'We are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us'
Jo Cox MP, 1974 - 2016
It has been seven months since my last blog, and this specific one I've been putting off all week in the interests of keeping things personable between myself and some of my comrades, because things have got quite heated and I partially agree with two completely conflicting perspectives. It has taken me quite a few days to get my own opinion coherent enough to write about.
Earlier this year, The Rebel Without A Clause took off significantly after I took part in a protest at a Bristol venue called the Jam Jar in defence of the Gender Recognition Act (if you don't know about this feel free to read my blog about this protest, as well as the exclusive interview with a trans rights activist that I conducted mainly to answer some of the questions I was receiving on social media). I don't know quite what it is about this subject that gets people so worked up. My readership is tiny (I'm lucky to get over 200) and yet for this brief period it reached into the thousands. I had a heck of a lot of contact, both on here and on Twitter, some of which was very supportive, some of which was quite abusive, but I did my best to take it all in stride and respond as politely as possible.
Just over a week ago, our protest was featured in a documentary on Channel 4 called Trans Kids: It's Time to Talk, which included a featured interview with me (I confess I have only seen the parts of the documentary that I'm in - I hear it's really not very good and contains a lot of erasure about trans and non-binary issues, but here is the On Demand link if anyone wants to watch it). I think that I myself came across quite well, but the protest generally was naturally edited to look a lot more violent than it actually was, which is of course to be expected if you're a left-wing activist. Shortly after this programme was broadcast, another featured activist, Esther Betts (whose identity was obscured at the time) has written an article in the Guardian identifying herself, openly regretting and apologising for her actions and suggesting that we use a different approach to achieve this goal. Having read the article, I think Esther makes several extremely compelling points. This article has provoked a very, very wide range of responses from both trans rights activists and from people opposed to what we do. I'll go into more detail about that later, but suffice to say that on both sides there are people applauding Esther, and people who utterly condemn the way she has handled this. There are activists feeling she has betrayed them, and TERFs (and I myself still use that word freely) feeling that this apology is not genuine and only an opportunistic attempt to capitalise on being portrayed in a negative light on national television.
As someone quite involved, I've been questioning myself as to how much I agree with what Esther writes. The first question to answer there is: do I myself regret my actions at that protest?
The short and simple answer, no.
Not even slightly.
There are two reasons for this. The first is that although other activists may have had a different agenda, my protest was not really aimed at the speakers (I really don't consider certain people such as Venice Allen, who was asked to leave a Labour Christmas party for transphobic behaviour towards the first transgender women's officer, to be worth my time or energy fighting) but at the venue. I felt providing a platform to Allen and others of that ilk was counter-intuitive to the Jam Jar's aim of supporting and promoting grassroots culture and creativity - which in my view is about allowing people to be themselves, free from the sort of persecution that certain invited speakers have been known to precipitate. I had myself witnessed one particular organiser, Matthew Strange (who I had known and got on well with prior to this), speaking in an extremely arrogant, dismissive and patronising way to concerned individuals, and to me. I think it is certainly possible to have a reasoned discussion about sex and gender, but this was not it as it was clearly intended to prioritise a certain intepretation, and Matthew himself did not seem willing to take on board other points of view.
The other reason is that I've been a left-wing activist since I was 17, on many different issues. Things can get very heated at protests, and if you attend as many as I have you develop your own moral code. There is a line that I don't cross - for example, there's a chant that commonly comes up at anti-austerity demos: 'Build a bonfire, build a bonfire, stick the Tories at the top; put Labour in the middle and we'll burn the fucking lot.' I choose not to take part in this particular chant, because I think threatening to burn people alive, even if it is tongue-in-cheek, does not put across the message that I want to put across. I'm quite a peaceful activist, but I am still an activist. I'm not cool with threats of violence, but when circumstances demand it I am cool with damage to property, civil disruption and breach of the peace. I've stood outside supermarkets that stock products sourced from warzones shouting into a megaphone, and I'd do it again - because a minor bit of disruption to someone's shopping is worth it if it means customers are educated about what to avoid, and supermarkets are incentivised to take a stand. But I don't think anyone has ever felt frightened for their personal safety because of me, and that is where I draw the line.
At the Jam Jar protest, I don't think I crossed my self-imposed line at all. For most of it, I stood outside with a banner, talking openly to people and explaining my reasoning, and my exact words if anyone asked if I was preventing people going in were, 'We respectfully ask you not to.' At a later point I was part of a large crowd that forced its way past security to attempt to gain access to and disrupt the event. Had I managed to gain access to the room, my protest would have been much the same as how I behaved outside. I should mention that Esther mentions in her article that there were plans to let off a smoke bomb; I need to make clear that I was not made aware of this at all, and would not have played any part in that. I wasn't watching Esther at every second of the demonstration; she may well have done something that broke her own moral code, and if so it's at her discretion to apologise for that. I do not feel that I did. I'm proud to be a Trans Rights Activist, and would do the same thing again if I thought it was important.
So I think it's clear that I firmly disagree with quite a lot of what Esther says in her article. I think there's an indication that confrontational protest achieves nothing, and I utterly refute that. The rights we have now did not come without a struggle, and nor will the ones we don't have come easily in the future. Having said that, I don't really have much of a moral issue with her having written it. This seems to be quite a problem for a lot of people - as I said at the start, Esther has faced signficant levels of criticism for this. Read any comment thread, and you'll see numerous accusations from TERFs claiming that Esther's apology is only damage limitation because she was caught out on TV, and is a thug crying crocodile tears to fool the gullible (these tend to be the ones who use the wrong pronouns for her). But it's not just from political opponents - a lot of the negative reaction has been from fellow trans rights activists, including some good friends of mine. I spent quite a long time talking to a friend and comrade of mine, who felt utterly let down by this; who had considered Esther a close friend, and now feels that she has sold out everyone who was at the Jam Jar and let down the cause. Although this is not my feeling, I can relate; if one thinks back to one's schooldays, I think everyone can remember how it felt when your best friend ditched you for the school bully. I don't actually think that was the intention, and I think that trying to find some common ground with your political opponents can be a constructive thing - but if those people have threatened you and try to find out where you live, then on a personal level an ally trying to get on with them is quite a bitter pill to swallow and feels quite backstabby.
So I see and sympathise with both sides, and as a cisgender man I'm probably not qualified to say who is right. However, what really annoys me about this is that they cannot see one another's side. And to me, that is the problem here. The left-wing activism community is really close-knit - most of us know each other, if not in person then by reputation, and the word 'comrade' is thrown around in a way that it isn't in any other field. There's good reason for this; we need each other. We need to discuss strategy and ideas, otherwise we're not a collective, we're just a bunch of individuals shouting at the world because no one is listening. And in a collective, not everyone will think exactly alike. It's hopelessly naive to think that everyone who believes in the same ideals as you will have the same methods as you - as above, I spoke about moral codes. Some activists are a bit more confrontational than I am, some are a bit less so. I respect them whatever, and talk to them openly to try to create a better world. Because even though I may disagree with them on certain things, they are still my comrades, and I'd rather they were with me than against me (or worse, discouraged and sitting at home with the XBox).
We live in a world that is utterly divided, on every level. Two and a half years ago, a week before a referendum that split this country down the middle, a wonderful Labour MP was murdered because of her ethics, kindness and empathy. I've shared a quote from her at the top, which was true when she said it and it's true now. The fallout from 2016 still hasn't abated, and my frustration about Brexit goes way beyond Leave vs Remain; it's not about what people believe, but about why they believe it. We should not have had a referendum that was split right down the middle, because ultimately our frustration is the same - we're all sick of the exploitation of this world, but instead of dealing with it we're fighting amongst ourselves about who has caused it. And it's for this reason that I cannot stand left-wing activists fighting amongst themselves. Guys, we're on the same side. Our methods might be different, but we want to achieve the same goals. There are enough people out there who hate us, and are forcing us to fight them - why are we wasting time fighting amongst ourselves instead of dealing with the problem?
My position, which probably disagrees with both people I've been talking to, is that protest is not the antithesis of dialogue. Protest is the moment when you take to the streets, to show the world how angry you are - and that's important. Dialogue is the moment after that, when you talk to whoever will listen to you and reach a conclusion that suits everyone - and that's important as well. It's not a binary, either/or, mutually exclusive choice. They work together, and if some people choose to prioritise one area more than another, we should support them and help them, even if our own skills are better somewhere else.
Dialogue + protest = activism.
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