Meeting held on Monday 16th January 2023
10 people welcomed two new members of the group. Two people gave their apologies.
We were concern about the attempt by right wing supporters of Bolsinaro to overthrow the recent election of Lula in Brasilia. As with similar attempts by Trump in US and by right wing factions in Germany, how should democratic forces respond? But perhaps we should recognise that forces of democracy in US, Brasilia and Germany have not been overcome by factions.
While there was some similarity in UK, with Johnson’s suspension of Parliament in Sept 2019, we saw our main problem to be the right wing nature of the press. Furthermore, recent policies by Tories to extend police powers and further limit effective strike action, represent further anti-democratic forces which must be resisted. Similarly with new rules which require photo identity checks for voting, which discriminates against the poor. Labour’s policy on all this is inclined to say little while the Tories dig themselves further in, with their appalling poll ratings.
A problem for any progressive resistance to such antidemocratic forces is the attitude, prominent in many ‘red wall’ constituencies that with politicians: “They’re all the same”. A corollary of this is the lack of interest in politics, especially amongst those who would nevertheless always vote Tory.
Furthermore, the growing interest in gender identity appears to be crowding out what some see as more immediate material needs of workers, impoverished by the ways they have to bear costs of economic chaos.
There was some concerns about SNP’s recent changes to facilitate gender transition, but many of us felt somewhat bewildered by the current prominence of issues around gender. Who, or what, forces are behind this? Whose interests are being served? What is the politics around gender transition? While the issues appears not be be political in the sense of Labour/Tory division, perhaps the ‘new’ politics is more focussed around issues such as this (and climate, environment, etc) rather than on political identity in terms of left/right or class. Age, however, is a single issue which does appear to be distinctly Labour/Tory, with the vast majority of older people being Tory and current policies (like pensions rising with inflation) favouring the older, Tory voter. There was a suggestion that there is emerging some evidence that, as people get older, their politics does not necessarily move to the ‘right’. If this is substantiated the Tories will have real problems as their supporters die out.
Next meeting on 20th Feb.