UK is far from exempt: a woman is killed every three days – but the ‘opposition’ is fostering abuse, says black activist group
The Labour Black Socialists (LBS) group has issued a statement on the United Nations’ call for an international push against violence toward women:
LABOUR BLACK SOCIALISTS: GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE
The UN has called for 16 days of activism on violence against women. No society is exempt. Such violence can be psychological, physical and emotional and can happen in public or, as it does most often, in private. At any time more than 30% of women anywhere can be at risk.
Safety from violence is a human rights issue that is protected in international laws, conventions and declarations. It is the duty of the state to ensure that women are safe. But it is also our personal duty to address this matter, where we are.
In the UK one women is killed every three days. Only 6% of women are killed by strangers. 40% of all homicides of women are by their partners. Every minute, the police receive a call about domestic abuse. 68% of women are killed in their own homes. 15% of murdered women were over 60 years old. Poor (irrespective of ethnicity), disabled and LGBTQ+ women are at significant risk of domestic abuse. This is not a serious problem. This is a catastrophe that is largely ignored as we focus on a non-serious politics of spectacle.
In places of civil unrest and war, the bodies of women are theatres of war. The struggle for peace and reconciliation is also a struggle to defend women. The International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda established rape as a war crime. Major arms manufacturers and exporters treat diplomacy and peace-making as strategic threats. Women pay the price for the commitments of our politicians and civil servants to the military-industrial complex and bankers.
LBS notes that in politics women are often high-profile targets of abuse, if not murder. In the UK, the murder of MP Jo Cox is a tragedy that shows that no one is spared. The killing of women in politics is a global problem.
We also note the amount of abuse directed at female Labour Party MPs of all ethnicities. The Labour Party apparently has a hierarchy of victims of gender-based violence. Some are worthy and others not worthy of compassion and solidarity. For some the party machine is used to crush their spirits because of the colour of their politics.
Addressing gender-based violence requires the slow building of a culture of human rights for all irrespective of differences in class, gender ethnicity, religion and national origin. The criminal justice system has to do better in order that victims have greater confidence to report intimate partner violence. The media report the spectacular and ignore the routine, everyday violence against women Without an education system that slowly shapes the imaginations of students towards justice for all. Unless the Labour Party holds to account the abusers of Dianne Abbott, Dawn Butler and Apsana Begum it is hard to believe that the party is serious at all. The media are complicit in this regard. However, we know that there will be some who will say that in a limited press conference or online event, all women cannot expect solidarity. Another comment might be that any female MP who stood by Corbyn does not deserve solidarity and compassion.
Raul Hilberg, the founder of Holocaust Studies, said that there are perpetrators, victims and bystanders. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel for whom participation in the Civil Rights Movement in the USA was an act of prayer, said “Indifference to evil is worse than evil itself”.
As well as the abuses toward Diane Abbott, Apsana Begum and others, Labour’s leadership has also been accused by a whistleblower of covering up alleged criminal abuse of vulnerable domestic violence victims. At least two alleged sex pests remain on Keir Starmer’s front bench, while Chris Matheson – who resigned after being found guilty of sexual harassment, was never suspended by the party while he was being investigated by a parliamentary panel.
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“In places of civil unrest and war, the bodies of women are theatres of war. The struggle for peace and reconciliation is also a struggle to defend women.”
This cannot be truer.
I agree wholeheartedly with most of LBS’s statement but disagree with them in respect of the abuse directed at Apsana Begum and Diane Abbott.
They want the party to hold Diane’s and Apsana’s abusers to account but in these cases the Labour party was/is the abuser.
It is a matter of record that Starmers Labour colluded with Apsana’s abusers and facilitated the mental torment this woman was subjected to. This clearly makes the party a willing accomplice of the vile individuals who set out to totally destroy this woman
Regarding Diane, Labour MPs like the deplorable Jess Phillips mocked and belittled her and not one of the Labour Right ever sought to support or help her although she was the most abused woman in parliament.
Labour staffers’ inhuman treatment of Diane was also totally despicable. It is recorded in the leaked ECHR submission that when Diane was discovered crying in Southside, staffers contacted the MSM in the hope that they would run a story about it in order to degrade and humiliate her. It didn’t happen because I think she had left Southside by the time the hacks arrived.
Therefore LBS is wrong in my opinion to ask the party to call the abusers of these women to account. They should state openly that in these cases (and others) the party -its MPs ,senior members and staffers- are the abusers and therefore it is absolutely clear that Starmers Labour is not serious about tackling the abuse of women if the woman concerned is black or a socialist.
Another problematic element of this statement and the analysis which underpins it concerns the terms and definitions used.
The framing of the issue in terms of “gender based violence” misinterprets what is, always has been and always will be, sex based violence.
The historical and evidence based data, as well as everyday experiences, are that the vast majority of physical violence and abuse is sex, rather than gender based, and is committed by biological males against biological females.
In terms of abusive violence one only has to observe the screaming hordes of black pampers violently abusing and intimidating anyone who has the temerity to explicitly hold a different view of the world to themselves. The most recent example being the display of a banner calling for particular groups to be armed in order to enable them to better intimidate and abuse anyone who does not subscribe to a particular subjective opinion.
The unseen very sharp analytical knife operating here is the aggregating together of “LGBTQ+ women.”
An aggregation which hides, rather than reveals, how the numbers subject to such violence are distributed between the different categorisations under this all encompassing umbrella.
This is a shame because it merely serves to undermine the initiative being undertaken.
I have seen some members of the ++ community level hatred and violence against feminists and lesbians. What’s that all about?
wobbly,
Where to start in attempting to unwrap that question?
Post-modernist theorists such as Foucault and Judith Butler would be tempting. Though, as a primer, they might prove rather heavy going for anyone just starting out to delve into the issues.
Problem with this site is that previous experience demonstrates it is only possible to submit a below the line comment containing a single URL link.
Rather than attempt multiple postings I’m going to go with this more easily readable overview:
https://janeclarejones.com/2018/11/13/the-annals-of-the-terf-wars/
If you would like any more links related to your question just ask and I will try my best to find something suitable from my archive.
Labour Party rule against racism 2.1.8 says no member of the LP should engage in conduct which is prejudicial or act in a way is grossly detrimental to the party Why make rules like this when Dian Abbot/ Apsansa Begum/Dawn Butler were racially abused by the likes streeting /phillips/hodge etc why have these not been expelled it’s a fucking party that supports racists
Reply to Dave Hansell. Thank you very much for your response. This is why Skwawky is miles better than it’s competitors/rivals?. Before getting your reply I was chatting to a gay lefty neighbour. He was appalled at my ignorance. I’ve lived in North Yorkshire, for over a quarter of a century and just carried on throughout as a live and let live socialist. Just like the old days we, Julie and I, we’re really easy going but any anti-gay or hostile personal stuff and we showed the foul-minded swine the door. I remember protesting “cure aids not gays”, in the ’80s. Ok, I read Foucault and Lacan at evening school but the great strike was on and the CP was in civil war. I haven’t had a bloody clue. God, how can people scream and hate one another and still call themselves socialists? I was a regular at a boozer called The Vauxhall Tavern it was a gay transvestite pub used by locals because of its late license, brilliant comics, and great atmosphere. The world has changed, I’m old and decrepit but there is a good library just down the road. The reading begins. Thanks very much for your kindness and considerate response. Love from wobbly and Julie.
Dave Hansell –
Thank you for that ..
there is also this (below) which Ive already posted
elsewhere on Skwawkbox. It is specifically about the Labour
Party and Trans Issues where it should be noted that problems
started during the Corbyn era. However they have got worse since
Starmer took over with his heavy Stalinist attitude.
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-labour-party-and-gender-critical-women/?fbclid=IwAR2MPJUt7-PZ7TyXFR_SiRZ5qK6olb7Gtd0g3I6QEYFAGkzqpzBiw4rN9eI
The PDF available here…
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jopp.12251
….whilst being more academically written than the previous link provided to wobbly, dissects the key parasitical infection which has been injected into the body politic of the left.
The post-modernist pseudo ideology of intersectionalism has more in common with Ayan Rand and Thatcher than the Class politics it deliberately undermines. Salami slicing people into ever smaller silos – just like the modern management movement have done with all organisations in the West – creating an artificially manufactured hierarchy of oppression which mirrors that of the traditional Capitalist/Feudalist models and where rights are ruthlessly taken and enforced within that hierarchy whilst denying the basic social reciprocity of the same rights to others.
The insistence on the primacy of subjective based individual/group narratives over testable evidence based objective social reality, because objective society does not exist, only the subjective feelings and narratives of the individual and the group, has familiar echoes.
It should do because this is the narrative of “no such thing as society, only the individual and the family” philosophy of Thatcherism.
An approach which should be anathema to any political or social based group, organisation or institution claiming to be progressive or of the left.
It is deeply and deliberately divisive and represents an extremely effective divide and rule Class based attack using the disguise of left/progressive labels. Salami slicing groups in society which do and should have more in common with each other in a hierarchy of oppression sold as “progressive” by identity politics.
Driving a coach and horses through the principle of equality in terms of objective treatment and approach in favour of subjective — ie selective — judgement based on identity and where that subjectively manufactured identity is located within that hierarchy of oppression pecking order and rejecting outright any practical notion of a wider society.
Randism on steroids. The rallying cry was once ‘No Pasaran.’ Today it is ‘No Reciprocation.’ Thatchers no such thing as society coming home to roost in a cuckoo that pretends to be ‘left’ and ‘progressive.’
A process and approach which ultra emphasises subjective based differences to divide what should be united. Where Class based action is neutralised in favour of an atomised approach of a war of all against all in order to achieve and maintain control against any practical challenge to the current status quo within that artificially manufactured hierarchy of oppression and the primacy of its narrative. Which is why it is actively supported and financed by authoritarian State institutions and organisations from the police service and judiciary through to corporations and the media — both corporate and in some cases “left” media — across a variety of issues.
“Thus arises an intriguing ‘binary’ relationship between extreme individualistic subjectivism and extreme state authoritarianism. Assertion of non-negotiable pseudo-sacrosanct narcissistic power is common to both. Objective law as irreducible sphere of reality is subverted by arbitrary personalism. Might determines right. Autocracy of self-ID is mirrored by autocracy on high.”
– Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh