Issue 174 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published April 1994 Copyright © Socialist Review
We support complete equality for gay people and demand an end to every form of discrimination including the age of consent. We loathe the hypocrisy of Tories who harp on about traditional morality and 'family values', while 'doing all the things they told us not to.'
None will disagree so far with Regan Kilpin in his 'TalkBack' article (March SR). However, Regan then questions whether any legal age of consent is defensible, and concludes 'an age of consent... is of no use today.' By what steps does he reach such an extraordinary and mistaken conclusion?
Firstly that sexual relations must either be consenting or they are exploitative and secondly that any particular age of consent must necessarily be somewhat arbitrary since young people don't develop towards the 'adult' ability to consent at the same rate.
So, as Regan says, it could be difficult to agree if a 12 year old girl (or boy?) can 'fully understand and independently consent to having sex with an adult.'
The answer to such difficult questions for Regan does not lie in 'a magic age of consent', but in dealing 'individually' with particular cases and circumstances. Who should do this Regan doesn't say (magistrates? judges? doctors? social workers?). I wouldn't welcome greater discretion for the judges in cases of alleged rape or sexual abuse--far from it. But that's not the main problem with his analysis.
He completely misses the inequalities of power between adults and children under capitalism. Children are the only age group in society who can be physically assaulted with the backing of law and custom--even if that 'right' has been increasingly confined to parents alone. Earlier, of course, both teachers and coppers were more or less officially entitled to hit children.
Because children are subordinated to their 'elders and betters' they do need protection from sexual abuse and exploitation; we have to support laws that regulate sexual access to children. Lest there be any doubt, I know through my job (social work) of sexual relations between an adult man and a girl only 18 months old. The fact that in a society freed from alienation and oppression we can expect all human relations to be utterly transformed doesn't contradict at all the need for children to be protected now.
Socialism can and will end the specific oppression of children. It is the interests of capitalist exploitation and 'labour discipline' which insist--ultimately--that children must learn to respect authority, to have their autonomy curtailed, and to have their natural curiosity and their spirit stifled. Philippe Aries' fascinating book Centuries of Childhood shows not only how the particular oppression of children is specific to the rise of capitalism, but so also is the idea of a 'childhood' itself. It presents us--in short--with one further instance of the necessity of socialism for human emancipation.
Richard Purdie
Keighley
I was amazed to read the comment by Wayne Hall (February SR) that Zhirinovsky differs from the fascists of the 1930s because he 'does not question the multi-party framework'.
To say this about Russia at the moment, where last September Yeltsin abolished the constitution and dissolved a democratically elected parliament, would be bizarre. But to say this about Zhirinovsky, who in an election broadcast last December called for the dissolution of all political parties, the banning of strikes and demonstrations, is just plain barmy.
This is a man who is seeking to build a parliamentary youth organisation, 'Zhirinovsky's Eagles'. Until recently their paper was edited by people who were at the same time members of a smaller and openly Nazi organisation, and carried an article titled, 'The theoretical basis of National Socialism', as well as calling for 'a new racial genesis' and other vile fascist rubbish.
Socialists should not waste time trying to invent new words such as 'hypernationalist' for people like Zhirinovsky. There is already a perfectly adequate word--fascist.
And to believe we can rely on people like Yeltsin and Gaidar to fight the Nazis would be a disaster. Yeltsin has recently called for reconciliation with Zhirinovsky, and Poltoranin, a minister and leader of Gaidar's party, made openly anti-Semitic remarks on television.
Thankfully, socialists do not need to rely either on the Russian government, nor on the Communists, who are part of the red-brown alliance alongside the fascists, to fight against the Nazi threat in Russia. Recent polls show support for Zhirinovsky dropping, and the possibility of a wave of strikes, which is terrifying the ruling class at the moment, could force the right to retreat.
Nicolai Gentchev
Moscow
Kevin Ovenden, in his obituary of Derek Jarman (March SR), is right that the overwhelmingly gay content of Jarman's work meant that it 'remained largely ghettoised'. Kevin is also right in saying that as a result of this ghettoisation Jarman 'could offer no coherent alternative society'. However, despite this, his critiques of capitalist society, both past and contemporary, were often astounding.
Jarman was a visual artist as well as a film maker. His montage piece, 'Imperial Dreams--Material Nightmares', which has a picture of Queen Victoria beneath broken glass and symbolic moths, not only borrows language and concepts from Marxism, but also cuts against the traditional 'Englishness' to which Jarman himself aspired.
Kevin states that Jarman's films 'often became quite impenetrable'. However, even at his most obscure in content (The Garden) and in form (Blue), he always managed to be powerfully meaningful--for example in the absolutely horrifying scene in The Garden in which cops tar and feather two gay lovers.
Jarman was not, of course, a revolutionary socialist, but neither was he a narrow gay separatist. Indeed, only his Aids condition prevented him from speaking at the Socialist Workers Party's Marxism 92 event.
As Kevin Ovenden says, Derek Jarman despised the Tories. It was, therefore, quite stomach turning to read David Mellor's 'salute' to Jarman in the Guardian. Mellor boasted of spending an 'absorbing half hour' by his sick bed. All this proves is that Jarman's chief fault was a tendency to be too polite. In his last film, Blue, he makes perfectly clear what he thinks of Mellor and his kind: 'Charity has always allowed the uncaring to appear to care... so the rich and powerful who fucked us over once fuck us over again and get it both ways.'
Derek Jarman was as artistically progressive as he was politically. Now that he has gone we must defend his work from the accusation that it was too obscure to become truly successful. His work was sidelined by a homophobic society which knew no other way of dealing with his commitment to gay liberation. After all, anyone capable of master works as accessible as The Tempest and Caravaggio can't be accused of persistent obscurity.
Mark Brown
Glasgow
No, not all Ulster Protestant workers are Loyalists. Surely that much must have been obvious long before now? But does that mean that they would believe in a united Ireland? Not at all.
To do that they would first have to become socialists and then understand the necessity of Republicanism from that standpoint. Manfred McDowell's letter (February SR) showed clearly how he had reached the former but not the latter.
It used to be that those Northern Protestants who were active socialists argued in favour of retaining the link with Britain because of its bigger and stronger trade union organisation. Nowadays they speak, sensibly enough, of wanting to stay within a country with a National Health Service and unemployment benefit.
But if we were to ask ourselves if a united Ireland would be of any benefit to the mass of people who have nothing at all, the resounding answer would be yes.
The border doesn't just run across the rain sodden fields from Derry to Newry, but through the minds of the working class: so much so that it hamstrings the struggle for socialism to an almost impossible extent. Whenever people fight to improve their lot the most important battle to win is with your workmates and other sections of the working class--across all divisions. Look at the past history of workers' struggles in the North of Ireland and you will see how on every occasion Loyalism to the British state equals loyalty to the ruling class and division in our ranks.
It is understandable but wrong that socialists should find it abhorrent to have any alliance with nationalist politics. Yes, in Ireland we will attack the bourgeois politics of both, but we will still gladly make the choice of allying with Republicans over Loyalism.
However, while we may agree with Republicanism in so far as it confronts the ruling class, the freedoms for which we fight go further and require a completely different form of struggle. As many working people as possible have to be openly involved in arguing, demonstrating and participating in the most democratic way possible. We want control over our economic, political and social destiny. No sell out, no compromise, no nationalist, racial or religious bullshit. We want it all.
Laurie McDowell
West London
In the March issue of SR I read about a recent strike against United Parcels Service in the US. This was very interesting to me because I also work at UPS. Neither I nor any of my colleagues has heard anything about that strike. We face the same problems of ever intensified exploitation.
Beside the problem of higher weights to handle there are other grievances. At the end of last year UPS reorganised work in the Cologne Hub so that the same or even more volume as before is now on the conveyor belt in a shorter time. Generally we now have to work three hours at night non-stop and with less overtime than before, and so of course also with less pay. In addition our January salaries were not paid on time because of an alleged technical problem with the new system. This means that many workers who had to pay their rent had real problems, while UPS made big profits by paying all their European workers late.
Unfortunately we were not able to do anything about it. There is not even a bureaucratised trade union and no factory council here. Most of us only work for three to four hours a night so there is little opportunity to talk to one another. Please could you send me the address of any of the organisations involved in the strike so that maybe the next time the necessary information could be spread immediately.
A German socialist
Cologne
Ipswich Borough Council seems not to like the unemployed or disadvantaged. This explains why it is spending less (£0.74 per head) than other comparable East Anglian towns (Norwich £2.32 and Cambridge £2.98 per head) in creating new jobs this year.
Now it plans to build up to 200 houses on the site of the Bramford Lane Allotments. The biggest single identifiable group of the 190 or so people who will lose their plots in favour of private houses is that which needs an allotment the most: those on a low income, the unemployed and pensioners.
The signs are the council is beginning to regret the move. The allotment holders' committee is proving to be an unexpectedly vigorous opponent and both local MPs are publicly on its side. A pity the same can't be said about the Labour councillors most closely concerned.
The ruling Labour group has had one electorally damaging dispute by deciding to build on the airport. Now a bright planner has landed the group with another.
The council is already showing signs of weakening due to widespread opposition. Let's hope, in the spring, the pensioners and unemployed can dig the plan in as part of their compost.
Joanne Earley
Ipswich
I was pleased to read John Baxter's recent enthusiastic review of Lewontin's book, The Doctrine of DNA (January SR). It is indeed a fine book to use in countering the 'human nature' arguments socialists often come up against.
However, Baxter also reduces much of the discussion to an attack on 'reductionism' in science. Here I think we must be careful, for there is another set of arguments involving science which socialists need to counter. Some people argue that the whole scientific approach is of limited use and cannot explain anything complicated.
Some environmentalists, for example, reject science as being inherently destructive, and some feminists see science as irredeemably patriarchal and oppressive. I think that it is important for socialists to clearly argue that it is the misuse of the fruits of scientific inquiry which is the cause of problems, not the scientific method and philosophy itself. The essence of science is knowledge about the material world, tested through experiment and experience. It is only through such knowledge that we can understand how this world works, and how to affect it.
Bill Spence
West London
We welcome letters and contributions on all issues raised in Socialist Review. Please keep your contributions as short as possible, typed, double spaced if you can, and on one side of paper only.
Send to:
Socialist Review,
PO Box 82,
London E3 3LH