Valerie Coultas, a socialist feminist with more than forty years of activism behind her charged with "heresy"

[IwantToRetire]

What happened in Lambeth on the 2nd of March was not a political disagreement. It was a trial. The accused was Valerie Coultas, a socialist feminist with more than forty years of activism behind her. The charge was heresy. The inquisitors were the assembled representatives of the SWP, AWL, SP, ACR, and WP, clustered in the proto-branch of Your Party like sediment at the bottom of a glass, controlling between twelve and fourteen voting delegates and deploying them, with the practised efficiency of people who have done this sort of thing many times before, to bring down a woman whose only crime was to think carefully.

What had Coultas said, exactly? She had said that socialists must challenge far-right divisions and unite all oppressed groups. She had said that women, as a class subject to male violence, have a legitimate interest in feeling safe. She had said that trans people also need to feel safe, and that the task of serious socialists is to reconcile those rights.

This is not bigotry. It is not even controversial. It is the kind of patient, materialist thinking that the British left once regarded as its most essential characteristic.

For this, she was publicly denounced as a transphobe on the branch WhatsApp group. For this, she faced a motion of no confidence. For this, she very nearly lost her position as Vice-Chair by a margin of one vote, 21 to 20, after a process that Stuart King, the now-resigned branch Chair, has described without exaggeration as heresy-hunting. He resigned. Coultas, having seen the vote and read its meaning clearly, resigned too. That two of the branch’s most experienced and committed organisers felt they had no choice but to walk tells you everything about what that meeting had become.

Full article https://labourheartlands.com/the-inquisition-comes-to-lambeth/

The Salem trials all over again: social contagion, fervent belief in fanciful nonsense, self-promotion, accusing anyone who challenges the fanciful nonsense of being a witch, the accused must repent or face being cancelled/ social death.

“Is the Labour Party to remain a democratic party in which the right of free criticism and free debate is not merely tolerated but encouraged? Or are the rank and file of the party to be bludgeoned or cowed into an uncritical subservience towards the leadership?”

Wow, I didn't know Foot said that, this totalitarian streak has been in Labour for a long, long time then. 🤔

I appreciate everything VC said and has probably done for women over the years but she helped create the party that just kangarooed her out of the door, so good job. 🤯

Thanks to the link to the web site though, I'll think I'll read more of what he has to say, he sounds like my kind of leftie.

As some of the illustrations with the article imply, yes Salem Witchunts.

But also how this purity purity is just made. Or in fact indicates that many parties actually dont have policies, but just soapbox declarations.

She wasn't / isn't even questioning the politics of TWAW. She was just saying women's rights should also be respected.

And for that she is put on trial.

God they sound like such a sad bunch of bores. Valerie - yer better than that lot !

Another excellent article from Paul. Glad you investigated his articles.

Didn't investigate! But it popped up on a feed.

I was going to try and find the FWR about the other article but not had time.

The OP is a report of a witch hunt in the Lambeth branch of Your Party not the Labour Party.

Everything TheywontletmehavethenameIwant said is true and does not necessarily indicate that she has confused the Labour Party with Your Party. Which seems very unlikely given that she has mentioned that Valerie Coultas "helped create the party that just kangarooed her out of the door" - not the Labour Party.

As the article says,

"Michael Foot wrote those words in Tribune in 1954. He was not predicting the future. He was issuing a warning. Seventy years later, the warning has been ignored, and not only by Labour. It has been ignored by the very people who would claim Foot as their own."

Paul Knaggs in his ‘Labour Heartlands’ blog so often puts into words how I feel about the left these days.

And he has excellent sources as well as a way with words.

Excellent article. I’ve not come across this blog before and will look out for it now. VC sounds like an impressive woman. And I’m very pleased the chair and the individual members have stood by her. Well done all.

A great read. If only more socialists were prepared to discuss rather than bring their closed minds to meetings.

If freedom means anything at all it means being able to tell people things that they may not wish to hear.

George Orwell.

Whilst the issue of freedom of expression is obviously important what this is about is back door decision making:

The inquisitors were the assembled representatives of the SWP, AWL, SP, ACR, and WP, clustered in the proto-branch of Your Party like sediment at the bottom of a glass, controlling between twelve and fourteen voting delegates and deploying them, with the practised efficiency of people who have done this sort of thing many times before

And the reality is that not just the usual suspects as list above, but that deals are done in all parties often not based on a committment to an issue but to create a bargaining point for when they want their interests to be promoted or adopted.

I would like to say women are excluded from this sort you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, when we have seen in the Labour Party and the Greens, women who are all to willing to conspire against other women in their party. And guess which women get promoted or platformed.

It sounds like the game plan for the 'special' interest groups as well, it's how they came to have so much power in so short a time

"..with the practised efficiency of people who have done this sort of thing many times before"

It is almost sweet the way that the 'anti-conspiritorists' conspire to prevent the advancement of a Socialist argument.