Civil liberties, justice, crime

Free Sarah and change the left

Ryan ( Solidarity 682 ) is right to advocate that “Sarah Jane Baker should be released immediately”. Claureen also poses some good and important questions. He then ignores existing answers to these questions; instead throwing out a handful of straw men. In the article that Claureen replied to, and in both call-outs at Workers’ Liberty events for the campaign for Sarah’s release, the operative part of the speech was criticised. What she said in it — “if you see a TERF, punch them in the fucking face” — was wrong. More on that below. Claureen requests that “[i]f we say parole was really revoked...

Only Yes Means Yes

New sexual consent legislation came into effect in Spain in October 2022 – “La Ley de Garantía Integral de la Libertad Sexual” – stating that sexual consent must be explicit and cannot be assumed to have been given. Previously, victims of sexual abuse, harrassment and violence had to prove violence, threat of violence or coercion, or demonstrate that they had resisted the perpetrator. Under this new law, popularly known as the “Only Yes Means Yes” law (“La Ley del Solo sí es sí”), various lesser crimes have been recategorised as sexual assault. A range of behaviour that previously was not...

Jina Mahsa Amini, one year on

September marks one year since the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian-Kurdish woman who was killed in detention following her arrest for allegedly violating Iran ’s compulsory hijab law. Her murder sparked the most significant protests against the Iranian regime since the 1980s and the strength of the uprising prompted the Iranian regime to take the notorious morality police off the streets. CRACKDOWN It has been confirmed that more than twenty thousand people have been arrested and hundreds killed in the subsequent crackdown, with the real number expected to be much higher. Sentences...

Free Sarah Jane Baker!

Sarah Jane Baker is now on a hunger and liquid strike in Wandsworth prison. As well as being charged under the Public Order Act 1986 (for violent language, for which she has publicly apologised, in a speech at Trans Pride), Sarah has had her parole revoked from a previous life sentence from crimes over 30 years ago, and faces an utterly disproportionate risk of indefinite jail time. Her first demand is to be moved to a female jail. She had been housed on the vulnerable prisoners’ wing with male sex offenders. They were inappropriately touching her, making transphobic and intrusive comments to...

A letter to some comrades

If we think Sarah Jane Baker should be released immediately, as I do, we say and campaign for that. We are not in solidarity with the speech that got her parole revoked or on her convictions. If we say parole was really revoked for reasons other than those stated, say what they were. But you seem to make little of the punch-in-the-face speech. You describe it excusingly. But I understand that the speech had a very large circulation on video. Why do you do that? Surely from someone with her convictions the speech can’t be taken as meaningless, to be indulged. We may think and say the recall is...

Free Sarah Jane Baker

Sarah Jane Baker is currently a political prisoner. On Wednesday 12 July 2023 she was arrested because of a speech she made at Trans Pride (8 July). In it she said, “If you see a TERF, punch them in the fucking face”. It was not a helpful thing to say, and she has publicly apologised for it. It was said in anger, to be outrageous and to give confidence to her audience. She didn’t imagine that anyone would actually act on it. Since her release from prison in 2019 Sarah has never been violent to anyone. She has been the victim of transphobic assaults and harassment but has never retaliated. The...

Report indicts spycops, but 40 years on

The report from the first tranche of the UCPI or “spycops” enquiry has concluded that the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) of the Metropolitan Police should have been disbanded in 1968. Retired judge Sir John Mitting has concluded that the infiltration of left-wing organisations and campaigning groups from 1968 to 1982 could not be justified. From 1968 to 2010 at least 139 officers were sent to infiltrate groups predominantly those on the left. There is little evidence, even in submissions from some of the undercover cops, that they ever encountered any action that posed a threat to public...

Jailed for getting an abortion

On 12 June, a woman, Carla Foster, was sentenced to 28 months in prison for obtaining drugs to induce an abortion after the legal term limit. After taking the medication, she experienced complications and called 999. Police were called to her hospital bedside. Currently, the legal limit on having an abortion in England, Scotland and Wales is 23 weeks and six days, as per the Abortion Act of 1967. The maximum sentence under the The Offences against the Person Act, which applies in cases of illegal abortion, is life imprisonment. Compared to countries around the world like Poland and the US, it...

Sheffield, Manchester, Brighton: students fight clampdowns

At the time of writing the statement organised by the Student Cost of Living Campaign calling on the University of Sheffield to drop ongoing investigations and proceedings, and end the use of private investigators against student protesters, has 350 signatures. The last Sheffield University Student Union Council passed a motion passed condemning the securitisation of campus, the university’s disproportionate response to activists, and the intimidating environment it created. We’re still waiting, however, for public statement from the Student Union, or from its officers, on the recently...

Punishing families is no cure

Darren Rodwell, the Labour leader of Barking and Dagenham council and parliamentary candidate for Barking, has threatened to evict council-tenant families not working with the police over knife crime. “If your child is involved in an incident and knows who the perpetrators are, and refuses to speak out, we will look at reviewing your housing agreement,” Rodwell said. “Everyone must play their part in stopping these crimes. As parents, it is up to us to know where our children are, and that we play an active role.” He added: “If families know their relatives are linked to crime, they must speak...

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