LGBTQ

The Morning Star (linked to the Communist Party of Britain) has been forced to apologise for printing a transphobic cartoon by Stella Perrett, published in the print edition of Tuesday 18 February.

The cartoon depicting a slavering, slithering crocodile ogling terrified and defenceless newts and invading their “safe space” with the excuse that the crocodile is “transitioning to a newt”. The cartoon is grossly offensive, showing trans people as predatory and deceitful and cis women as weak and in need of protection.

As the cartoon circulated online, trade union LGBT+ groups began to organise

• See also this on LabourList by Christie Neary

The Labour Campaign for Trans Rights, founded by transgender and non-binary Labour members in order to advance trans liberation through the Labour Party, launched on 11 February with a set of pledges for leadership candidates.

The proposed reforms of the Gender Recognition Act were a step forward against trans oppression, but also began a debate which brought deeply reactionary views into the public discourse, including within the labour movement.

The comrades involved are right that trans liberation should be an aim of the Labour Party and that

On 10 February, the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights (LCTR) constituted itself as an online presence and released a launch statement and a series of 12 pledges for Labour supporters to sign up to.

This is a campaign launched by trans and non-binary Labour Party supporters with the aim of shifting the terrain within the party on the question on trans rights, educating activists on issues of transphobia and bigotry as well as seeking to shift Labour Party policy on support for trans rights and on issues around trans healthcare in particular.

The campaign only exists in online form as it stands,

Labour must break from triangulation on trans rights

The Labour manifesto’s wording on trans rights is a result of triangulation on the part of the Clause V meeting that drew it up.

On the one hand, the manifesto calls for a commitment for the reform of the GRA in order to demedicalise the process of application for a Gender Recognition Certificate and the amendment of birth certificates to correspond with gender identity. This is a policy supported by a broad base of Labour Party members and strongly amongst young activists in the party. On the flip-side, the manifesto also calls for a

In Solidarity 498, in March of this year, I wrote a review of an article by Joni Alizah Cohen in which she drew upon Moishe Postone’s work on the basis of the extreme Nazi iteration of antisemitism and compared this to the way the Nazis themselves as well as the contemporary fascistic far-right rationalise their hatred of transgender people.

She argues that there is a common basis in what she terms abstractions. Jews represent “abstract” financial capital as opposed to the “concrete” industrial capital, whilst the trans woman represents the embodiment of the “abstract” gender vs the “concrete”

The entrance of former Respect party leader Salma Yaqoob into the contest for the Labour candidacy for West Midlands mayor is causing a bitter row within Momentum and the Labour left as a whole throughout the region.

In principle, the idea of a female ethnic minority candidate is attractive. But Yaqoob’s record makes her a highly problematic prospective candidate.

There are many aspects of Yaqoob’s record that have caused concern, but the most obvious is her campaign, as an independent candidate, against Labour’s Naz Shah in Bradford West at the last general election in 2017.

Now, Shah –

Graham Hellawell has died, aged 55.

Supporters and members of Workers’ Liberty may well remember Graham from when he took an active and leading part in the Campaign for Free Education in the mid-1990s.

As President of Huddersfield University Students’ Union, Graham helped to set up CfE. For a while the Campaign was a very large force inside the National Union of Students battling against the Blairites’ attempts to ditch free education policy.

Graham was also active in Unison, in health campaigns and in the fight against racism and fascism. In the 2001 General Election he stood as a Socialist

Crucial reforms to facilitate basic trans rights have been kicked into the long grass by the Conservatives.

Amendments to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) would have simplified the process for trans people to legally change gender. The current process is long, difficult, expensive, degrading, and excessively medicalised.

Transphobic attacks — almost half of which were physically violent — have trebled in the last half-a-decade. The amendments would not stop these, but are a necessary part of unambiguously standing up for trans rights. Trans people also face horrifically high rates of mental

A further series of unpleasant attacks on left activists aligned with Workers’ Liberty took place at the Lewisham Momentum meeting held on Wednesday 14 August.

The most serious incident at this Momentum meeting was that Bill Jefferies of Ladywell ward, Lewisham Deptford CLP, physically attacked me. He hit me on the chin and grabbed my throat, in the hall outside the meeting room as the meeting was breaking up. He is 10cm taller and 40kg heavier than me.

I’m okay, as always. But my chin still hurts and there’s a mark on my neck.

The witnesses to this incident were Tom Harris and Rob Robertson.

The end of the First World War meant the end of the Kaiser’s rule. The attempted Socialist revolution in Germany in November 1918 and the accompanying wave of strikes forced Kaiser Wilhelm II, as well as all 22 monarchical princes of the German federal structure, to abdicate.

From this it was not the revolutionary socialists, but the social democrats that took power. They established the Weimar Republic, with an SPD (German Social Democratic Party) majority in the Reichstag. It was at the establishment of this republic that, with a vibrant gay and lesbian subculture, the Institut für