Why should these women, or any woman, restrain their anger or sweeten their bitterness? Children have been seriously harmed because those same women were ignored — granted not only by Labour politicians, but the women in those parties are right to expect that theirs are the politicians who should most apologise, because they turned a blind eye and a cold shoulder to the left-wing women who still did not desert them for doing so.
I think any request for women to restrain such angry outbursts shows a level of class prejudice and snobbery. Working class women, for example, are often categorised as not being very clever or strategic when they express anger, as though they are too lacking in intelligence to restrain themselves. The suggestion being that spontaneous anger is a limited and limiting response. It is unfair to say women are right to be angry about what has happened but “not that angry” or “not like that.”
Isn’t it the case that incandescent rage splattered over social media gathers the attention of politicians in a way that a privately furrowed brow and a stern letter does not? Likewise, feeling hopeful and grateful at the first sign of political breadcrumbs scattered in the direction of women, is not the same as dragging them into the open and making them apologise and commit to firm and concrete reparation of harms done. Honest righteous anger yields better results sometimes, than quiet, patient strategic waiting, which might not. Some women won’t accept breadcrumbing, until they are sure the Labour loaf won’t be mouldy come the General Election. Permit them their rage.
Part of a much longer article at https://thecritic.co.uk/a-labour-of-unrequited-love/