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SWP expulsions and squabbles

How about this then, from a friend and comrade on his FB page
"Had an unpleasant altercation with Steve Hedley on todays housing march. As a legal observer I've been assaulted many times on demonstrations but never before by the Assistant General Secretary of a major trade union. As for my opinion that he did batter his former partner Caroline Leneghan. It is unaltered by arguments like "hold me to fucking account will you"" (from 31 Jan)
 
charlie mowbray said:
How about this then, from a friend and comrade on his FB page
"Had an unpleasant altercation with Steve Hedley on todays housing march. As a legal observer I've been assaulted many times on demonstrations but never before by the Assistant General Secretary of a major trade union. As for my opinion that he did batter his former partner Caroline Leneghan. It is unaltered by arguments like "hold me to fucking account will you"" (from 31 Jan)
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In fairness , and I know the person your talking about well and consider him a mate, but what did he think the repercussions of holding a public meeting called "what's to be done with SH" would be? Real life ain't the internet!
 
charlie mowbray said:
How about this then, from a friend and comrade on his FB page
"As a legal observer I've been assaulted many times on demonstrations but never before by the Assistant General Secretary of a major trade union. As for my opinion that he did batter his former partner Caroline Leneghan. It is unaltered by arguments like "hold me to fucking account will you"" (from 31 Jan)
Click to expand...

I fucking hate people who try to put an equals sign between having abuse shouted at you and being assaulted. Yes getting verbal abuse is unpleasant and sometimes frightening depending on the context. Yes it definitely shouldn't be used when interacting with people at a political event. However it it NOT the same as physical violence and to imply that it is, as this person does, is dishonest as fuck.
 
leyton96 said:
I fucking hate people who try to put an equals sign between having abuse shouted at you and being assaulted. Yes getting verbal abuse is unpleasant and sometimes frightening depending on the context. Yes it definitely shouldn't be used when interacting with people at a political event. However it it NOT the same as physical violence and to imply that it is, as this person does, is dishonest as fuck.
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Drawing a line between what is violence and what isn't (e.g. "physical" vs "non-physical", as you are) is almost impossible. Psychological violence and emotional violence exist and can be far more frightening, traumatising and damaging than physical violence. Often of course they go together which makes neat definitions impossible, but it certainly isn't "as dishonest as fuck" to overlap the two.
 
Limerick Red said:
In fairness , and I know the person your talking about well and consider him a mate, but what did he think the repercussions of holding a public meeting called "what's to be done with SH" would be? Real life ain't the internet!
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The person in question has got a lot of things he needs to be "held accountable" for. More dangerous and fucked up than hedley could ever be
 
leyton96 said:
I fucking hate people who try to put an equals sign between having abuse shouted at you and being assaulted.
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Actually, this is totally within the compass of the legal definition of assault. Fear of imminent attack is all that's necessary for someone to be assaulted. Assault occasioning actual bodily harm or grievous bodily harm is another matter.
 
Our legal observer probably felt affronted that SH would not submit one of his ridiculous accountability processes.
 
charlie mowbray said:
No, it's not dishonest at all. Hedley took a swing at him, other people including some RMT people pulled him away. Do you think this is a way to behave?
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If he did take a swing at someone then that's wrong and I'll withdraw the remark about him being dishonest. My reading of it was that there was verbals with SH and he was making out this was an 'assault'
I still stand by my annoyance at equating verbals with actual assault. It's on a spectrum of anti-social behaviour with things like pre-meditated murder on the most extreme end. Whether it's at the mild or extreme end it's unacceptable but that doesn't mean it's right to blur the distinction between different types of anti-social behaviour.
 
co-op said:
Drawing a line between what is violence and what isn't (e.g. "physical" vs "non-physical", as you are) is almost impossible. Psychological violence and emotional violence exist and can be far more frightening, traumatising and damaging than physical violence. Often of course they go together which makes neat definitions impossible, but it certainly isn't "as dishonest as fuck" to overlap the two.
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Exactly, and what you're saying is entirely consistent with the findings of research studies into domestic violence.
 
leyton96 said:
I still stand by my annoyance at equating verbals with actual assault. It's on a spectrum of anti-social behaviour with things like pre-meditated murder on the most extreme end. Whether it's at the mild or extreme end it's unacceptable but that doesn't mean it's right to blur the distinction between different types of anti-social behaviour.
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They're clearly very different things (verbals vs - e.g.- punching) but they are (depending on context) both perfectly capable of being acts of "violence". One of the many ironies of the the position apparently taken by Sisters Uncut (i.e. that any act of physical violence against a woman by a man is some kind of whole-new-level-of-taboo and that any man who has done this must be outcast - ?for ever?) is that emotionally and psychologically violent men are often the most dangerous to women in terms of long term outcomes & physical violence is not necessarily a marker for this - weird controlling men who end up killing women are very rarely directly violent until they "lose" the woman.

But I can understand the reluctance of a simplified "ultra-feminist" position in looking too closely at this because once you allow complexities like "emotional violence" or "psychological violence" into the debate then of course women are perfectly capable of inflicting this as easily as men (maybe more easily?) and that makes things complex (which I think this topic is).

For the any left perspective in general surely an essential part of that is seeing that "violence" is often structural and invisible? Reducing it to punching etc is essentially conservative I think.
 
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In terms of domestic violence I wouldn't differentiate between physical and psychological violence but i'd define abuse as being patterns of behaviour (rather than isolated incidents) and having a particular motive and effect (to gain power and control). Otherwise, on the one hand as co-op said, you end up dismissing really dangerous situations of psychological control as not seen as serious abuse, while on the other, if you equate single incidents of physical and verbal violence, this can be manipulated to abuser's advantage (she nagged me until i lost control) and just muddies the waters even further.

While i don't deny that women are capable of being violent assholes (and abusers), i still think don't think that a definition of abuse that includes psychological violence in a context of behavior patterns/motive/effect makes women as likely to be abusers of men as men are of women, simply because domestic violence against women is part of wider structural violence against women. Surely you're more likely to want to gain power and control in your relationship or family if you're surrounded by cultural messages saying that you should have power in that context, and will find it easier to do this if society has already done some of the work for you?
 
crossthebreeze said:
.

While i don't deny that women are capable of being violent assholes (and abusers), i still think don't think that a definition of abuse that includes psychological violence in a context of behavior patterns/motive/effect makes women as likely to be abusers of men as men are of women, simply because domestic violence against women is part of wider structural violence against women. Surely you're more likely to want to gain power and control in your relationship or family if you're surrounded by cultural messages saying that you should have power in that context, and will find it easier to do this if society has already done some of the work for you?
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I agree and I shouldn't have said "more easily" of women and emotional violence, I do find it hard to post accurately on BBs sometimes as it's easy to throw a casual phrase out without thinking about it in depth. My point was to argue that this is a complex subject, I'm not trying to push some MRA bullshit.

The wider cultural messages that tell men they ought to control "their" women definitely underlie much violence against women.
 
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