Lily M standing as women's officer again

knick yes periods are transphobic unless periods are a way in to stick two fingers up at women who have periods.

Somewhat baffled at that speech since that individual stated an aim in previous women's post to separate women from biology. That speech definitely suggests that there's something about women's bodies that impacts on women's lives, which kind of massively contradicts the previous stance. If TWs in political posts actually worked to represent the group they wish to join I'd be all for them.

Re rules: in a group I organised, I have dealt with a trans member on several occasions expecting the standard rules for all members not to be equally applied to them, and my insisting that the rules (like no members spamming people's inboxes with memes, advertising or political material) applied equally to everyone led to tears, drama, accusations of 'micro aggressions' and 'transphobia' and many flying monkeys. Issues with boundaries are a huge part of this whole mess.

Pom Bear Excellent post on the use of words and 'vile transphobia' - thank you.

(Sorry am catching up with the thread here)

Agree BettyDuMonde

I personally think we should be working towards political representation that is more reflective of modern Britain and that includes transpeople, but simply lumping Transwomen in with women isn’t the appropriate way to do it.

I think looking at % of population we wwill end up with Transwomen over represented and Transmen and women underrepresented. I wonder why that might be?

I am very happy for the people of Lewisham, especially the women, that they will have a very hard working, amazing Women's Officer in Gill. Congratulations Gill.

My only experience of compliance is that they move very slowly - we had a member who was saying dreadful and untrue things about our woman MP and it took multiple member reports (inc local cllrs and party/trade union officers) to get compliance to act.

Sorenipples I’m clinging on because I know locally Labour is the best option (and we have some semi-secretly terfy woman councillors) and i’ll be damned if I leave it to be totally overrun with fuckwits. However, I respect the women that have left due to these issues, and in particular, the light Ann Sinnott’s resignation threw on Cambridge council.

However, my MP has a comfortable majority, so I may well end up writing ‘woman - adult human female’ on a GE election ballot 🤫

This is kind of making me want to join labour, so that it isn't lost to the crazies. But not necessarily vote for them. And I wouldn't canvas unless I believed in them. So not sure they'd really want me.

Thanks Telesilla. I can only echo Betty. Utterly shocking Lewmo deleted them, showing any criticism of or debate LM or her policies is not tolerated and that they as an organisation or at least as a social media account have a no real interest in improving lives in their consituency.

I wonder, was this reported to compliance? What did compliance make of it?

Thanks for those, Telesilla - so glad you saved them.

How Lewmo can justify deleting important comments like these under the banner of protecting LM from ‘transphobia* is beyond me.

BettyDuMonde - sorry I forgot to post the replies! Here they are.

That’s exactly what I have posted up thread, Tiger - i’d like to know how Lewisham momentum decided who to back - my group would’ve polled the local members and would be able to back that up with figures on request (ie 60% of the membership participated and the vote split was blank/blank).

Mom should’ve checked the registered addresses on their own database, and labour should check members at the door (non resident members can usually visit as guests with permission of the chair, but will not have meeting voting rights or be eligible to stand).

Yeah kindof ironic that the central party are trying to parachute in a middle class male who has no track record or connection to the constituency over the head of a local woman who has spent 10 years tirelessly campaigning.

It's almost exactly the scenario that women's officers and AWS were brought in to try and prevent.

As an outsider, Betty, what amazed me was a tweet from someone at ward level about the ward meeting saying that Momentum HQ phoned through a list of the delegates people were to vote for, most of whom then turned out not to be registered to addresses in the ward/constituency. For a longstanding activist, member of Momentum, already living in the ward, that must have been a right kick in the teeth.

Similar seems to have happened with Momentum instructing people who to vote for at the Women's Meeting. Gill is a member of Momentum and by any objective measure far better qualified to be the Women's Officer than LM. So why didn't she get the backing from HQ?

I'm afraid this is the kind of thing that puts me off Labour Party politics altogether. (I'm sure the other parties are no better.)

Yes! I think Thain’s reply was also excellent, from (middle aged) memory?

Hullo sorenipples and BettyDuMonde - I screenshotted that thread and I think this is the post you mentioned. Really good points.

I think so!

The labour rule book is pretty dense and impenetrable and I tend not to pay much attention to the bits that aren’t relevant to our area (and we use the other option, an ‘all member’ system) but yes, as far as I can tell, Lewisham and Deptford work on the delegate system and you cannot contest an executive officer position unless you are already elected as a delegate.

Gill is a delegate through her branch and was eligible to stand for WO. Lily had the chance of winning a women’s forum delegate place, which would entitle Lily to run for WO.

Lily failed to win that delegate place and became ineligible as a candidates for WO and thus, never got to do Lily’s WO speech.

I don’t know what the alleged ‘agenda change’ was, but it seems to me that any change to the order of the meeting might’ve been to enable Lily to have the opportunity to stand (ie, if the WO position was voted on first, Lily wouldn’t have been able to try for a delegate place and then stand for WO, Lily would’ve simply been shit out of luck).

Normally you elect a new chair first and they chair the election for the lower positions.

I’m sure this is well annoying for LM has has moved from a much smaller branch, working on a less complicated system, it it looks like Lily’s participation in the elections was actually given more support and consideration than mandated by the rules, rather than less.

Sounds fair enough to me, Lily I imagine, thinks rules should change to suit Lily.

This response to that Sarah's tweet is funny.

I can't follow it fully, Giles, but a procedural thing which Betty explained above about most of the constituency party business being handled by a committee to which active members can be elected. I think they're the delegates. If you aren't a delegate you can't be the Chair of the Women's Forum. LM failed to be elected as a delegate, first of all at ward level because of technicality around not being registered at an address in the ward or constituency, and then at the meeting because other people were preferred. Hence not eligible for election as Chair of the Women's Forum.

Is that right?

What rules weren't followed?

I tend to keep my thoughts about Lily Madigan to myself as I sense they’re not entirely in control of events and, when the wheels come off, I don’t want to be the one feeling bad about something I said.

I have no such compunction about Jack I-know-what’s-best-for-women-better-than-they-do Jackson whose tweet epitomises everything I have come to despise about the Labour Party over the last 40-odd years.

Yes, I saw that post. It also talked about the systemic ways that make women more likely to live in poverty than men and how the Labour Party should be working on those root causes, not just giving out tampons (the equivalent of treating a symptom, not a disease).

If anyone screenshotted that thread and can find the comment, I would like to read it again!

That speech is much too literate for Madigan to have written it.

Rules are for little people! LM did tweet something about being 're-appointed' as Women's Officer, which was an odd choice of words. Seems not to grasp that each constituency is separate. Not a good sign in one doing a Politics degree.

So LM didn’t follow correct procedure, so couldn’t enter the election?

Lm and their supporters are so bloody arrogant they don’t even think to follow the rules!

A good point indeed, sorenipples (ouch!).

There was a really interesting post about period poverty in the area that got deleted from momentum Facebook page. Claiming in many cases the issue wasn't purely finances (as value brand products are cheap and often adequate ) but an issue of financial abuse, where the men control thr household budget but don't prioritise woman and girls.

I'm not disputing that for some it is a simple matter of finances, but it did highlight to me how simplistic Lily's "I'll bring a box to every meeting so you can donate products and make me look good" solution is.