09.12.1999

Tory confusion

Section 28

The process of selecting a candidate for mayor of London is highlighting tensions within both main political parties. The Millbank machine’s unsuccessful efforts to exclude Ken Livingstone have shown the Labour leadership to be both ridiculous and ineffectual, and the strong support for Livingstone among party members demonstrates how shallow New Labour’s roots in the party really are.

However, the Tory leadership is also having difficulty finding a candidate who is credible and ‘on message’. William Hague’s original favourite, Lord Archer of Weston-Super-Mare, had to withdraw after admitting he got a friend to lie in court during his libel trial in 1987. The Tories still suffer the effects of the sleaze which blighted the Major government.

On Monday the man Archer beat in the original poll of Tory members, Steven Norris, announced that he will again be a candidate for the Conservative nomination. The Tory leadership backs him, despite his public statements contradicting official Tory policy, in favour of the planned abolition of the notorious section 28 of the Local Government Act. Yet only four days earlier the shadow minister for London, Shaun Woodward, was sacked by the Tory leadership from the front bench for voicing identical opinions to Norris.

Section 28 prevents local councils from funding any project which could be interpreted as ‘promoting’ homosexuality. Crucially, it bans schools and colleges from discussing homosexuality in the context of a ‘normal’ family relationship. It was passed by the Tory government under Margaret Thatcher in 1988, and has been the object of protest by gay rights activists and democrats ever since.

Last month the shadow cabinet voted to oppose the government’s plans to repeal section 28, but the Tory Party is divided on this question, as it is on many others, not least the key question for British capital - the single currency. Shaun Woodward, who is a director of the children’s charity ChildLine, opposes section 28 because it prevents teachers from taking action to protect teenagers from homophobic bullying in schools. Suicides among gay youngsters are significantly higher than for their heterosexual classmates, and section 28 obviously increases their vulnerability. It has also been shown to hamper education about safe sex and Aids.

Woodward was sacked for his refusal to conform to the party’s policy opposing repeal of section 28. Steve Norris, in contrast, was not disciplined by the party for stating that he too will continue to oppose the law, which he described as “totemistic, homophobic, and unworthy of the Conservative government that introduced it” (The Guardian, December 4). The difference was that Woodward was on the opposition front bench, whereas Norris is not subject to the same ‘collective responsibility’. Interestingly, Teresa Gorman, who backs the Hague line, was excluded from the short list to select the party’s candidate for mayor, leaving Norris a virtual certainty to be chosen. Clearly the Conservatives do not rate their chances in next May’s poll - no big-name Hague supporter could be found to throw their hat into the ring.

Alongside the campaign to end the ban on gays in the military and the fight for an equal age of consent, opposition to section 28 is currently a central focus of the struggle for gay equality. Section 28 is as much a denial of equality as an unequal age of consent, in that it stigmatises those gays who choose to live in long-term, committed relationships and/or raise children. It insists that in law their relationships are not as valid as heterosexual unions. This is of course nonsense: thousands of gay men and women are competent parents despite the obstacles they face.

In October a gay couple from Essex, Barry Drewitt and Tony Barlow, made legal history when they persuaded an American court to allow both their names to be entered as parents on the birth certificates of their twin children, who were carried by a surrogate mother. Reactionary opinion was naturally outraged at this violation of conventional morality. The fundamental source of all the bourgeois moralising about the sanctity of marriage and the value of the conventional nuclear family is that, from the point of view of capitalism, having working class children raised in this way by their biological parents has long been the cheapest and most efficient way to reproduce the labour power capitalism needs. Yet Drewitt and Barlow, who spent £200,000 on arranging the surrogate birth of their twins, are clearly wealthy enough to raise them without ‘burdening’ the capitalist state, and will doubtless love them as dearly as any other parent. The objections are a living demonstration of the way ideas based on social control - in this case the idea that only married heterosexual couples can be ‘good’ or ‘real’ parents - assume a life of their own and in periods of rapid social change can actually act in contradiction to the purposes of the ruling class.

Of course, ideology catches up with reality eventually. Single parents are no longer frowned upon in Britain, and ‘living in sin’ is now the norm. Openly gay relationships too have gradually won acceptance amongst the bourgeoisie - section 28 could be seen as a Thatcherite attempt to hold back the tide. The New Labour establishment, while preaching the virtues of ‘family values’, nevertheless is prepared to tolerate minority lifestyles. Only the right of the Tory Party is stuck in the old anti-gay mould. William Hague demonstrates his weakness by pandering to this irrationality in opposing the repeal of section 28.

Michael Portillo’s calculated comments at the 1997 Tory conference in Blackpool about the need for a kinder, more caring Conservatism demonstrates that he understands well that the Tories need to reconnect with the mainstream of public opinion if they are to have a chance of regaining power. But for the moment he is prepared to toe Hague’s line. Although the party is divided and Hague’s leadership looks precarious, Portillo has no interest in making his bid for the leadership just yet. He is biding his time, waiting for his opportunity after the inevitable Tory defeat at the next general election.

Mary Godwin