Labour MP's and the Labour Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, have been busy criticising the Metropolitan Police for their handling of the vigil held on Clapham Common, last night, in response to the murder of Sarah Everard. However, Labour is in no position to criticise the police, because they are simply enforcing the laws and restrictions that the Tories have put in place, and that Labour has encouraged them to implement, in response to the moral panic created over Covid. Indeed, Labour, and some section of the Left have criticised the government for not being authoritarian enough in the measures it has introduced, and not efficient enough in implementing them. This is Labour and sections of the Left again wanting to have their cake and eat it, in the same way they have done over Brexit. It is thoroughly unprincipled.
Such events are inevitable. That it should arise in response to a demonstration by mostly women is fitting, because the underlying issues have similarities with another question that affects women, and particularly working-class women, and that is the question of abortion and a Woman's Right To Choose. When it comes to the latter, most of the Left arrived at the position long ago, that what happens to a woman's body, including whether or not to have an abortion, is something that only the woman herself should decide, and no one else.
Of course, in demanding that right, enshrined in law, it is not saying that every woman should have an abortion, as the anti-abortionists have often tried to frame the question. On the contrary, it is simply establishing a legal right to choose. But, if we recognise that legal right to choose to exercise that control over our body, why then should it be illegal to exercise the same right in other respects? We do not make it illegal for people to smoke or drink alcohol, for example, even though those things are damaging to people's health, causing tens of thousands of deaths, each year, and even more ill-health. There are laws against taking various other drugs, but many would say that those laws are illogical given that alcohol and tobacco are allowed, and that the laws themselves create bigger problems than they solve.
In the same way banning people from engaging in social gathering is equally illiberal, authoritarian and illogical. If I am happy to take the tiny risk of serious harm from COVID that many going on to the vigil clearly were, then why is it any business of the state to prevent me doing that? Its my body, and my choice. Personally, even though I have now had my Covid jab, I wouldn't do that, but again that is my choice, and not for me to impose on anyone else. My attitude in that respect is the same it has always been, which is that as someone in the 20% of the population actually at risk from COVID, I will do what is necessary to avoid any contact with the virus, but I see no reason why such behaviour that limits my activities should be imposed on the other 80% of the population who face no such serious risk. In fact, its clear that the main risk to most of those attending the vigil came not from COVID, but from injury at the hands of a police force enforcing ridiculous restrictions on civil liberties.
And as socialists always pointed out in relation to abortion, this is also a class issue. In relation to abortion, it was always the case that it was poorer, working-class women who had less access to birth control, and whose general conditions of life put them in danger of unwanted pregnancies, more than for middle class women; it was always the case that middle and upper class women had access to proper abortion facilities, whereas working-class women were forced into the clutches of back-street abortionists. Similarly, with the restrictions brought in by the state in relation to lockouts and social gatherings.
The middle and upper class are not the ones who need to gather for political events and meetings, because they already have political control. It is the working-class that does not have such control that is being restricted in its political liberties by the imposition of such bans, bans which reimpose the restrictions on the working-class that major battles were fought over in the 18th and 19th centuries, in order to achieve those liberties in the first place. Yet, Labour and sections of the Left rather than defending those liberties has been at the forefront in demanding they be taken away!
Its not middle and upper class women who most need the right to protest about violence to women on the street and public transport, as a result of having to go to work, but working-class women. Its not the middle and upper classes that need to go on strike, or engage in other such collective activities to protect their interests, but the working-class, and yet Labour and sections of the Left have been at the forefront in demanding that those rights have been taken away.
As with the unfolding disaster of Brexit, Labour and the Lexiters have to now own the catastrophe they have brought about by their actions. So too, Labour and those sections of the Left that have encouraged the closing down of society and of civil liberties in response to COVID, have to own the consequences of their actions too.
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