I’ve always admired KJK (and donated to her in the past) for sticking her neck out and making it happen for women and generally not taking shit in a very aggressive atmosphere towards her. Her thought provoking, striking projections, billboards and public meetings and the coverage they get are needed to advance a GC message to the wider public.
Just as much as the people slugging it out on X are needed or the bloggers or the columnists and the activists, the people talking at the school gate or work or hobby meeting, the experts from different professional fields, the journalists, the service providers, the academics, lawyers, and the politicians in Parliament. It’s all needed. I thought KJK’s trips to America several years ago were fine and she was the first to test the waters with trying to engage everyone to come in the tent to talk about women’s rights going out of her way to include those on the right. Good.
I don’t support this approach though if it’s either indiscriminate or not being clear about what’s changing and that that is in effect becoming discrimination in a particular direction.
To remain UK LWS as it initially said on the tin, people shouldn’t be able to be there to signal other issues or give the views about other issues, and doing that should be strongly rejected by LWS.
its not blaming a woman for the actions of men of they were to reiterate that a) any women of any view can come but b) the sole topic is women’s rights and that has to be the focus. C) your views will likely be challenged whatever they are. D) men have to fuck off (unless they are say, a carer for a woman attending or her kids).
So waving a flag or wearing a political or national symbol that isn’t a women’s rights one should be out. Because it’s a distraction from the important issues at hand which don’t get enough women being together with women airtime. This all becomes more urgent to enforce particularly since the disorder at the free speech Tommy Robinson and Musk event in the summer in London. It is divisive and threatening to have England flags at LWS events since the flags being put up in neighbourhoods in the UK which signal racist turf claiming, since then this will rule out completely a lot of women who would otherwise want to come to LWS and speak for fear of racist aggression or attack on themselves or on anyone else.
If people come without symbols to LWS events and then talk about women’s rights which includes their racists views then that’s part of public meetings and is to be expected in the current climate. Nobody has the right to support for their personal views. Everyone else has to hear them at such an event but they can also challenge them. Obviously nobody can incite violence etc. There have to be strict rules. They must stay on topic.
The strength of the GC movement has come from women of all political sides coming together on one single issue. KJK has contributed to building that strength.
But widening that to accept hot button political issues that are not laser focused on one issue- women rights- will change the LWS demographic attending.
The alternative for KJK is to rebrand as ‘Let a right wing woman speak with the focus removed from being only on women’s rights’. Then the power of that original LWS concept is lost and a different power gained which looks much less likely to advance women’s rights. But that’s up to her, it’s her party.
The left wing and centrist GC movement needs to also respond to these changing times and provide an alternative explicitly inclusive of all political angles set of women’s rights meetings, very carefully moderated to be genuinely inclusive. Sadly I bet this won’t happen because it’s very intensive on resource and time and fending off aggro, though I would love to see it happen. KJK was originally doing something amazing just on the power of her own personal gumption and that isn’t easily going to be replicated.