For equality, against bigotry

In the midst of the Tory leadership candidates baiting each other to move even further rightwards on trans rights, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves gave an interview to the Times in which she appeared to move away from support for transgendered people’s rights too. There is a lot else to criticise in the interview, which may be worth returning to, but most of it basically affirms that Reeves is not at all left-wing – which we knew. In contrast she has previously made relatively good comments defending trans rights, at least recently as September 2021 . As often with these kinds of interviews...

Hundreds of left-wing feminist activists and over fifty organisations in fifty five countries around the world (so far) have signed this appeal launched by organisations in Ukraine. You can read the original, with information on who has signed, here . You can add your or your organisation's name at that link or here . This article on the LeftEast website explains the problems with the other manifesto this one criticises at the start. And this one by UK organisation Feminist Fightback gives some useful background and links to Ukrainian feminist organisations. We, feminists from Ukraine, call on...

100-200 people took part in a trans rights demo in Bristol on Sunday 19 June, protesting the transphobe “Posie Parker”. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, who goes by a pseudonym “Posie Parker”, is one of the UK’s most well known “gender critical” — transphobic — "feminists". As well as proudly self-identifying as a “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist”, she has well documented linked to hard- and far-right activists, to influential anti-abortion activists from the religious — anti-feminist — right. A demonstration called by “Standing for Women”, a hate group Keen-Minshull founded which has the sole...

The question of who black American actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson was in anything beyond general outline hovered at the edge of my mind for several years. Earlier this year I googled for a book and found Australian journalist Jeff Sparrow’s No Way But This: In Search of Paul Robeson . I recommend it. It’s not a straight biography. Sparrow travelled to various parts of the US, Spain, London, South Wales and Moscow to engage with episodes and aspects of Robeson’s life (1898-1976), and a lot of No Way But This consists of his conversations with experts and activists in those places. At...

For some reason there was not much coverage on the left when Newcastle council leader Nick Forbes was deselected by local party members in February. This despite the fact that Forbes is (was) the most senior Labour Party figure in local government, leader of the Labour group in the national Local Government Association. He has been a Newcastle councillor since 2000 and council leader since 2011. Nonetheless, he lost his ward selection vote 13 to four. The Labour right in Newcastle has been trying to deny party members their democratic rights in selecting council candidates; activists have been...

Home Secretary Priti Patel is not just a very right-wing Tory. She is also an admirer of, with close links to, the far-right, Hindu-chauvinist BJP government in India. 230 UK Sikh organisations have signed a statement of protest after it emerged that last November Patel gave a speech to the right-wing Heritage Foundation in the US – in which, after attacking ISIS and four white nationalist organisations, she said: “Sikh separatist extremism has also caused considerable tension in recent years”. (The speech is proudly republished on the UK government’s website.) Sikh religious fundamentalism is...

Amid the hijab row, students from different communities walk together to the Government Girls Pre-University College in Udupi, Karnataka Our report last week on the very important state elections in India (results 10 March) discussed the far-right BJP’s doubling down on anti-Muslim agitation in Uttar Pradesh (UP). Last week Hindu nationalist students in UP began agitating for the hijab head-covering won by some Muslim women to be banned on college campuses. Undoubtedly there will be similar campaigns beginning in other states. This is an extension of right-wing agitation in the southern state...

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and his comrade, fundamentalist monk and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath Starting on 10 February, the giant Indian state of Uttar Pradesh - population over 230 million! - is voting in crucially important state elections, in a major test of how much last year's victorious farmers' struggle has pushed back India's far right. The left and labour movement in the UK should be paying much more attention. Many farmers’ leaders are vocal about their desire to drive Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government from power. In March 2021 much of...

Protesters burn an effigy of Uttar Pradesh's chief minister, fundamentalist monk Yogi Adityanath, after the gang rape of a Dalit woman, October 2021. Effigies of Adityanath were also burnt during last year's farmers' struggle During the year-long farmers’ movement which humbled India’s far-right government in 2021, forcing repeal of its pro-corporate agricultural reforms, many farmers’ leaders were vocal about their desire to drive that government from power. In March 2021 much of the movement’s leadership went to West Bengal, target of a huge campaign by prime minister Narendra Modi’s...