Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[Athos]

London is a city of contrasts Fucking lazy drivel.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

 

[equationgirl]

London is a city of contrasts Fucking lazy drivel.

Sounds like the start of one my English essays written as a teenager.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

London is a city of contrasts Fucking lazy drivel.

'Contrasts' is indeed lazy. Nor does it do justice to the extreme levels of deprivation, inequality and structural oppression.

London is a city of intersectionality.

 

[Firky]

I was in Seattle, and I'd just come back from yet another interview for a job I didn't get, when yet again I'd been told I was a stong candidate, that I was qualified, brilliant at what I do - I am brlliant at what I do - and named runner-up. Not one of those people I was beaten by was a person of colour, and not one of them was female. And that night I dreamed that I was in my hotel room, and in walked Hilary Clinton.

 

[Athos]

'Contrasts' is indeed lazy. Nor does it do justice to the extreme levels of deprivation, inequality and structural oppression.

London is a city of intersectionality.

So is Milton Keynes.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

I was in Seattle, and I'd just come back from yet another interview for a job I didn't get, when yet again I'd been told I was a stong candidate, that I was qualified, brilliant at what I do - I am brlliant at what I do - and named runner-up. Not one of those people I was beaten by was a person of colour, and not one of them was female. And that night I dreamed that I was in my hotel room, and in walked Hilary Clinton.

Who wrote that cloo?

 

[equationgirl]

I'm brilliant at what I do, and on several occasions I've also been runner-up for positions. It doesn't mean I'm being oppressed.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

I'm brilliant at what I do, and on several occasions I've also been runner-up for positions. It doesn't mean I'm being oppressed.

me too

My mum told me

 

[Firky]

Who wrote that cloo?

PWOPA NORTY!

It's Laurie Penny talking about how she forced Hilary Clinton to finger fuck her.

Don't the Jungians say that you're meant to represent every person who appears in your dream? In walked Hilary Clinton, and she was a maid, too, like Jennifer Lopez in that movie, Maid in Manhattan. And I forced her to finger-fuck me. She wasn't enjoying it - I mean, I was practically raping her. It was like -'

At this point, Commie Girl makes a hand gesture that I can't quite bring myself to describe.

Utterly

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

PWOPA NORTY!

It's Laurie Penny talking about how she forced Hilary Clinton to finger fuck her.




Utterly

I think it was commie girl saying that...

 

[equationgirl]

PWOPA NORTY!

It's Laurie Penny talking about how she forced Hilary Clinton to finger fuck her.

Utterly

That's well old, from 2008.

 

[Firky]

Aye, I found it when I googled her bed

I think it was commie girl saying that...

Doesn't make it any less bizarre.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

I'm brilliant at what I do, and on several occasions I've also been runner-up for positions. It doesn't mean I'm being oppressed.

I had an interview about 9 months back. I'm alright at what I do...most days.Unfortunately, I get bored in interviews if they're more than 15 minutes or so. But I was a runner up for a position....5th.

 

[equationgirl]

I had an interview about 9 months back. I'm alright at what I do...most days.Unfortunately, I get bored in interviews if they're more than 15 minutes or so. But I was a runner up for a position....5th.

Are you being oppressed though? Maybe you're not getting these jobs because you're being oppressed, or maybe you're not being oppressed enough and need more oppression. It's hard to tell.

 

[Ronnie Rubashov]

Are you being oppressed though? Maybe you're not getting these jobs because you're being oppressed, or maybe you're not being oppressed enough and need more oppression. It's hard to tell.

Yeah I'm definitely oppressed. Doesn't 'intersectionality' make constant 360 24/7 oppression an inevitablility? It's everywhere...like god.

 

[equationgirl]

Yeah I'm definitely oppressed. Doesn't 'intersectionality' make constant 360 24/7 oppression an inevitablility? It's everywhere...like god.

I think it depends on your exact intersectionality...

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'm thinking the outright 'charitify'-ication of all social struggles. Making mission statements and inclusivity statements for all and any campaign, seeking funding from other masters.

As soon as a compromise deal that still shafts everyone is offered, accepting it if it is attacking an 'oppressed group' slightly less than attacking everyone else is a big achievement.
With the student occupations on Palestine a while back - as soon as token annual scholarships were offered to like 4 Palestinian students - who had already completed university there was a split. Some were 'no let's hold on longer and force some actual disclosure from university managements'. In the end those who wanted the scholarships and not total disruption of university life won out, and the 'occupations' (seizures of unused rooms in some cases) ended.

What's to stop scholarships for Somali female students being part of the official way of university life?
(I'm thinking in a higher education thing, because that's where this stuff is.)
An 'intersectional' approach says yeah Somali students in higher education are necessary they are at a critical intersection - Muslim, refugee, women. Whereas the traditional Labourist/some Marxist approach says reduce fees for all - we don't want scholarships, stick 'em.
Both sides can end up unable to agree on a common platform - so nothing is won.

I'm not sure that's true, if you look at it from the perspective of those who, at a specific place of learning, have adopted an intersectional approach. Their proxies (in your example female Somali Muslim students) don't benefit, but the intersectioneers do. The failure to achieve an outcome via their proxies in fact proves to them the successs of their analysis. They failed not because they are wrong, but because their cause was overwhelmed by the privilege exerted by others.

 

[ViolentPanda]

So is Milton Keynes.

The great thing about Milton Keyes is that the regular layout makes destruction by artillery really easy.

 

[barney_pig]

I agree with that but there is another side of that coin. Unions dominated by white working-class men, way back when unions had power and used it, had no incentive to fight for immigrants who were perceived to be threatening jobs (however counter-productive excluding them might be) or for women to receive equal access to and pay in the workplace. There was a need for the rest of the class to stick up for ourselves you know, 'specially as we massively outnumber you privileged fuckers.

The over-articulate, under-empathetic middle-class types could get that. And they dominated the discourse until everyone else fucked off and left them to it. But the pendulum doesn't have to swing all the way back to the point that it's not even possible to discuss 'privilege' in the serious parts of the left.

My partner was the only black member of a left sect. They made sure he spoke at meetings, they had a black member you see. But they only ever got him involved otherwise if they wanted drugs or dodgy gear for a benefit gig. When he raised the distinct lack of black members, he was told that class subsumes race. "Well, yeah. But doesn't that mean you should have loads of black members?"

The sniping is fun, but there's some serious issues here.

And yet those white dominated unions did fight for immigrants, like the nur members who broke the colour bar on the rail in the early 60s, or the thousands of white male unionists who fought for the grunwicks strikers.
When I was in the swap, I was the only train driver in the party, railway fraction meetings consisted of me, a half dozen tube workers and some wonks from the tssa. Working class members like me were almost entirely presented as "trade union militants" at party meetings, never as party members.

 

[sihhi]

I'm not sure that's true, if you look at it from the perspective of those who, at a specific place of learning, have adopted an intersectional approach. Their proxies (in your example female Somali Muslim students) don't benefit, but the intersectioneers do. The failure to achieve an outcome via their proxies in fact proves to them the successs of their analysis. They failed not because they are wrong, but because their cause was overwhelmed by the privilege exerted by others.

This is where it all goes floppy.

1 If the weight of privilege (solidarity from people marginally richer, paler, with better immigration status) 99 times out of a 100 - deflects and tarnishes struggles from the focused-on intersectional group, then surely the intersectional group should be left to get along with it alone.

2 Scratching my head here but the kind of thing where this has come up in any meaningful sense the past year has been benefits and claimants' action. (I'd add no one used the term privilege).
Some said a benefits group should be for benefit claimants only, with material by and for work programme and JSA. Others said no anyone should be able to join and should direct most of its material on non-claimants.
I think in the end the first option won because of practicality. But.... that doesn't mean struggles have been won - in fact it's the opposite.
2ii A privilege analysis would say the first option always, I think, and that non-claimants people in work should write leaflets and organise claimants for claimant goals, as non-voting allies in the struggle of the claimant intersection.

3. The more I think and I have thought long and hard since LP, the more 'privilege' is like a wand to wave at a leftist argument you don't like.
This what irritates about Laurie Penny - leave aside the blaming the subs, and show-off parts, the white and not so white lies.
It's A. refuse to engage with the argument on multi-culturalism that Dave Thurrock
B. accuse him/her of 'lefty-flavoured unexamined white privilege'
C. stand by the interview of tan-shop owner Tommy EDL again (as if their voices haven't been heard what with Paxman interviews, Telegraph interviews, Daily Star columns)

 

[ymu]

And yet those white dominated unions did fight for immigrants, like the nur members who broke the colour bar on the rail in the early 60s, or the thousands of white male unionists who fought for the grunwicks strikers.
When I was in the swap, I was the only train driver in the party, railway fraction meetings consisted of me, a half dozen tube workers and some wonks from the tssa. Working class members like me were almost entirely presented as "trade union militants" at party meetings, never as party members.

A colour bar that was instigated by workers originally, no? Has there been much militant union support for female pay equality in workplaces that have more male than female workers? How is the struggle for equal pay going?

As for the SWP, that's exactly what I'm talking about. The dominance of middle-class activists fetishising the working-class without ever being part of it. That's what the middle-class left does.

 

[SpineyNorman]

She gets everywhere. Saw this video on a blog I look at now and then. It's of a meeting in New York and an absolute masterclass in how to fuck up a potentially interesting forum discussion - the moderator spends a self indulgent 20 minutes asking questions that one suspects add up to his personal views, then only gives the speakers 10 minutes to respond to the 20 minute long questions

But Laurie asks a question at 1.37.30 - fair enough to ask why all the panel were white males but why ask the panel? It's hardly their fault.

 

[Lo Siento.]

A colour bar that was instigated by workers originally, no? Has there been much militant union support for female pay equality in workplaces that have more male than female workers? How is the struggle for equal pay going?

Actually, in all my research on post-war trade unionism I've seen no evidence of trade unions demanding a colour bar, beyond the occasional isolated local official. TUC's official policy is opposition to racial discrimination from 1955 Congress.

You can certainly argue that trade unions didn't do enough to combat racism, but arguing that they instigated colour bars is historically inaccurate.

(as to pay equality, there's several instances where largely male workforces supported women's pay claims and the opening up of employment opportunities to women - Morris Cowley and Ford Dagenham being two examples off the top of my head)

 

[butchersapron]

She gets everywhere. Saw this video on a blog I look at now and then. It's of a meeting in New York and an absolute masterclass in how to fuck up a potentially interesting forum discussion - the moderator spends a self indulgent 20 minutes asking questions that one suspects add up to his personal views, then only gives the speakers 10 minutes to respond to the 20 minute long questions

But Laurie asks a question at 1.37.30 - fair enough to ask why all the panel were white males but why ask the panel? It's hardly their fault.

They mostly live there. If that's all she has to offer the debate ,then fly me out there Laurie.

 

[ymu]

Actually, in all my research on post-war trade unionism I've seen no evidence of trade unions demanding a colour bar, beyond the occasional isolated local official. TUC's official policy is opposition to racial discrimination from 1955 Congress.

You can certainly argue that trade unions didn't do enough to combat racism, but arguing that they instigated colour bars is historically inaccurate.

(as to pay equality, there's several instances where largely male workforces supported women's pay claims and the opening up of employment opportunities to women - Morris Cowley and Ford Dagenham being two examples off the top of my head)

I didn't say the unions demanded the colour bar, I said the workers did.

I know there are instances where female pay equality has been supported. How often has it been entirely neglected?

I can't work out if the unions were even involved in this case. All the reports I can find make it sound like a private legal action. Was it?

 

[butchersapron]

Unison were yes.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Unison were yes.

Indeed, all the public sector unions have been nationally.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

I didn't say the unions demanded the colour bar, I said the workers did.

I know there are instances where female pay equality has been supported. How often has it been entirely neglected?

I can't work out if the unions were even involved in this case. All the reports I can find make it sound like a private legal action. Was it?

Unison are quoted at least once in that article.

 

[Lo Siento.]

I didn't say the unions demanded the colour bar, I said the workers did.

Well, both statements are equally wrong. I mean, there's plenty of evidence that individual workers objected to working with immigrants, but there's no record that comes to my mind of workers taking collective action to enforce a colour bar (I've a dim recollection that there might have been one brief incident on the buses in the West Midlands at some point in the '50s), nor even of it being demanded.

Any workplace that operated a colour bar (and again, to my knowledge, the conscious formation of such workplace discrimination was not as common as you might imagine) in post-war Britain did so because management was hiring that way, either out of their own prejudice or often because of their projected prejudice (rightly or wrongly) on to their workforce ("I'd love to hire a black, but the lads wouldn't have it").

Put it this way, in The Making of the Black Working Class by Ron Ramdin, which is certainly a book that would've pulled no punches on such practices had they existed, makes no accusations of the above sort whatsoever.

I know there are instances where female pay equality has been supported. How often has it been entirely neglected?

By whom? In comparison to what? Unions have done more for female pay equality than probably any other type of organisation. Certainly a great deal more than cross-class feminist groups ever did

I can't work out if the unions were even involved in this case. All the reports I can find make it sound like a private legal action. Was it?

Well, it's based on an agreement between the government and the trade unions. So, yeah.

 

[Lo Siento.]

and all of the above is not to suggest that either trade unions, or union activists and militants have always done brilliantly in combatting racism and sexism at work. In fact, what they achieved in spite of their shortcomings (in contrast to the meagre achievements of many of their critics), rather illustrates the point that whatever the issue, class unity and sharing a common purpose has proved way more effective than dividing ourselves off into special interest groups.