If this weekend has made one thing very clear, there is a malaise in the Labour Party – but it is not situated politically where people are led to think by a mainly right-of-centre media hellbent on wearing their navels out through excessive gazing.
The real issue with The Labour Party is the right of the party, not the left.
When #EdMiliband was leader, it was all ‘Why wasn’t it the other brother?’
When Jeremy Corbyn was leader, it was ‘Boohoo, Magic Grandpa is sooooo MEAN!’ like some latter day Verruca Salts.
This weekend, it’s ‘We could’ve got away with it, if it wasn’t for those pesky lefties!'(winning all our seats and making us look like idiots!)
And now the optics of firing northern working-class women from their positions in favour of MPs barely hanging onto their majorities.
Politicians like Andy Burnham are obviously savvy enough to have clocked this, but there is more than a touch of The Lord of the Flies about those in charge of the LP currently. On top of that, the arrogance is breathtaking.
So anyone seriously considering being Labour leader is probably best served by holding their powder dry and waiting till this lot have worn themselves out, are voted out or lose their jobs by some other means, because they seem to have a capacity for destruction that is quite something to behold – and it seems like they’re just about to turn it on themselves.
Looking at what has happened over the last year, I’ve never witnessed any Labour leader make quite so many unforced errors as #KeirStarmer. Just when one thought that he couldn’t make the optics of losing so many council seats any worse, he basically said, ‘Hold my beer’.
With high-handedness like this, and clear signs that he has no intention of taking any responsibility for it, or at the very minimum waiting a week or two so the optics don’t look as terrible, it’s obvious that the Labour Party has a lot further to fall under his command. This is where his inexperience as a politician – zero charisma, a lack of telegenicity, no inability to connect with people or to be quick-footed enough to ascertain when a small dose of humble pie might be more prudent – is shining through. And why it was never a good idea to put forward someone with only 5 years experience in the job of politician as leader of the 2nd major party in the UK.
Making the Tory Party look functional, especially during this period where it’s clear their dysfunctionality has hit new lows, is the only thing that is extraordinary about his leadership. Nothing has exposed this more than the #LocalElections2021. And I get the feeling that we are only witnessing the tip of the iceberg.
The future is female. Or is it? There is no doubting that the biggest political event of the year was #MeToo. When I first saw the hashtag, posted it on my social media and then wrote about it, I had no idea how big an impact this movement was going to have. Still is having. As a woman, one gets used to ‘women’s issues’ gaining a bit of publicity for a while, then fading into the background. This hasn’t faded. If anything, it is keeping a steady glow going.
There is hardly a profession that I have seen that hasn’t been mentioned in conjunction with #MeToo. Sure, it started with the relative elite of Hollywood, but I’ve seen mentions of this movement by women in the financial world, medicine, the London theatre scene, the classical music world, politics, the literary world, academia, opera. I’ve known, in acquaintance, a few of the accused, and the revelations weren’t surprising. The irony of art reflecting life reflecting art were not lost.
There’s been a multiplicity of reactions to #MeToo, from women. It wasn’t long (probably a month) before the mutterings of the #NotAllMen groups of women started. From my observance, they were mainly women ‘of a certain age’ and the main thrust of their argument, when one broke it down, seemed to be that they had to put up with it, so why shouldn’t younger women have to do the same? Many of these women of my personal acquaintance (though not all) had sons which seemed, by their own words, to colour their views. Some women, who were friends with the accused, because they had not experienced this side of them found it hard to comprehend that they were capable of these actions. A human reaction, I guess; but part of the reason that the system of patriarchy and its narrative has prevailed. The deceit of women. Their cunning. When underneath all they are, are sluts. Branded women. Mark them with an A and have done with it. Dress them in a red dress and white bonnet and treat them as brood mares. They are good for little else. Possessions, not human beings.
This movement has given me pause about many things. Of course, partly I was elated and continue to be, that finally, these issues, which form so much a part of the experience of being female, were being discussed, and that this movement hasn’t disappeared from the public consciousness yet. Partly I’ve been disappointed by the reactions of some other women, and recognise that there is much in there that has been the causation of the lack of progress of the suffragette movement and its descendants, the various waves of feminism. We are still having arguments about providing creches in workplaces – something that was established by the Pankhursts in their business a hundred years ago. If anything, we seem to have gone backwards in terms of this argument.
I believe that #MeToo is having a major effect because of the political schisms we are experiencing. We are seeing an epic battle between how things have been, and how we want them to be, and in between, how things currently are. There is a broad acceptance that how things are is no longer acceptable, and there must be change. There is also conflict with traditionalists and apologists for how things are, and how they want regressive change to the way things were. Crucial to the movement, to this moment, and to the rising call for female equality, has been Trump. Never has toxic masculinity, a real life consequence of the system of patriarchy, been personified so odiously and so fully in one person. The Hero’s Journey is a basic principle of story-telling, and for every hero(ine) there must be a villain. Trump has fulfilled that role more than competently. In truth, one could argue that it is the only role he has fulfilled competently, providing the perfect example of what happens when one leaves power all in the hands of men. The call for female equality would not be resonating on this scale if men did not look at Trump as an example of their sex, and not like what they see. By and large, unless one is a white supremacist misogynist, he is the very antithesis of aspirational masculinity. His ‘grab ’em by the pussy’ comment. His wildly inappropriate and borderline incestuous comments about his daughter. His clear disregard for his current wife. The scarcity of women in his every staged photo opportunity. Women are useful and/or of service to him, or they are irrelevant, seems to be the message. The history books may yet show that the biggest catalyst for equality for women in Western countries was Donald Trump, despite the villain’s best efforts. No Hero’s Journey story is complete without the triumph of battle.
The way I see it, the major obstacles standing in the way of female equity, and that always have, are two-fold: Not just the implementation of patriarchal mores from men, but also from women themselves. A sort of keeping of the status quo. I was struck by this when reading about Meryl Streep recently. Now don’t get me wrong – I love Meryl Streep as an actress. I think she is probably the greatest living film actor, male or female. I’ve seen her speak at a Women of the World conference, and she comes across as a thoroughly nice human being, despite her disavowal of feminism, which I have to say, I did find disappointing. However, she is a person who has reached a certain level of power and influence, and her pronouncements about wearing black at the Golden Globes come across as someone who wants predominantly to maintain the status quo, while talking about protest. The problem with this is that sort of attitude is not possible, sustainable or even desirable to maintain anymore. It’s part of the ‘Change – but not too much’ attitude of neoliberalism. Unlike Brexit, change does actually mean change. Change is painful. It’s messy. It turns your world upside-down and inside out. Change is the rollercoaster ride that you have no guarantee of being thrown off of. It’s gut-wrenching, soul-destroying, overwhelming, terrifying. And ultimately, enervating, empowering and inevitable once one has been baptised in its fire.
I am using Streep as an example, not because I loathe her (the contrary) but because I believe her approach to fundamental change is wrong and can be a teachable moment. Sure, if every woman rocked up in black, there would be a huge amount of publicity – for the Globes and sales for media outlets. All predominantly run by men. These awards depend on women to boost their profile and sales. There is not one female director nominated this year, despite several great films directed by women, for example. Until they give women an equal footing, and equal power, then don’t engage. If every single woman stayed away from the awards season and refused to engage, that would do more than sending a message, and ‘making a statement’. I’m fairly certain it would have a real-life impact on the profile of the awards and media sales. Who, after all, wants to sift through hundreds of pictures of men in very similar looking tuxedoes?
I hasten to add that this isn’t an original idea – it is based on the Icelandic model of women disengaging from working, taking care of children and households in 1975 as an action against inequality. The result were quite startling – men were barely coping over the 24-hour period. They made their point, and got their first female president 5 years later.
Action can seem overwhelmingly. But even small actions matter. For example: I’ve made a commitment to not hashtag the Golden Globes – small in its way, but in this day and age, social media raises profile. An awards ceremony that does not recognise the achievements of women, half the population, is not a ceremony that I want to help in any way, shape or form. Instead, I’ll be writing as much as I can about #MeToo and issues of female equity as a counterbalance. Done collectively, like the #MeToo movement, these sort of actions can have impact.
The point is: protest is all very well. But actions do speak louder than words, and across sectors women need to start taking meaningful action that does not play by the rules of a game which treats them as second-class citizens. Then, and only then, will we see real progress on the issue of female equity. And progress on this, 100 years on from when women were arrested, tortured and killed merely to get a vote to get a seat at the table, more than change for its own sake, surely has to now be the aim. This is why #MeToo is a crucial movement, coming at a crucial time in the social history of the world, with remarkable staying power. It remains to be seen whether the hero will transform into the heroine on this journey, and whether the Heroine, female equity, will triumph at last.
A flag is just a piece of cloth. What it’s supposed to represent – an equal playing field for all, justice for all – is not being adhered to and has not been, ever, in the history of the US.
Remember these protests started under Obama’s administration, as a protest against police brutality. Only Trump could make it all about himself and some perverse idea of patriotism, where one doesn’t question how loyalty to this ‘flag’ trumps (pun intended) keeping racist law enforcement officers in check.
But since The Donald has decided to put his rather profane tuppence ha’porth in, let’s use it to question what is really important here. In truth, no flag matters. What is done supposedly in the name of the flag does. The flag is no more than a human extension of the Pavlov’s dog experiment. I support those taking a knee because what they are protesting for (actual civil rights, the right to not be killed by endemic racism) is more important. If you are proud of your country (and by this I mean any country, not just the U.S.), know exactly what it is you’re proud of. When it comes down to it, and if one’s grasp on history is solid, and if one is scrupulously honest, it’ll end up that you’ll be proud of some things, of other things not so much. Let the country that is without sin cast the first stone.
The danger is, during this political paradigm shift (and we are still in the midst of this shift) that revisionism of history is rife. We have the situation in Germany where partly (to the best of my understanding) what the AfD set their stall out on is whitewashing German history, especially that of the Third Reich, as something to be proud of, that ‘others’ had wilfully misinterpreted. How can one be proud of that part of one’s history which included mass genocide? And this point could be said of many countries, including the US. Including the UK. Trump and Brexit happened, to a large extent, due to people’s ignorance of their own imperialist, genocidal, racist histories.
Pride in a flag, for pride’s sake, if the foundation of what that flag represents, is ridiculous. Pride in an anthem, a song, is indefensible if the human rights that have been nominally enshrined in law are not being accorded to all citizens, irrespective of colour, creed, sex, gender, sexual preference, power and wealth status. There is ample evidence to show us that the US has little respect for the rights of its African-American citizens. The very presence of a man like Trump in the White House and his penchant for the company of white supremacists and self-described Nazis is a very testimony to this. The symbols that we once held dear unquestioningly are being called into question. It’s long overdue. Men like Kaepernick remind us that rather than slavishly adhering to the status quo, our citizenship calls upon us to question whether it is fit for purpose, or indeed, if it ever was. And the evidence and history taken objectively, would strongly indicate that it never has been.
The late great Stéphane Hessel wrote about a ‘Time for Outrage’. Outrage is only the beginning point. It’s the precursor of change, and holds the potential of change for the better, for everyone. Some people will not want change, simply because change, even when it is for the better, is not easy. Some people will not want change, because they see change as an attack on their status and supremacy in the world order. Those latter are probably not wrong, but they must not stand as an impediment to change for the better for the majority. We are on a knife’s edge balance in the West when Germany, for 28 years a beacon of hope to the power of people and progressive thinking, to the art of the possible rather than the cynical deal, can have 1.3 citizens who ignored their own history and voted in the far-right to the Bundestag again. The damage has been done, and nationalism has made its inroads. The road that this ultimately leads to can be changed, however. It’s not too late for that yet, if we remain conscious of the difference between superficial nationalism and deeper citizenship.
Nationalism only appeals to those who are childish and sheep-like in their thinking. Those who deal in the vicious pettiness of playground politics. Those who like their inane saluting, doublespeak, symbolism and who find comfort in the denigration of others. This is not ‘love of country’. Love of country, and deeper citizenship is when you care that everyone is afforded the same rights, the same opportunities, that everyone prospers. That’s what those who are taking a knee are highlighting. May they overcome.
While I grew up in Ireland, I was born in the USA to an American father and Irish mother.
I couldn’t vocalise my ‘otherness’ but – well – I could feel it. I had a life where I could be profoundly Irish (with my very Irish first name) and my Gaelgeoir mother. But I also had a life where I was American, with my height, and my largesse of spirit and culturally feeling neither Irish or American but both.
I went through a period of not wanting to be ‘other’. I tried to ‘fit in’. That did not go well. The more I tried to fit in, the more ‘other’ I became. The more isolated and awkward I felt. So then, during my turbulent teenage years, I had two lives. One, where I was the ‘good’ girl, the ‘model’ student.
The other, where I was out drinking and going to nightclubs I was far too young to be in – but hey. American ‘largesse’ also led to American physique and height and from the age of 13, I could pretty much pass for being in my twenties.
I went to university in Cork – one of the few places that I was ‘other’ among other people who were also ‘other’ in their communities. The friends I got on with best were also bi-cultural. I was finding my tribe.
Our ‘otherness’ was confirmed at my brother Niall’s wedding, when his best man talked about how we were always known as ‘The Yanks’ (news to all of us – but kind of welcome news. It was confirmed. We were ‘other’).
Then I went to London, a city where everyone, bar a few exceptions, is ‘other’. And what a relief. To be an immigrant, in a city with a high concentration of immigrants. To be the same in your otherness is liberating, a common ground. And it’s exciting to meet other people, to learn about different cultures and discover – well – we have more in common as human beings than we think.
There is the dark side of being an immigrant too. I didn’t experience it a lot – but when I was confronted with racism, it always shook me. The ‘this is our country, who are you to make decisions about it/are you a terrorist’ vibe occasionally reared its ugly head, especially since 2016. But, being a white-skinned immigrant – I wasn’t an immediate or visible target.
No, that has fallen to my Japanese brother-in-law, who, prior to the 23rd November 2023, has faced racism in Ireland (including intimidation and eggs thrown at him). Or my Moroccan Muslima sister-in-law, who regularly came out to slashed tyres in the morning when she lived in Cork.
And – apart from my childhood – I’ve chosen to be an immigrant since leaving university. Some immigrants, like my friends who are refugees – they didn’t choose to leave their countries. They had beautiful lives in their countries, destroyed by psychopathic egomaniacs. Their refugee status doesn’t offer them any grace from racists, however, as we saw last night in Dublin City Centre.
Something ugly is taking root around the world, and last night it visited Dublin. It is partly rooted in inequality and feeling left behind. But, if that were solely the case, everyone who is living in unequal circumstances would have been down there on O’Connell St, burning cars and buses and trams and looting shops. So I think we do a disservice to those who struggle but don’t engage with the far-right and in this nihilistic behaviour if we default to this explanation. On the flip side and an obvious example, but look at Conor McGregor. Someone who has had a lot of good fortune, but who has chosen to hate on vulnerable refugees and migrants. Someone who has gone against the very principles that anti-racist forefathers like Daniel O’Connell, whose street these vandals desecrated by their very racism. This sort of mewling toxic masculinity/narcissism is wed more to global nativism than to the principles our forefathers fought for: in the words of Thomas Davis:
“[We seek to establish an Irish] nationality which may embrace Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter, Milesian and Cromwellian, the Irishman of a hundred generations, and the stranger who is within our gates.” (1842)
Today, like a lot of Irish people, I’m struggling with the enormity of what has happened. Firstly to the people who are immigrants in Ireland, ‘the stranger who is within our gates’, who’ve chosen to make Ireland your home: so many of us see you, appreciate you and want to make this better. For me, you are my family and friends. Many of us are moving forward from the yokes of the past, some of them inflicted upon us through occupation, some of them self-inflicted through theocracy, and we want a more progressive country, because we know the alternative.
I won’t offer platitudes and say that these people who caused such mayhem aren’t ‘us’ – they are ‘us’, and, as Irish citizens, we all have a duty to own this sad fact, and to confront racism and bigotry from our fellow countrymen and women where we can. I can see a lot of people are embracing that duty and standing, as we should as a country to whom immigration has been a lifeline, with immigrants. I hope that will continue.
Finally, like the Dublin-born Duke of Wellington said, albeit disparagingly about the city of his birth, “Being born in a stable does not make one a horse.” Being born in Ireland does not make a person embody the values of what Ireland in the 21st century is striving to be. As Ailbhe Smythe at the #Ireland4All march said earlier this year:
“Our message is powerful and simple. We want an Ireland for all. “Whoever, whatever you are. Wherever you come from, we want an Ireland that is welcoming, equal, decent, respectful and kind. We want housing for all, healthcare for all and public services for all.”
Especially as a lifelong immigrant, as a bi-cultural person and even from abroad, I’ll still be doing all that I can to make other immigrants to Ireland feel like they belong. That’s my personal commitment and responsibility to my Irish citizenship. Let’s be kinder, more conscious and more appreciative of the courage of immigrants and refugees and the value we have to society. Because when we all have that sense of belonging, and include everyone, and exercise kindness instead of hatred, then we really have a country we can be proud of.
I don’t often post about classical music on this account but I’m going to be honest and say one of the things that really destroys an industry devoted to beautiful music is the downright hostility to any hint of change. And, the irony is, Western art music used to be at the forefront of innovation and change in the theatre.
We didn’t, for example, always sit in perfectly quiet opera houses. In Händel’s time, these were noisy, boisterous places – it wasn’t until much later in the 18th century (I think, if I’m recalling music history accurately) that the whole concept of concert halls and sitting quietly and listening came about.
Speaking of Händel: I don’t think he wanted singers with pokers up their jaxxies to be singing his oratorios – he put stage directions in many. He used actresses like Mrs Cibber for Messiah.
Personally I think the whole ‘period’ movement of the 1970s was hugely destructive in the way we perceive Baroque music nowadays. If you go to the Handel-Hendrix Museum and look at some of the scores – it’s blatantly obvious from the ornamentation that big voices sang baroque music. Same with Vivaldi’s.
So there’s two things going on in the classical music industry at the moment:
1. Adhering to a past practice that never really was;
2. And using ‘musical excellence’ as an excuse to gatekeep women and minorities.
Lemme tell you something for nothing: there are works by white men that I would not care if I never heard again in my life.
Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne? Never again, knowingly. I could take or leave anything by Haydn, easily. Fidelio? Let’s just be kind and say Beethoven was not really a great vocal composer.
And here’s the thing I do not get: There is a lot of great music by female and diverse composers who were feted in their lifetimes. They unfortunately mostly didn’t have husbands/children who were championing their works after their deaths, and, a lot of the time, that makes a difference in terms of who gets remembered. But it doesn’t lessen the impact of their music contemporaneously.
And, let’s say, even if their works haven’t stood the test of time and are complete and utter sh*te: what does it hurt for one concert hall in one season in the whole world to give them another airing and allow the audiences of today to make up their own minds? Because if we don’t do that, then we’re only allowing a very small section of the population (normally white male critics) to decide what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. That’s pretty political.
And not in a good way. It’s regressive – Pater-knows-what’s-best syndrome. Time’s up on that.
If we are truly appreciative of music, it doesn’t hurt us to know more, and/or to be exposed to more music, from groups of people that have been ill-served by the industry up to now. Conversely, it has been IN THE TRADITION of classical music and opera to be innovators, and we’ve lost that as a practice.
Failure is as much a part of artistry as anything else – if we look at some of the greatest opera flops, Carmen, La Traviata etc – one might argue that failure is even a necessity to longevity. That means that the critics of yesteryear were wrong about them and that the critics of today are likely wrong about much of today’s music also. But even if they’re right, we’re stifling the lifeblood of the industry by not factoring in permission to fail.
Classical music also has a massive inclusion problem. We lose nothing by including more people from different experiences, and different backgrounds. But we gain new audiences. It’s often written off as an ‘exercise in box-ticking’ – but it’s the only smart thing to do for the long-term survival of the industry as a whole. Let’s face it, the older people who have for a long time made up the concert halls and opera houses are not likely going to be around for as long as the 16 year old boy I sat next to at Theodora with his friend, who were as excited as any teenager at a rock concert to see the star turn of Jakub Józef Orliński (and I see their point -definitely a countertenor who has it all). They’d gotten to know him from Instagram. It was a pretty even mix at the Royal Opera House – older audiences who’d come to see Joyce di Donato (also amazing)and the younger JJO fans who, btw, were introduced to a great opera, incredible production by Katie Mitchell and great singers like JDD through opera seeking different routes to be relevant.
Diversity is not only the right thing to do – it’s the smart thing to do. If a composer hasn’t stood the test of time – So. What? There can be many factors at play as to why that is so. We only know the reason why by actually programming the damn music.
And, who knows? We may very well discover some amazing music and performers the more that the industry expands to be diverse and inclusive and platforms the story of everyone. But we can’t make those discoveries without stopping the gatekeeping that is an unpleasant part of the industry right now. If people truly are in it for the music, they won’t let these gatekeepers have the final word.
Douglas Murray can’t seem to hold two conflicting thoughts in his head in his recent article in the Daily Mail ie that you can have white men inventing/creating great things but at huge cost to others along the lines of oppression of women, slavery, colonisation etc. A post:
One has to question how great an achievement is for everyone other than white men – and rich white men at that – if that is the cost. And also how accurate history has been when it only remembers white male achievements.
The perfect example of this was the complete airbrushing of Mo Mowlam out of the picture this week in some quarters. If anyone was responsible for the success of the #GFA, it was her. And that is history that is only 25 years old.
History, as it’s been recorded, from the white European male perspective, does not largely take into account anyone who deviates from that norm. And, in all honesty, because of the hurdles placed in front of them, those that did achieve great things despite these hurdles were even greater. Let me explain:
Let’s say we have a hurdle race. Runner A has one hurdle in front of them, 1m high. Runner B has two hurdles, each of which are 1.5m high. Runner C has 4 hurdles in front of them, all of which are 2m high.
Now be honest: which of these runners do you think will have the easiest race? 2nd easiest? Etc?
Society as it’s now structured in Douglas’ world, and in the world of the DM readership, seems to think those hurdles don’t make a blind bit of difference as to human achievement.
I beg to differ. All those extra hurdles make ALL the difference. Historically, because of patriarchy, men who achieved great things had their wives to nurture their great reputations after their deaths. The reverse didn’t normally happen in the case of married women.
When unmarried women died, their legacy often died with them. Hence, when I wrote and presented a radio series on Women Composers 22 years ago, for RTÉ, virtually no one apart from a few feminist musicians had heard of Ethel Smyth. Or Fanny Mendelssohn. Or Lili Boulanger.
I hadn’t heard of them myself, doing a music degree, and I only got to know about them because I had to do a self-taught option. I came upon them because I used to compose and was curious about why I hadn’t heard of any other female composers. And that was in the late 1990s.
Ironically, Douglas mentions Bach. Well, Bach himself was almost lost to the vagaries of how history is recorded eg even despite his numerous progeny, Bach was largely unknown until Felix Mendelssohn popularised him. He gained a champion, and the rest is (some of) music history.
There have been great women, and people from minority backgrounds doing great things for centuries. Ever heard of Capt Flora Sandes, the only British woman to serve on the frontlines in WW1 AND WW2? Wendy Carlos, transgender composer of The Shining and A Clockwork Orange?
Phillis Wheatley, who, despite being a slave, wrote the most amazing poetry in the 18th C?
These are only three examples, only sketchily outlined – there are literally thousands more, in every sphere that you can think of. We owe it to them, AND to historical accuracy, to overturn the false narrative.
We owe it to them, and to the people who come after us, to make sure that when a hurdle race is run, that ALL THE HURDLES ARE ABSOLUTELY EQUAL.
And here’s the crux of why I think Douglas Murray and his ilk get on their high horses (pun intended) about revising history.
They don’t want an accurate reflection because then, it would reflect badly on themselves and all the unspoken advantages they’ve had. The structural and very carefully maintained system that keeps others at a disadvantage, with significantly more hurdles to achievement, along sex, gender, race, class, ability etc. Their insecurity lies with their privileges, which they are keen to observe. If they have children, they’re also motivated to protect the system.
And so it continues. They rail against the ‘woke’, that little voice that niggles at them, telling them they got to their position on the graft of others and a lie. I get it. That’s not a comfortable admission. That it is uncomfortable doesn’t mean that we stop the work.
If anything, it is even MORE important that we do the work, that we tell the accounts of history accurately, that we face the uncomfortable truths. In time, even Mr Murray may come to realise that there is space for every story and that the truth will set us all free.
Today I’m going to talk about compassion and food as the greatest weapons of all.
I’ve been watching, as everyone in central Europe has, (and possibly around the world) at Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. I’ve also been watching the Ukrainian reaction to this. We’ve seen many instances of heroism, but it was one example of sheroism that really reached into my heart-space and turned the key to unlock an insight: https://twitter.com/Caucasu…/status/1499156135823257607…
This Russian soldier phones home to let his mother know he’s alive and that the Ukrainians are feeding him when Putin left him to starve. The woman beside him is holding up her phone so he can talk to his mum. He becomes emotional. She, presumably a perfect stranger, strokes the back of his neck to comfort him. A small, intimate, human-to-human gesture. Food to feed his belly; food of compassion to feed his soul.
A friend of mine recounted this morning about how a homeless man came onto her Tube carriage, complete with sores and wracked with hunger and that she gave him her food. He was so grateful and thankful for this that suddenly the rest of the Tube, who had shunned him prior to this, suddenly started digging deep to give him what they had. Food to feed that poor human’s belly; the food of demonstrated compassion to feed everyone else’s souls.
Politically, when the Tories and Lib Dems came into a coalition power in 2010, one of the first things that I noticed they did was to attack the poor. I was on an Overground train to Dalston around 2011, and a homeless man came on the train looking for money. I gave him some and the man opposite me almost growled at me:
‘You’re just encouraging him!’
Me: (thinking to myself ‘Encouraging him to be what? Homeless?’) ‘It’s my money and frankly it’s none of your business who I give it to.’
End of conversation, but a lot of resentful energy.
The me of 2011 could probably have found a more compassionate way to express myself. It may still have been met with resentment but I don’t blame that me – she didn’t have the skills to deal with unsolicited aggression at that time. My way of showing compassion at that time was to give money and stand up for the homeless man. There was some compassion in there, but I could have done better. Food for thought for 2022 me.
Backtrack to even further in my memory bank to me as an 24 year old, seeing the faces of homeless men in Cork City and wondering what terrible trauma had happened to them, clearly etched in their faces. Seeing the human being beneath the pain and understanding that we don’t understand – and may never understand – another human being’s full story is important. Blessed are the non-judgemental helpers.
I can parrot the line from my fundraising days, that giving people cash/food/drink does not help them and that regular giving to a charity is all that matters. I call BS on this. Yes, giving to certain humanitarian charities will definitely help. I’ve worked with some of the best closely, and I can testify to the good work that they do. I still maintain that we shouldn’t need charities and that their very existence is a deep failure in our society to provide food, shelter and healthcare for every human being BUT as the world stands in 2022, they are still a necessity.
The small, random acts of compassion, be it in the Ukraine, with human beings facing each other as human beings and finding common ground – food, drink, a comforting hand, all things we need help with as human beings from time to time – are powerful. They are so powerful that the powerful don’t understand their power, and cannot be manufactured by any munitions company or government propaganda machine. It’s why I think armies use rape as a weapon of war: to see if they can break the cycle of compassion in those who often find it easiest to demonstrate compassion ie women. Compassion is a genuine existential threat to these latter-day Peter Pans (JM Barrie’s, not Disney’s), who have never grown up and see their power games as an evolution of the toy soldiers they played with. Maybe no one has ever shown them compassion – or maybe they’ve been shown too much compassion. Who knows.
What I do know is that (much like in 2011) we are living in another political paradigm shift, where the rules of the old world do not apply, and where there is a crack – a sizeable one – where a chink of light and direction is shining through. That direction is compassion and meeting each other, soul to soul in our varying and variable meat-suits that we traverse the world in, as human beings.
This month is Women’s History Month and I’d like to invite all of you, to honour the women of the past and the present, and to stand in solidarity with what we are seeing in the Ukraine, to consciously meet other human beings with compassion, which is a quality not exclusive to women but is often more expected in women than in men (in my experience). It’s an experiment (I’m going to be doing it too). Can we support the energy being shown to us of compassion-in-action as the greatest conqueror of hearts and minds in the many examples we have seen coming from Ukraine? And can we change the world we live in by doing so? I wonder. Not all of us are fighting for our countries’ freedom but we can keep on pressing for a much better world for everyone.
I’m not Muslim. But one of my brothers converted to Islam and these are some of the things that have happened to him and his wife that I know about:
Slashed tyres.
His wife being told by care home residents (when she worked there) that she was very nice ‘for a Muslim’.
His wife (again) deciding that it was easier to wear a hat rather than a hijab to avoid confrontations. A very bizarre one – but being brought in by the police for questioning when one neighbour went on holiday to Spain and another neighbour told the police they’d murdered them.
I’ve also intervened in London when a Muslim woman was getting threatening verbal abuse at a bus stop in Camberwell – literally shouted at him with my opera voice and chased him away.
And then there was the former colleague who votes Liberal Democrat and was in an Oscar-winning film who told me that he’d be glad if Muslim boys who are refugees all drowned. And he’s someone who sees himself as ‘liberal’ on every other topic conceivable bar the lives of Muslims. He’s not alone, in my experience.
One of the very grim jokes that did the rounds in the Irish community in 2003 when Blair basically gave the green light to profile Muslims was that ‘at least the heat is taken off from us’. Anyone who has any interest in how the British state operates – it’s worth taking a look at some of the arrests of Irish people like the Guildford Four, the Maguire Seven and the Birmingham Six to understand that the notion of British ‘justice’ is highly selective, and very dependent on who is the ‘enemy du jour’. With the British government involved in renditions, British Muslims have probably had the hardest time of any minority in the UK, save possibly Roma travellers. Imagine knowing, as a Muslim, that you could be placed in someplace in like Guantanamo on a pretext. Plus the Shamima Begum case, which I find absolutely disgraceful and prejudiced and merciless.
Sayeeda Warsi quitting the Tory Party should have been enough to raise an investigation. It wasn’t – because an awful lot of people in the UK look on the likes of David Cameron and Theresa May as the ‘respectable’ face of Toryism, rather than judging their acts of dehumanisation as the appalling initial steps to fascism that they are. But they wore nice suits, and wore their ties correctly, and wore leopard-print kitten heels, so that seems to mean they are stand-up folks in the eyes of the ‘Great British public’.
That the Tory Party hasn’t been investigated by the EHRC before now for their anti-Muslim prejudice really speaks volumes about the EHRC and whitewash (pun intended) culture within the Establishment. Of course it now becomes a handy pretext at another cut against the Johnson government. I guess – whatever works.
Ok; but let’s not pretend there isn’t a history going back to at least the New Labour years that has made this prejudice pass the ‘dinner table’ test. And that is something that every non-Muslim in Britain needs to self-examine and ask: Do you like the Britain your apathy, if not your prejudice, has contributed to? Do you understand where this is headed and the true meaning behind ‘First they came for the….’? And what are you personally willing to do to ensure the worst does not happen?
I should not have to have ‘the conversation’ with my brother about what he is to do if the UK descends into complete fascism, where Muslims have been primed to be targeted – but I have had that. Because it’s happened in Europe already, in the Yugoslav war in the 1990s. Because of Guantanamo. Because of the thousands of Irish citizens that were unfairly targeted in the 1970s and 1980s, in the name of ‘security’. Because I understand that while the target changes among polite society, people often don’t learn the patterns of the steps to tyranny. Because I lived 23 years in the UK and I understand that the very politest of polite societies can be party to some of the world’s greatest savagery – let it never be forgotten that concentration camps were a British invention. And, because while white supremacists might change their tactics according to what they feel might be acceptable – they don’t change their spots.
Understand that some things are being tested in the UK – and disenfranchising Muslims from their citizenship rights has already passed the dinner table test in the cases of Shamima Begum and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. And that your rejection of this disenfranchisement matters. You may feel that it is too much risk – I get that. A greater risk is your humanity. That takes a long while to recover. It’s possible – look at Germany. But it’s not easy.
The message regarding Nusrat Ghani is: If a Tory MP, with a life of relative privilege, can be targeted for her ‘Muslimness’ – what hope do you think other British Muslims have?
So many answers to this, but here go some brief initial thoughts on this:
‘Democracy’ probably never existed in the UK. You read that correctly. The UK is a constitutional monarchy, not a ‘democracy’ in the sense that most other European countries understand that word. It’s why, with the benefit of hindsight, a referendum like Brexit was always going to be inevitable. I think that there was never really a democracy in place in the UK is something British people are going to have to face up to, sooner or later (preferably sooner).
There is a VERY strong Establishment in the UK, starting with the monarchy down, and the electorate are very much herded in the direction of how that Establishment wants them to vote. If you are from a country colonised by the British Empire, as I am, it’s easier to see this, as a corrupt and greedy British ruling class forms a huge part of our history. It does form part of British history (the Peterloo massacre) for example, but it is not dwelt upon largely, because essentially what was in place, via the Crown and the Establishment, was more or less benign and on the surface, benevolent dictatorship – until it wasn’t.
We can kind of see a shift in the post-war period, with the setting of the NHS, more power with the unions etc. That swung back badly with the patronage of Rupert Murdoch, and essentially there has not a PM in place without his backing since the 1970s. So, a kind of invisible shadowy puppetmaster, which has suited the Establishment and the politicians he’s chosen.
In modern times, the beginning of the crumbling of this facade of democracy happened with Tony Blair flouting the UN. Bush and Blair made it very easy for global white supremacy to treat the UN with contempt. That’s the macro-political background. The micro-political background, in terms of the UK, started with the Corbyn era – whatever anyone thinks of him, it was clear he was a threat to the Establishment, on all sides. The writing was on the wall very clearly with the attempted proroguing of Parliament in September 2019, and was compounded by the Tory win in GE2019. 13th December 2019 was really the day democracy died in the UK, and it gave in to authoritarian rule. Nothing the Tories do now should be a surprise, but they on their own aren’t the only enemy to democracy in the UK – that’s the Establishment. And the English feudal system, which quietly and ruthlessly does not brook dissent.
Dismantle the Establishment, the feudal system and all its elements – monarchy, the class system, the cronyism starting in public schools that controls all aspects of society – and Britain has got a chance. However, by the time people cop that this is the big battle, I suspect that the UK will have been dismantled – this is, above all, a story of the demise of England as a world power and how it’s eating itself alive by the wealth, greed and power of an Establishment unchecked, and a populace kept deliberately ignorant of how their own political system works in the main.
The clue should have come in September 2019, where it was clear there was no written Constitution, just a series of precedents. Show me any other democracy in the world, no matter how dysfunctional/functional, that doesn’t write their Constitution down. That the chattering classes think there was a functioning democracy in the first place shows how deep this delusion goes. Like a mould-infested building beyond repair, the institutions of British society need to be torn down. Only then can real democracy – sans favour, sans class system, sans privilege – be built back better. Anything less will be inclined to crumble eventually anyway. These are desperate times, with likely worse to come for the UK – but there is the opportunity of renewal here, if only people have the stomach for it.
The issue with British politics, for a long time, is in the area of fantastical thinking. Every faction engages in it. But nowhere is it more in evidence than among the so-called ‘centrists’, the ‘sensibles’, who, at anything vaguely representing a win, seem to collectively lose all common sense, and indulge in future-casting wholly unrelated to reality.
So is it with the recent Labour hold of the constituency of Batley and Spen. It is absolutely crazy that anyone can look at that result and think that was a ‘victory’. Labour were lucky to hold on to a seat which had never been in danger since its inception in 1918 and not to lose. Their margin was reduced from 3500 in 2019 under Corbyn to 323 votes under Starmer in 2021. Starmer himself was largely absent from the campaign. The word on the ground was that it was won due to the hard work of Shabana Mahmood and Holly Lynch -and still it was a slog where it should have been a walk in the park, in a constituency with a tragic history in Jo Cox and a solid candidate in Kim Leadbeater.
And even when it wins, the Labour Party cannot help but lose. The massive own goal of showing their contempt for their loyal Muslim base shows a party hugely disloyal to their supporters, who cannot be expected to hold faith with the party if they continue on with the policy of unforced alienation. If the Forde Report didn’t demonstrate it adequately, the Labour Party as it is now seems to treat racism in a hierarchical manner. This is unacceptable.This is not a vote-winner. As we’ve seen in the by-election, contrary to Mandelsonian wisdom, voters do actually have somewhere else to go, and will, when sidelined enough.
Another issue with claiming this as a ‘victory’ is that Starmer was presumably kept away from the actual campaigning in Batley and Spen given the disastrous result in Hartlepool and how his presence there seemed to work against the party. Crowing about this being some great Labour ‘win’ and Labour being back is just puerile nonsense and amateur bravado. You can’t run a GE effectively if the leader is such a liability they have to be kept out of campaigns for fear they’ll tank.
Also for those asking, ‘Is Starmer the new Blair?’ – dear God, one should hope not. Even if only purely in terms of electoral votes.
Blair/Brown LOST 5 million votes between 1997-2010 – why would the Labour Party hearken back to that? (Yes, they won 3 elections – but Blair inherited huge support on the back of the great John Smith, which he promptly started losing once he gained power).
We are in a different political era now. A paradigm,if you wish. Neoliberalism is dead, and has been for years. The New Labour experiment was a failure, because it has rendered the party largely toothless, due to what Blair/Brown DIDN’T and DID do when they had the chance.
They DIDN’T regulate the financial sector.
They DIDN’T invest in abandoned mining communities.
They DIDN’T support the UN, but undermined it.
They DIDN’T increase equality and a level playing field in society.
They DID increase hostility towards British Muslims.
In turn they DID use neo-Crusader style language, which DID open the door to people like Nick Griffin and Sarah Palin, before Nigel Farage and Trump kicked that door down, and consequently has opened the door to white supremacists globally. Don’t believe me? White supremacists like Bannon and Trump have always been clear that Britain and Brexit have been the petri-dish for their project.
Do not underestimate the connections between the failures of New Labour to issues like Brexit -even those of us who were pro-Remain but on the left had to hold our noses, given the company of Blair, Brown, Campbell, Mandelson etc.
They DID continue on Thatcherite policy.
In 2008, they DID decide on austerity rather than censuring the banks -that was increased by the Tories, but it started under New Labour.
No one – especially not the most ardent Starmeristas – should want Starmer to be like Blair. It’s a sure vote-loser now, given all the water under the bridge. Even Blair knows this – else why did he jump ship mid-term back in 2007? He could see the direction of the voting numbers and didn’t want to be associated with those losses.
It’s clear that Starmer will stay to the next GE. He has alienated a lot of Labour core voters, and, by the looks of it, even in this self-styled ‘win’, gained no Tory ones to write home about. Batley and Spen looks more like Labour abstentions than any real gains.
So is there a way forward for Labour under Starmer? Yes, but the path is full of a lot of backtracking and humble pie. The issue is down to electoral maths – FPTP is more inclined towards Tory wins. And the Tories currently have a healthy margin.
Labour needs everyone.
To be effective, Starmer has to win back the support of the groups he has alienated over the past 15 months, including, but not restricted to: the black and Muslim communities, teachers, unions, the Left, young people. He may have to turn his back on some of his backers to do so. Readmitting Corbyn to the party and welcoming back all that great campaigning skill that has clearly gone to parties like the Greens is essential. Labour simply doesn’t have the cashflow that the Tories have to compensate for lack of footsoldiers on the ground. And, even then, that might not be enough – but to reiterate, for the cheap seats in the back: Labour needs everyone to win. Or even to form a plausible government with other parties. How can it hope to form alliances with other parties, if it can’t even form alliances internally? This is where the argument for a Progressive Alliance falls down, and badly, as far as Labour is concerned.
Starmer needs to define policy. There is no shame in using policies from the 2017/2019 manifestos – those policies were popular, and he was involved with them. Why not use them?
The idea to ‘buy British’ is a good one – mainly because it looks like the UK will have little choice but to ‘buy British’, as it is almost certain be hamstrung with regards to EU imports in the near future. Getting ready to attack the Tories on how they’ve damaged sectors in the autumn, when the vaccine bounce and football euphoria has worn off, might also be judicious.
The main issue will be with Starmer himself.He’s not a political animal, looks awkward when meeting with the public and in photo-ops and generally hasn’t performed well anywhere except in a largely empty House of Commons. It seems, from the numbers, that the more the public sees of him, the less they engage with him. So it may need a combination of reducing his appearances for those with more obvious charisma, or ensuring he always has a star performer by his side to compensate. This also was an issue with Ed Miliband.
In short: there may be a way forward. But Batley and Spen was in no way a victory or vindication of Starmerism, and no one should be claiming it as such. It was a reprieve, that is all. The right lessons have to be learned. Whether they will be remains to be seen.
There’s a post going around on Facebook about Nadia Nadim, which ends with the line: ‘If you want to show your daughter a role model, show her Nadia Nadim…. not the Kardashians.’
I’m going to be honest on two fronts:
1. I know very little about the Kardashians. I have a vague notion of them as having some sort of reality show which I’ve never seen; maybe something about cosmetic surgery which involves butt enhancement (totally could be wrong about this one); their dad being OJ Simpson’s friend; and one of them being married to Kanye West (and the only reason I’m aware of that is because of West supporting Trump). That’s the sum total of my knowledge of them.
2. This post makes me very uncomfortable. It feels like more of the patriarchy pitting different types of women against each other. And this is not what feminism is about to me.
The post starts with: ‘This is Nadia Nadim. She was born in Afghanistan. Her father was murdered by the Taliban when she was 11 years old and her family fled to Denmark on the back of a truck. Nadia has scored almost 200 goals in professional football and represented the Danish national team 98 times. She’s completed medical school and is studying to become a reconstructive surgeon when her playing days are over. She speaks 11 languages fluently and is on the Forbes list of Most Powerful Women in International Sports.’
Now look – Ms Nadim sounds hugely impressive and a great role model. Definitely someone to aspire to. BUT – and here is the big but(t) for me: One woman being really impressive does not mean it’s ok to denigrate other women. It’s another take on the Madonna/Whore complex.
Besides all of this – the post sidelines what some of the Kardashians have done. I didn’t know this prior to thinking about this post, but I found out using my good friend Google:
Again, to reiterate: I have had zero interest in the Kardashians, never seen one of their shows, and certainly never conceived that I would write about them – however, that post has sat badly with me for a few days now. I know the people posting it had the best of intentions; BUT: Do we as women need to keep falling for patriarchal divide-and-conquer BS?
There is not one ‘better’ type of woman: there is all of us, glorious in our diversity, in our humanity, in our femaleness. When one of us is elevated, all of us are inspired just that little bit more. When one of us in denigrated, all of us are crushed that little bit more too. It’s also manipulation by mainly male societal structures, including media and social media. Since time immemorial in society, women have been elevated and then crushed if they got too famous, too powerful, too loud. Essentially, if they took up too much room in the public consciousness.
Note: THERE IS ROOM FOR US ALL. We don’t have to tear each other down to get ahead. Leave that to the patriarchy. Leave them to their idiotic Darwinism, survival-of-the-fittest ethos, and let us, the other 50% of society, ensure no woman is left behind.
About 10 years ago, I was privileged enough to be at a free event in Canary Wharf hosted by Roger Black and Steve Backley, the Olympians. There were many gems from that talk about mindset training, but one of the things Black said stuck with me, apparently from an African proverb: ‘He who travels on his own, travels fastest. He who travels with others [with a team] travels farther.’
In conclusion: You can be both a Nadim AND a Kardashian. One is not necessarily ‘better’ than the other. Feminism is big enough to encompass both. Feminism is Everywoman. Division is distraction. No woman left behind.
I’ve written a bit over the years about political illiteracy. It seems like people are just catching on to this concept, including, on Twitter yesterday, the writer Otto English.
But the story of these local elections isn’t about ‘political illiteracy’ – it’s about ‘electoral illiteracy’. And that electoral illiteracy is coming from the Westminster chatterati, who refuse perennially to engage meaningfully with a political landscape that has been changing since at least the early 2010s.
Now, don’t get me wrong: Political illiteracy is a thing – granted. But the real story from Hartlepool is the abstention as protest against the Labour Party. And (besides the obvious protest at Starmer’s leadership and the decades of Labour councillors thinking that they could pin a red rose on a donkey and do relatively little in return) that’s down to electoral illiteracy on behalf of the Labour leadership and the media. Here is the evidence as follows:
1. Thinking it was a good idea to engage Peter Mandelson – if this weekend proved anything, it is that New Labour couldn’t win an election in today’s political climate. That’s not to take away their achievements; it’s to acknowledge their strategies are 40 years out of date.
2. Mandelson himself – problematic. All the over-promising with New Labour, etc. But he also said we did not need more “blue collar, working class, northern, horny-handed, dirty-overalled people” in the party in 1997. There’s a condescension there, and Starmer is in that mould. High-handed, but not high-minded.
3. Whoever thought it was a good idea to parachute in a failed candidate like Dr Paul Williams – nuts.
4. Whoever thought it was a good idea to parachute in a failed uber-Remainer candidate into the area that had the highest Brexit vote-share – insane. (And it seems like they are set to repeat that mistake in Batley and Spen, so I have to assume stupidity as well).
5. The left of the party abstained.They abstained in protest at Starmer/Mandelson’s targeting of them and silencing them in CLPs. I am hearing this time and time again from ex-Labour members. It is obvious from the Greens’ surge that they benefitted from the former membership who were there in the Corbyn era. Nowhere more so than in Bristol. The Greens were the biggest, obvious beneficiaries of Starmer’s targeting of democratic socialists, and this surge is proof-positive that progressivism is not dead in the UK – it’s just moved to a friendlier home.
Again, mistaking skill as a QC for political skill is deadly for Labour. Clinging to those who are political anthrax like Blair and Mandelson -electorally deadly. Only someone who is as ambitious, arrogant and untalented politically as Starmer is could have made this very fundamental error. Or else he’s getting paid well for his pains, because his failures over the last year have all been unforced, unnecessary errors. Starmer supporters have dismissed Corbyn supporters as a ‘minority’ – that’s as may be. But the heart is a ‘minority’ body part – I think it’s not even up to argument that the body could function without it. Plus, members who came to the party during the Corbyn era – 300,000 of them – that’s £15m they can potentially take with them. Unless Starmer has that sort of money, and the union money he’s jeopardised on top of that, this seems like a terrible and personally motivated move.
6. There will always be people who don’t fully understand political systems. That’s ok. It’s not their job to do so. And the media will always highlight them, looking to transfer blame rather than going through the awkwardness of self-reflection. It makes for better copy. But the people whose job it is to understand politics and understand the particular political climate we’re in – that’s far more deadly to democracy. Blaming ‘political illiteracy’ with all that infers (‘stupid local yokels’ – more class condescension) without examining the electoral illiteracy of those who have no excuse, by virtue of education, position, profession and privilege – seems just to be adding more fuel on the fire of class wars. And passing the buck, which again, seems to be in line with the Labour leadership’s modus operandi these days.
7. Let’s get real about this: middle class people in the UK haven’t even begun to understand how much the working classes hate them. They hate them more than the elites, because, at a grassroots level, the middle classes are the gatekeepers to working class progress. The middle classes loved Blair, for example, while he overpromised change and delivered relatively little for working class, former industrial areas that desperately needed it. As a non-Brit who is middle class but flits in between classes – this is my abiding sense. The 2016 referendum was the ultimate middle class cause and I wouldn’t underestimate how much people in these areas enjoyed the discomfiture of their more affluent neighbours. It’s not to say all working class people voted Brexit and all middle class people voted Remain – patently not true. But it seems to me that class anger was in the mix. And the Blair years fostered this. They certainly didn’t do much to alleviate inequality in any meaningful way, or else the Tories wouldn’t have been able to accelerate it so easily.
In conclusion: What this requires from those who consider themselves ‘centrists’ is an understanding that centrism is dead, and has been since at least 2013. That votes have to be earned. That an opposition party has to oppose. That areas of the country cannot be recklessly left behind without consequences. That neoliberalism is dead, and that we are not in 1997 anymore. There are good reasons that Blair jumped ship midterm, and all to do with his falling vote-share. That is why Corbynism spoke to so many people – it offered solutions that were structurally radical (for the UK – not elsewhere), that cut across class, and challenged the status quo. That’s the circle Starmer isn’t reconciling, deliberately or otherwise. And this sort of electoral illiteracy from those who should know better will cost the country dearly.
thepoliticaldiva 