misery for the people of Greece. You do not have to be on the political Right to oppose it, as Tony Benn and Bob Crow demonstrated so brilliantly. Treating European immigrants more favourably than non-European immigrants is the real racist policy, and expecting the unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats in Brussels to change their ways is the real naïvety. My main principle against the European Union is also the reason why I oppose our foreign military interventions: I believe in independent nation states, and that the internal running of a country should be a matter for the people of that country to decide and no one else.

Whenever I reveal to people that I do not identify as a feminist, I am almost invariably met with looks of mingled incredulity and fury. “So you don’t believe in women’s rights?” is the usual response. Of course I do; I cannot think of a single person I know who does not wish for women to have the same legal rights as men. Nor does my opposition to feminism stem from misunderstanding the word; I have examined the modern Western feminist movement, but I cannot relate to it at all.

We hear all the time that women are paid less than men and oppressed by a “glass ceiling”. Men do on average earn more money than women and vastly outnumber women on corporate boards, but this is due to lifestyle choices and not discrimination. In 2000, sociologist Dr. Catherine Hakim published a paper on “preference theory”, which stated that while four in seven men in the UK were “work-centred”, only one in seven women was.

Generally, men work longer hours and take less time off work, while women prefer a work-life balance. Motherhood often plays a large role: if a woman takes time off work to have a baby, then that will inevitably have an impact on her progression in her career. It is also worth noting that the Equal Pay Act has prohibited paying men more than women for the same work since 1970, women now earn more than men under the age of 35 in the UK and the US, and longitudinal studies show a causal link between artificially increasing female representation on corporate boards though enforced gender quotas and decline in corporate financial performance. If feminism is about empowering women, why does it unnecessarily continue to present them as victims? I believe that talented women can succeed in the workplace without legislation that is deeply patronising towards women and discriminates against men.

In her launch speech for HeForShe, Emma Watson said, “Fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating.” I totally agree, but feminists themselves are responsible for this in many ways. For a start, look at the aims of HeForShe: to “engage men and boys as agents of change for the achievement of gender equality by encouraging them to take action against negative inequalities faced by women and girls.”

There appears to be no sense of recognition that men and boys can also often be victims of sex inequality, and no desire to rectify this. Examples include high male suicide rates, lack of support for male domestic violence victims, lower male life expectancy, male genital mutilation, victims of false rape allegations, underachievement of boys in schools, fathers denied reasonable access to their children after a divorce, and sex disparity in the sentencing of criminals. These are much more important issues than women on banknotes, female composers on an A-level music syllabus, and other thoroughly trivial matters which receive far more attention from mainstream feminists and exposure in the media. For the good of democracy, raising these issues in Parliament should not just be left to Philip Davies.

As I have not examined the scientific research into climate change far beyond the theories taught in science lessons and soundbites in the media, I do not feel qualified to take a firm stance for or against the theory of anthropogenic global warming. It therefore irritates me when other people, whose knowledge of the subject is no more intimate than mine, smugly pour scorn onto anyone who so much as questions the prevailing consensus on this issue.

There are many interesting points raised by the sceptics, many of whom are scientists. These include the political nature of the IPCC, the influence of solar activity on climate, the decrease in global temperature during the post war economic boom, the amount of money invested in climate science, and periods in history when temperatures were much warmer or cooler than today. Why are people so scared of debate? If we chose the wrong path, then the consequences would be disastrous either way. Major floods would occur, destroying infrastructure and livelihoods, or we would have sacrificed jobs and hampered international development for the sake of a mistaken dogma. Therefore, an open and honest debate is of the utmost importance.

I do not share a number of Corbyn’s perspectives. However, were I a Labour Party member, then my vote would go to him. I do not understand how Owen Smith’s Leadership would add value to Labour. Nearly all of his policies appear to be either identical to Corbyn’s, thereby rendering a change of Leadership pointless, or a blast back to the Blair days of Labour and the Tories battling for the alleged “centre ground”, in the process abandoning their principles and the people that they were supposed to represent. He claims to want to appeal to the general population and not just to Labour members, yet he shows no respect for the democratic will of the British people to leave the European Union, running the risk of losing more Labour voters to UKIP.

As for Corbyn, where I disagree with him, the fake Conservative Party tends to sing from the same hymn sheet. Where I agree with him, such as on renationalising the railways, on taking action against the housing crisis, on scrapping Trident, and on ending our series of catastrophic interventions in the Middle East, then his presence is a breath of fresh air in Parliament. Anyone who attended the Durham Miners’ Gala could have seen with their own eyes how much his ideas resonated with ordinary people. His opposition has reduced the Government to U-turns and ad hominem remarks many times this year. He has performed his role with admirable dignity, despite being showered with buckets of slime from all directions. Labour finally shows signs of rediscovering its principles. If only those on the opposite side of the House could do the same.

Our Historic Bloc: Gramsci, Corbyn, and the Labour Party, by Andrew Godsell

I do not know whether Jeremy Corbyn has read the writings of Antonio Gramsci.

In a way, it is not too significant. Progressive political movements are much bigger than the personalities of their leaders.

Regressive movements – such as the regimes of Benito Mussolini and Margaret Thatcher – exhalt the personality cult of the divine leader.

As somebody who has been a member of the Labour Party since 1984, I see the emergence of the mass movement, in which 600,000 people are currently voting in a Leadership Election, as a vital part of our history.

Jeremy Corbyn has sparked the vision of a Labour Party that will end austerity, and which will rebuild the National Health Service and the railways as public services, while redistributing power and wealth.

The era of neoliberalism, an economic policy that Thatcher and Ronald Reagan borrowed from the horrors of General Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, led to a particularly severe worldwide crisis of capitalism – it started in 2008, and it is still reverberating. 

Tony Blair and New Labour achieved a great deal in the early years of power, before the ethical foreign policy gave way to unconditional support for the USA’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while the pledge to abolish the House of Lords withered away as MPs focussed on fiddling their expenses claims.

But Blair’s Labour did not challenge the basis of the power structure in Britain. Now we have a Labour Party that has a choice.

It looks likely that Corbyn, an MP since 1983, with a strong record of support for the working class, trade unions, and internationalism, will be re-elected Leader.

The alternative is Owen Smith, a man who trivialises women and people who struggle with mental health issues, while his background career with Pfizer, a private drugs company, undermines the Labour commitment to the NHS. 

Smith is an unsatisfactory figurehead for 171 members of the Parliamentary Labour Party, desperately clinging to the questionable way they used to do things, and at odds with the 60 per cent of the membership who elected Corbyn a year ago. 

So where does Gramsci fit in with this? 

I first became aware of the Italian politician, theorist, and prisoner of the Mussolini government, around the time that I joined the Labour Party. 

Gramsci’s name often appeared in the pages of Marxism Today and the New Left Review, magazines that I would read alongside the Labour Party’s New Socialist. 

During the 1980s, I read several collections of Gramsci’s writings, including the Prison Notebooks, plus a biography, and analysis of his thought. 

Gramsci’s central ideas include hegemony, the system of beliefs by which a ruling class asserts and reinforces its position. 

Gramsci advocated ways that the working class could counter hegemony, by creating its own ideology, and by building a movement that became a historic bloc, ready to take power and change society.

Some of the most interesting passages in the Prison Notebooks have Gramsci writing about the nature of a political party, and how its history can be explained. 

This has greatly influenced my book Why Not Trust the Conservatives? 

Gramsci occasionally touched upon the specifics of British politics, praising the strength of the trade unions, but he was sceptical about the potential of the Labour Party in his era. 

He developed the idea of Ceasarism, whereby a political crisis can lead to power being seized by a heroic personality. 

The crisis can, however, lead in parliamentary systems to a compromise, with Gramsci stating that:

“The ‘Labour’ governments of MacDonald were to a certain degree solutions of this kind, and the degree of Ceasarism increased when the government was formed which had MacDonald as its head and a Conservative majority.”

From his prison cell, with limited access to information about the outside world, Gramsci immediately saw the significance of the formation of the so-called National Government in 1931. 

Half a century later, Stuart Hall, writing in Marxism Today, saw an echo of this in the formation of the Social Democratic Party, as a group of Labour MPs defected to set up a centre grouping in Parliament, to oppose Thatcherism without challenging capitalism.

Now we hear rumours that the re-election of Corbyn as Leader will prompt many Labour MPs, returned alongside him in the 2015 General Election, to seek a repeat of the SDP betrayal.

It appears they may intend a request to the Speaker of the House of Commons to be recognised as a separate Opposition party, presumably without offering to seek a new mandate through by-elections – a precedent unexpectedly set by the two Conservative MPs who defected to UKIP in 2014. 

Unfortunately, at this point in writing the piece, I learned that I had been suspended from the Labour Party, and deprived of a vote in the Leadership Election, due to unsubstantiated allegations about comments on Twitter. 

Thousands of other loyal comrades are also suspended. 

My battle to reverse the suspension, imposed by a right-wing element on the National Executive Committee, continues as I resume writing about Gramsci.

I believe that this is just another example of the need for Labour to be a mass Socialist party, committed to changing Britain, rather than an echo of Blair’s New Labour. 

A party united around radical policies, with a membership four times that of the Conservatives, can win the next General Election. 

I have spoken about the potential of Jeremy Corbyn, as a figurehead for a re-energised Labour Party, at several political meetings, including my seconding an ultimately successful nomination of Corbyn by Southampton Test Constituency Labour Party last year. 

A few months ago, John McDonnell, Corbyn’s left hand man, addressed a packed Labour meeting in Southampton. 

One of the pre-submitted questions answered by McDonnell came from me: 

With the Labour Party having returned a reduced number of MPs at each of the last four General Elections, do you believe we will make the massive gains required to win a majority next time? Would joint work with other parties, on issues such as the NHS Reinstatement Bill and scrapping Trident, help us to replace the Tories with the progressive government the British people deserve? 

In reply, McDonnell said that Labour had been working with other parties to oppose, and several times defeat, the Conservatives in Parliament in recent months. 

On the other hand, he did not favour a formal electoral pact, believing that the strength of Labour can enable it to win power at the next Election. 

Since then the rebellion against Corbyn in the Parliamentary Labour Party has reduced its effectiveness. 

There has been increasing debate among the Left about some sort of progressive alliance between Labour, the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru, and the Green Party, aimed at defeating the Tories, and I support this.

I have never believed that the Labour Party had a monopoly on left-wing truth, and I see keeping the Tories out of power as more of a priority than returning a majority Labour government.

The SNP and the Greens have enjoyed major increases in their vote, and membership, in the last few years, because they offer something different to established Westminster politics, and give people hope. 

Labour, led by Corbyn, and with McDonnell leading the fight against austerity, can increasingly co-operate with this upsurge in progressive politics. 

As I approach the end of this piece, I have just read a profile of Corbyn, and his leadership campaign meetings, in The Guardian.

The author, Gary Younge, says:

“Corbyn talks about renationalising the railways, building more houses and reaching out to people with mental health problems. There is no talk of neoliberal globalisation, quoting of Gramsci, or appeals to intersectional thinking.”

Perhaps we could have some Gramsci quotes from Corbyn and his supporters, but the specific policy ideas we are developing are more important.

If Corbyn is re-elected Labour Leader, and if we regain power from the Tories, then our ideas can be put into practice on a national scale, making Britain a better place to live.

The media deride us as Corbynistas, but I am excited that we are forming a new Historic Bloc.

@AndrewGodsell