10.07.1997

Homophobia thrives in SLP

The following is an open letter to all Socialist Labour Party branches by voided party member in Manchester John Pearson. It concerns the attitude of the party leadership to the homophobic publication, Economic and Philosophic Science Review

June 30 1997
Dear comrades

Please find enclosed a copy of a letter I sent to the acting general secretary on April 12 1997, complaining at a series of vile anti-homosexual tirades published in the journal, Economic and Philosophical Science Review, which is the paper of the organisation formerly known as the International Leninist Workers Party, edited by an SLP member and branch secretary, Royston Bull. I have received no reply to the letter.

The party’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual Commission also made a complaint, in a letter to the general secretary dated April 29 1997. Comrade Scargill has informed the acting convenor of the commission that no action is to be taken against Royston Bull, or any other SLP members associated with the EPSR paper, because of “insufficient evidence”. Indeed, the approved status of the EPSR organisation was underlined a short time later when the June/July edition of Socialist News contained articles by two EPSR leader writers, Don Hoskins and Douglas Bell.

The party leadership is clearly either not taking seriously the publication and propagation by party members of such vile and bigoted material, or it is protecting a faction within the party which enjoys its favour. Either way, I am sure that your branch will agree that this inaction is not acceptable. I have supplied ample evidence as to the editorship of the EPSR paper both to comrade Scargill’s predecessor and to the Lesbian and Gay Commission. In any case, Royston Bull has not, on any previous occasion I am aware of, sought to deny his editorship of the publication.

I find the plea “lack of evidence” rather sickening since I and many other comrades have been airbrushed out of the party without regard to any evidence whatsoever, but upon the assertion by the leadership that our “activities” are “incompatible with the constitution”. A great many more comrades - the entire membership of Vauxhall and Brent branches - have also been summarily expelled, without production of any evidence against them, because those branches have refused to accept the witch hunting of comrades.

If no action is taken by the party against the authors and disseminators of homophobic material then the party will come to be seen as uninhabitable for gays and lesbians. In a branch such as Royston Bull’s Stockport it would already be most uncomfortable for any member or new recruit who is homosexual to participate in branch meetings and activities. I would urge your branch to make representations to the national executive committee demanding action in this matter.

Yours in comradeship
John Pearson
member no. 523 (voided)

[Below is John Pearson’s original letter to Arthur Scargill:]

April 12 1997
Dear comrade Scargill
Complaint – anti-homosexual publications produced by a member of the Socialist Labour Party

In my letter of December 3 1996, which I addressed to your predecessor for the attention of the national executive committee, I complained, inter alia, at “a sickening ‘queer-bashing’ tirade suggesting that homosexuals are the prime culprits in regard to parliamentary corruption, as well as calling them ‘perverts’”, which was contained in issue No 874 of a publication entitled, Economic and Philosophic Science Review.

I detailed that the publication in question is the weekly paper of the organisation formerly called the International Leninist Workers Party, and that the organisation’s founder chairman and editor is Royston Bull, a member of the SLP. Since I wrote, I have learned that Bull has been elected branch secretary of the SLP’s Stockport branch. The meeting at which he was elected took place at his private club on February 6 1997.

I received no response to my letter, and I am moved to write to you again on this particular matter by the fact that Bull has returned to the same theme, with a vengeance, in two subsequent issues of his obnoxious publication. These are Nos 889 (February 4 1997) and 891 (February 18 1997). I enclose two copies of these issues, together with the earlier one, for your examination. I would highlight the following statements, assertions and recommendations, contained within these publications:

• No 874: “The politically correct bourgeois press would also like to pretend that homosexual sufferers of retarded emotional-sexual development are not more vulnerable to the attractions of bent freemasonries of various kinds when the whole of social history would indicate the opposite. Queers figure prominently in this activity…”

“Perverted sexual activity is a phenomenon of a troubled society.”

“Sexual deviations, like sadism, paedophilia, and homosexualism are obviously more widespread, and clamour more insistently for ‘acceptability’, but their sickness is self-evident, and it is an unhealthy society which itself ignores the potential mischief making of such strong perverted drives.”

“Clandestine homosexual freemasonries can attach themselves to almost any social activity.” [Presumably Bull would include SLP activity here]

“To correct The Observer, the homosexual disorder is not unethical as such, but its demonic drives can lay sufferers open to a more conspiratorial prevalence of such behaviour, in this case (of House of Commons sleaze) ...”

• No 889: “But at the same time, people with malfunctioning sexual and emotional drives are different, and to pretend not to know about certain behavioural proclivities of those who suffer from sexual or emotional abnormalities in circumstances where it matters is not just stupid, but criminally stupid.” [This during a discussion of abuse of children in local authority care]
• No 891: “It is these weird people who are currently running rampant in the Vauxhall and South West London SLP, proposing scrappy ‘election manifestos’ to put to the working class in place of the SLP’s policy statements - which include such vital and ‘progressive’ immediate changes to working class life as ‘homosexuality to be treated identically as heterosexuality; sexuality to be no bar in the custody of children, applications for adoption or IVF treatment; all consensual sexual acts should be legal; abolish the age of consent; armed workers defence groups against homophobic attacks’, etc etc. And any criticism of this sick self-seeking nonsense - a complete paedophiles’ charter - will be met with non-stop abuse in the Weekly Worker as ‘homophobia’…”

“Let everyone declare their positions publicly on ‘homosexuality to be treated as heterosexuality’ allied to ‘abolish the age of consent’, and then say honestly if they would invite an openly camp male neighbour or local council child welfare officer, notorious for their promiscuous pederasty, to baby-sit for their children.”

“Paedophilia, pederasty and lesbianism will never not be describable as emotional and sexual malfunctions, or a major disruption of natural evolution.”

“Persecution of such abnormalities is a barbaric instinct and will die out under socialism. But differentiation and discrimination on many matters where sexual orientation remains a key factor in the outcome (child upbringing; all education; protection of minors; sensible use of resources; health concerns; acceptable public order and workplace conduct; practising and being susceptible to exploitation; counterrevolutionary agitation, etc), in societies which are yet struggling to build a stable socialist order from the varied human material inherited from degenerate capitalism, but still sabotaged and surrounded by hostile imperialism and chaotic bourgeois ideology - is a separate question entirely.”

“If malfunctioning sexual orientation persists, then it could only not be a problem if it continued in complete openness - ie, with known proclivities to paedophilia of male homosexuals for example (as well as of sick heterosexuals, obviously) universally openly acknowledged, and the individuals at risk identified.”

“If society eventually establishes that heterosexual procreation remains the basic natural evolutionary pattern for the species, then cleverly rationalised deviations from this by emotionally-charged male or female homosexuals in a position to strongly influence the education of minors is clearly going to remain a potential problem, possibly requiring continued differentiation (or discrimination) within child care and the teaching professions.”

The SLP can be proud of its fine policies, and its aims and objectives, relating to the pursuit of homosexuals’ equality. Conversely, the vile prejudices and support for inequality, ostracism and discrimination against homosexuals, of the Royston Bull and the ILWP organisation, is a phenomenon that has more in common with fascist organisations, and should be regarded as unacceptable to the SLP, and incompatible with SLP membership. Bull and the ILWP deny the need for the SLP manifesto to take up the cudgels against oppression of, and discrimination against, homosexuals. In this, it seeks to abandon, and to oppose the pursuit of major grievances and concerns of a section of the working class. This is a blow against working class unity and is anathema to a party of the vanguard of the class, such as we are.

The substantial support of lesbian and gay organisations for working class struggles such as the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-85, and the campaign against pit closures, has been well documented, and should be remembered. Both of those events contained the potential for generalised working class self-activity, and for revolutionary development. It was therefore entirely predictable and understandable that common cause would be found with homosexuals, since such developments reflect the role of the working class as the implacable opponent of all oppression. This is the true essence of the relationship between working class socialist politics and the homosexual freedom movement. It is in sharp contrast to Bull and co’s sick fantasising about Monday Club and Nazi “homosexual weirdos”.

I demand to learn, by return, what you intend to do about Bull, the EPSR and the ILWP faction of the SLP.

Yours in comradeship,
John Pearson
(member No 523)
copies to: NEC members & Gay and Lesbian Section