This is the text of a leaflet Socialist Party members will be distributing at Pride events happening before the general election. If you agree and would like to help spread a socialist alternative to LGBTQ+phobia then get in touch: visit www.socialistparty.org.uk/join
The Tories will be kicked out before Pride season 2024 is over! And for LGBTQ+ workers and young people this is a huge cause for celebration.
The Tories pledged that they would fight the election on “culture wars and trans issues”. That won’t save Sunak and Co from a kicking at the ballot box.
Their vile lies won’t distract anyone from the fact the Tories have no solutions to the huge needs in society – from ending poverty, to stopping war, to consigning LGBTQ+phobia and all discrimination to the dustbin of history, or providing a future for all young people.
But whipping up bigotry and division can still impact our lives. Getting rid of the Tories won’t end the need to fight for LGBTQ+ rights.
That’s also because, unfortunately, a Starmer ‘New Labour’ government is not going to act in the interests of the working-class majority and cannot be relied on to deliver the rights and services we need.
At this year’s Prides the Socialist Party is offering ideas for the discussion in our community about how we organise to fight for LGBTQ+ rights after 4 July.
Many will understandably be hoping that anything has got to be better than the Tories. Hate crimes based on sexual orientation were up by 112% in the five years to 2023, with a 186% rise when it comes to hate crimes against trans people.
We also cannot forget the impact of all the Tories’ other disastrous polices, felt not just by the LGBTQ+ community but the whole working class; anti-union laws, anti-protest laws, more than a decade of austerity leading (sometimes literally) to crumbling services, homelessness, and millions relying on food banks.
But Starmer’s Labour cannot be trusted to transform this situation. Starmer has been anything but firm on trans rights. And the untrustworthiness of Starmer’s Labour goes beyond U-turns on support.
For example, the Tory reign has left our NHS without the staffing and resources to meet all our needs. But rather than commit a Labour government to public funding of a massively increased and improved health service, including gender affirming services, shadow health minister Wes Streeting has committed to continuing the role of private profiteers in the NHS – a huge factor in its current disastrous state.
The biggest enthusiasm for Starmer’s New Labour comes from big business bosses – the capitalist elite. For example, the party’s ‘business conference’ was sponsored by HSBC, and was packed with bankers and city executives. This reflects how the majority of the capitalist class want a Starmer-led government, because they are confident it will act in their interests not the working class’s.
Attacks on our living standards
When faced with so many attacks on our living standards and rights and no mainstream party fighting for us, it can be easy to think things are hopeless but everything we have won has come from fighting for it!
The film Pride has immortalised the potential for solidarity between LGBTQ+ and workers’ struggle, and showed how trade unionism was a factor in changing social attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people. Marriage equality, support services and the healthcare we have weren’t gifted to us by benevolent politicians but came from struggle and campaigning.
A fighting trade union movement is going to be essential under the next government. So is building the LGBTQ+ rights movement. But it is also vital that the working class starts to create its own political voice.
This election does represent an opportunity to take steps towards the kind of party we will need under a Starmer government. It is positive that Jeremy Corbyn has declared he will stand as an independent.
The potential exists for a bloc of workers’ MPs being elected, who could, from 5 July, articulate the demands of the working class in parliament, including on LGBTQ+ rights.
Fighting for workers’ interests
If Jeremy Corbyn and others are elected, it will immediately pose the need for the trade union movement to start discussing how to build a party that fights in workers’ interests. The Socialist Party is fighting for every possible step towards this.
This includes standing candidates as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, an electoral coalition which aims to enable trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists who are fighting for a new mass workers’ party to stand candidates against pro-austerity establishment politicians under a clear banner.
Part of fighting for LGBTQ+ rights is therefore the fight for workers to organise and fight in all our interests, including building a new mass workers’ party. To liberate humanity from the misery of capitalist crisis, including LGBTQ+ oppression, means fighting for a socialist programme, a democratic socialist plan of production based on the interests of all.
- See the Socialist Party’s LGBTQ+ charter at socialistparty.org.uk/LGBTQcharter2023
