Political Parties

5 Apr 2016

Oppression – You Keep Using That Word, but it Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

Teachwell Gender, Political Parties Feminism, Prejudice, Sexism, University 0

Am I the only one tired of hearing the word “oppression” being thrown around like confetti? It was inevitable that there would be a cry of oppression in response to @oldandrew’s post yesterday (‘Is promoting women really the issue?’). In the age of the social justice warrior, how much one is a “victim of oppression” corresponds with one’s self-worth.

What is oppression though?

Definition (s):

Prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority.

The state of being subject to oppressive treatment

Mental pressure or distress

(Source: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/oppression)

According to the Geneva Convention, cruel treatment includes: torture, humiliating and degrading treatment, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health. Humiliating and degrading treatment includes lack of food, water or medical treatment. The idea that anything other than a tiny minority of women in this country are facing oppression on a daily basis is preposterous. While there are women who are the victims of domestic violence, assault and rape, the idea that all women are oppressed because of it is the worst kind of bandwagon jumping I can think of. Neither are the majority of women subjected to anything like cruel treatment day in day out like they are elsewhere.

Spare me the lecture too, I witnessed domestic abuse as a child and don’t think the genuine suffering of those women should be hijacked by a group of virtue signalers. Neither am I going to waste my time trying to trick myself into believing that I have it just as bad or worse than women in the past. I actually do have better things to do than twist reality so that I can throw myself a pity party.

We live in a society where legally no one is allowed to rape anyone else. I can already hear the “but the system is not perfect” being thrown back at me via the computer screen in a high pitched shriek of social justice warrior anger. I have some sympathy for that. However, the idea that any system can be perfect is part of the problem with the exaggeristas among us. They really do believe that there exists a utopia where there is no rape, no domestic violence, etc. As much as I hate to admit it, there is no cure for any of those things. The best we can do is ensure there are no legal loopholes, that victims know they can go to the police and that the justice system works effectively and is held to account for any poor judgements by the press. We can reduce but not eliminate the issue entirely.

Most change is slow and incremental but it is happening, and great gains have been made. A hundred years ago, I doubt many women would have reported a rape to the police, much less expect the rapist to be sentenced. Chances of being packed off to an asylum would have put off many.

What do most women in the Britain face? Some, and I do mean some, women face discrimination in their lives or at work. Not all, not all to the same extent and not all for the same reasons. Each generation faces its own challenges and has to meet these. It is narcissism of the worst kind to think that all human beings who lived before oneself should have figured out every problem so one can live in a utopian dream.

As for the third definition – mental pressure and distress – well the only distress I can see from those who claim oppression is the one they are causing by tying themselves in knots trying to prove they are oppressed in the first place.

The meaning of a word does matter and if we want to be taken seriously then let’s use the correct words and not words that sound dramatic. If your cause is just it doesn’t require you to exaggerate the nature of it.

This post was originally published on the Labour Teachers website.

5 Apr 2016

Labour’s Divine Right to Exist?

Teachwell Political Parties Labour Party 0

Deborah Mattinson’s article on the report she was asked to undertake by Harriet Harman after Labour’s defeat in the May 2015 elections, is illuminating. It goes to the heart of the matter and as she concludes, no party has the divine right to exist. Yet this is precisely what the current leadership is counting on. Despite our losses in Scotland, and being squeezed by UKIP, there is a tendency to assume that Labour will always be an electoral force because, in our living memory, it has been.

Yet our own history and success was built on the demise of the Liberals in the early 20th Century. To forget this is navel gazing in the extreme. That we would rather ignore the people who didn’t vote for us but did vote in favour of those who did not vote at all, even to spoil their ballot paper, is going to cost us.

In yesterday’s Guardian, there appeared an article stating that Labour faces losing all of its seats in the Scottish Parliament and faces losses in the local elections. This is a profoundly disturbing situation, especially as this is not a stance external to the leadership but resulting from it.

The Labour leadership need to get real. Usually opposition parties do well, not badly, in local elections, even if that is not then translated into national elections. What is happening if as an opposition party we are losing seats? When in government, this is put down to the unpopularity of policies. When in opposition, it is due to the public perception of the party, and it shows we are held in lower and lower regard by some of our traditional voters and by centrist voters.

Mattinson quotes one voter from Croydon, who states:

‘Labour talk with more empathy but it’s hard to tell if that is what they really think. They aim to do good, but I’m not sure if their policies will work out in the long run.’

This is actually the kind of voter who we should be able to bring onside with clear, well thought out policy stances. It is also the kind of voter who, while impressed by John McDonnell’s call on the government tax deal with Google, will nevertheless remember him brandishing the little red book.

We need to stop thinking that in 4 years’ time there will be a conversion of the masses to the Labour Party due to Corbyn, et al, which short term losses won’t affect. The fact is that we have no evidence to support such a claim and the idealistic stances taken by Corbyn do not have a wide appeal beyond equally idealistic non-voters who may wish to choose to vote in 2020. And it is a choice. If the numbers were so great, then there would be a surge for Labour in England, not a predicted 7% loss in seats.

I also think we need to have realistic policies that people can get behind rather than vague principles. Corbyn has tied his own hands on this one though. By insisting that the members and NEC sign off on policies, it makes it harder for him to say what he is behind. It could be that this year’s party conference clarifies this, but it will be too late for the local elections.

We do not have a right to be a political force in the Britain, we do not have the right to remain as one of the two major political parties, we do not have the right to even be the main opposition party. As the Liberals learnt to their cost, there are some political realities that have to be acknowledged, understood and acted upon in order to ensure the political survival of a party.

After 4 successive defeats in the 1980s, it seemed that we had learnt this lesson, which makes the current situation all the more ludicrous. History is revised to such an extent that Michael Foot’s defeat is seen as a success in contrast to Blair’s success which is seen as a failure.

The question is: Will the lessons of losses in the local elections be heeded any more than the lessons of electoral failure last year?

This post was originally published on the Labour Teachers website.

5 Apr 2016

Why Ambition is Not a Dirty Word

Teachwell Education Policy, Political Parties, Progressive Education Labour Party 0

The far left have always taken the working class vote and support for granted. Where it has not been forthcoming there is the classic ‘false consciousness’ to fall back on. If only people knew where their real interests lie, goes the argument, they would not resist or oppose a socialist agenda or society. The working poor are used to garner sympathy for their ideas of creating a utopian society as well as reviled when they do not act and behave as expected.

One of the greatest issues Labour faced in the 1980s was how to win back the support of the more ambitious and mobile working class voters. This group is usually ignored or treated with contempt (Harry Enfield’s Loadsamoney was a typical example of someone from an estate, with no taste, boorish but with cash to flash).

Yet there have always been those members of the working class who have endeavoured to improve their own circumstances using the means they have. Be it learning new skills, adapting to new workplaces, working hard in jobs they may not want while aspiring to those they do, as well as doggedly improving the circumstances of their children. This is what drives an illiterate man like my father to take his children to the library every fortnight for years. It is why my mother never let us of the hook for misbehaving at school or resorted to blaming teachers for our failings.

It would never have occurred to them that their children would fail because of their income. And now, as all three of us head towards our forties, it seems even more absurd. All of us went to university; I went twice. There are diplomas and certificates as a result of further training and education. The one brother who did struggle at university and dropped out, has worked steadily throughout his life, despite times of unemployment. Which is why I find myself baulking at bleeding heart liberals who inform me that poverty needs to be sorted in order for poor children to flourish. Of course, no doubt, they will claim I don’t understand the poor they are talking about, but, coming from people who are basing their ideas on stereotypes, I feel it is prudent to ignore such arguments.

Many don’t fit the narrative of hard-working but down-trodden, unable to make changes to our circumstances, bitter and angry at institutions that have let us down. While the far left were reviling Norman Tebbit (who, to be fair, said some revolting things), there were working class people moving around the country, learning new skills and some even went abroad to work. That is no criticism of those who for one reason or another did not have these options open to them, but it does give a different picture of this group in society than the one that middle class lefties like to portray. It shows how important equality of opportunity really is.

Structures matter, but so does action. Action does not require structures to change first, it is the cause of change in itself. It is the failure to grasp this and the way in which working class people have improved their circumstances that eludes the current Labour Party. Working class people, like all people, do not have to vote according to theories written by middle class revolutionaries. Neither is it true that they have always fared better under socialist or left wing governments. If we really want to win this group back, then we need to learn that being aspirational does not mean being greedy or selfish. Wanting a better life for oneself or one’s children, does not mean that the person is less than someone who can’t or won’t for whatever reason. Ideas alone do not give hope, we need real, pragmatic and realistic proposals in order to ensure that, even if we don’t win back voters from this group, we certainly do not lose them in the next election.

This post was originally published on the Labour Teachers website.