27.11.1997

Homophobic SLP hustings

The Socialist Labour Party’s pre-congress issue of its paper (Socialist News November/December 1997) reveals the new Royston Bull. The leader of the Economic and Philosophic Science Review group and SLP vice-presidential candidate, is, it would appear, a fighter against racism and homophobia and an advocate of a “firm stand against ‘incorrect’ attitudes and prejudices”. In an article subtitled “Royston Bull takes issue with political correctness”, readers are told that:

“It is crucially important for workers to educate themselves out of the backwardness of sexism, racism and homophobia”; and “Maturing working class political wisdom will eventually overcome all capitalism’s divide-and-rule plans - and a firm stand against ‘incorrect’ attitudes and prejudices will clearly have helped in this.”

Bull goes on to explain though, that we must “beware the bigotry of self-righteousness”, we must try to avoid attacking comrades who use ‘politically incorrect’ language. He gives an example. Persons who accept use of the term ‘Northern Ireland’ to describe the “British-occupied zone of Ireland”, are, in Bull’s opinion, “falling in with reaction’s cause”. But he understands how socialists can fall into the trap of using such language and he is tolerant towards them. ‘Political correctness’ has been cultivated as a diversion from actually overthrowing the capitalist system and all the influence of bourgeois culture, comrade Bull asserts.

So has the furore over “homophobic” articles in the EPSR really been about the intolerance of self-righteous bigots at the use of non-‘politically correct’ language? Let us look at the evidence.

“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”.

“Sexual deviations, like sadism, paedophilia, and homo-sexualism 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.”

“...the homosexual disorder is not unethical as such, but its demonic drives can lay sufferers open to a more conspiratorial prevalence of such behaviour” (emphasis added, all from EPSR October 8 1996).

Are the objectors just being intolerant at the description of homosexuals as queers, as perverted, as demonic? Isn’t the author just as entitled to use such terms as some socialists are to refer to ‘Northern Ireland’? After all, EPSR writers do not use sharp language only when referring to homosexuality. They have, for instance, described Labour MEP Michael Hindley as a “pompous twat” (EPSR November 19 1996), and three of their political opponents in Manchester as “fucking jerks” (EPSR November 26 1996), without simultaneously suggesting that their targets are homosexuals. Let us look at another issue of EPSR:

“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) … is a separate question entirely”.

“If society eventually establishes that heterosexual procreation remains the basic natural revolutionary 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 childcare and the teaching professions”.

“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” (EPSR February 18 1997; author - “RB”).

A call for state surveillance of, discrimination against and repression of gays? Or the words of a militant fighter against homophobic backwardness?

Has the Weekly Worker got it wrong when it brands Bull and the EPSR group “homophobic”? Has the SLP’s lesbian and gay commission misrecognised a group of fighters against homophobia as “active [promoters] of homophobic lies”, (letter from SLP lesbian and gay commission to acting general secretary Arthur Scargill, April 29 1997)? I don’t think so. Neither do I think that Bull has had a Damascan experience on the road to the SLP vice-presidential hustings. I prefer the explanation of the SLP’s Simon Harvey (Weekly Worker November 20 1997): ie, that Bull is mounting a transparent and frantic rearguard action over correct accusations of homophobia.

The SLP’s approved EPSR faction are the vilest of homophobes, with a programme for the gay question that has more in common with fascist organisations than a socialist one. They promote division in the working class. They are anti-socialist. They must be politically routed.

Derek Hunter