'Entryism', or, 'The People are Voting'

After several years of indecision, I have finally joined a political party. It's something I've been threatening to do since the Conservatives won the 2010 general election, but in the last few months, something has changed. With the election contest open to equally balanced votes from all members (thank you, Ed Miliband!), the Labour party has inadvertently offered members of the public a motivation to become politically active, with a minimum of effort.

Basically: oops.

Because this is not what the Establishment is meant to be doing. Rousing ourselves to vote is about as much as ordinary people should be involved - the rest is for the hardcore, loyal campaigners, the old wealthy families, the influential businessmen and trade unions who make up the small body of acceptably political beings. For the rest of us, we're not supposed to do much beyond listening to the news and voting. We're cattle, to be chastised when we move with the wrong herd, when we tramp from one dry pasture to another. (Run with that metaphor. it's heavy handed but there are worse concerning political parties. Definitely worse.)

Labour's simple membership deal challenges that. It's simple, it's accessible, and it doesn't require further commitment - three pounds, one vote. (Or less if you go for youth or student membership, which is a pound a year). There are no tricks, no traps, few rules; ordinary, semi-politicised people like me have a change to help create the party we want to vote for.

And there's the problem. Because ordinary people aren't, well, really meant to choose and control national politics. I'm grateful that we live in a democratic country, but democracy is only a ballot-box process; it doesn't shape the sociological and historical trends which elect the candidates on the voting card, it doesn't remove the social and economic pressures which discourage poor and disadvantaged people from voting or otherwise being heard, and it doesn't create results which are mysteriously acceptable to everyone. 2010 demonstrated that democracy doesn't always provide answers; I think 2015 will demonstrate that even when it does, they're not always good ones. But if more people are engaged in politics, we can't help but move towards a more balanced system, more likely to provide answers that will work; answers that will reflect the needs of the people, because they come from close engagement with a wider, more engaged public.

But what if what the public wants unsettles the establishment? What if it rocks the boat, maybe knocks a few of the privileged into the water? Well... then it must be illegitimate, because nothing is meant to really change in politics. So an influx of the public supporting a leader who might bring that change can't be legitimate, and someone digs up a neologism from political theory: 'entryism'.

Before I started writing, I did a quick google to check my definitions. Here's one from the Oxford Dictionary:

'entryism': the infiltration of a political party by members of another group, with the intention of subverting its policies or objectives.

It's a pretty serious accusation. The intention, of course, is of undermining the Labour leadership race, and principally Jeremy Corbyn, with the secondary intention of convincing the country that support for socialist-leaning left-wing policy is far lower than the polls, news, campaigns and publicity surrounding Mr Corbyn make it seem - a for-sure sign that the right wing are actually concerned that, well, that the movement might be genuine.

But, for the moment, let's say that the accusation is true, say that people who aren't born and bred Labour supporters are registering to vote. The assumption in the accusation is that this is a negative thing; we're meant to stay in our tribes. The Conservatives want this because after the disastrous election, the natural Labour support base is pretty small, made up of centre-ground Labour members who will happily vote in a Blair-lite leader who can be knocked down repeatedly for the next five years. If people from outside this tribe vote, they could be facing a far bigger beast - say, someone with actually policies.

I'll give this a paragraph to itself: traditional voters give traditional results. Claiming 'entryism', even with some genuine suspicion that it is taking place, does not come from a desire to make politics fairer or cleaner: it comes from the fear that the Establishment will lose control and the masses start genuinely influencing the direction of this country. tl;dr: they're trying to keep us quiet. 

So let's look at the entryists. Some of them are people like me, who might have been nominal Labour supporters or floating left-wing voters; the £3 supporters membership and vote is natural expression of support, but doesn't have the same level of commitment as full membership. In a climate where more and more people are 'floating voters', this is both an appropriate way to engage suitable supports and a way for the Labour party to slowly increase their voter support base. Some of these people will have voted Labour before, others might have voted Liberal Democrat, Green, Independent or not at all. Their votes are legitimate, though, not because they have or have not voted labour in the past but because they have a real interest in voting Labour in the future.

The argument against their validity as supporters is that, coming from other parties, the Labour party of the future would have had its 'policies or objectives subverted' by these incoming voters, seeking to use Labour's established role in British politics to push through their own agendas. It might become the Green Party in red ties (oh, what a terrible thing that would be...).

Three counterpoints. Firstly, I do not believe that any of these incoming voters would care enough to vote unless they already had some sympathy with the Labour party and its' objectives. Secondly, this attitude comes from an idea that political parties should stick consistently to their ideological ground, whether or not time and changing populations have moved their original support base away from them. All of our main political parties have drifted left and right over their history; even if the Labour party is about to be pulled left by the democratic vote of potential voters, as Corbyn and his supporters hope, it will still be in ideological ground which has at some point been covered by the Labour party. Thirdly, the position of a political party ought to be determined by the modal average of its' members beliefs; incoming support not only increases the control group, but may help correct the sense of alienation between the public and politicians. Incoming supporters might move the party, but as concerns those who are genuinely interested in supporting Labour, their support can only make the party better attuned to where it ought to be.

Then there are the 'entryists' from other parties. They do, seemingly exist; the news reports vague but unspecific examples of their presence, and of course, the news is always accurate and unbiased. Their existence is being used to negate the reality of serious, Labour-supporting new members. Already in this increasingly wordy blogpost I've argued that this is a trick the establishment is playing in the hopes of undermining real, grassroot democracy. However, even where true - where right wing or far-left wing are voting in the hopes of undermining a change for the left to choose the best leader - I do not believe that it is so great a problem as it is made out to be. Firstly, the risk of being expelled from your own party if discovered is great enough to discourage those in positions of power; those with significant authority or connections risk a double-page spread in the Sun if caught encouraging others to register to vote. There are, probably, some lower-level supporters engaging in 'entryism'. Where this means opposition parties voting for the candidate they believe will best undermine the Labour party, this is problematic. However, where people are voting for a candidate closer to their own policies - say, a Terrifyingly Left Communist Type voting for Jeremy Corbyn - they too are exerting their democratic right to be represented. It is easy to forget that, even as party members, we are not just represented by our own party; we are represented by whoever has power and influence to change our lives, and I see nothing underhand in a Green member or a LibDem, for instance, voting for a leader who may have power over their lives as PM. The more people we can have represented by our political system, the better. In the end, this isn't a chance for a revolution: we're picking from pre-selected candidates, selected by people in the heart of the establishment. No matter who is elected, they have all been given the green flag by Labour itself. 

The real 'entryists' are not unregistered Labour supporters or sneaky Conservatives, though. They are the literal 'entryists' - the people making their entry into the world of politics for the first time, who are for the first time getting a chance to be heard. So what should the papers, the Tories, the Labour leadership candidates do? Shut up and listen.

To a Secular Friend: This is what I wanted to say

Disclaimer: This post is not aimed any one person, or group of people. I have written it first person to second person because it felt appropriate for what I wanted to say in the piece. The 'you' in this piece is a representative figure, and I understand these generalisations may not be representative of you and your beliefs.

It's been a good evening so far. We're at a house party, probably, or maybe just all out together for coffee or drinks or a film, and chances are we've probably had a drink or too (caffeine or booze). Conversation is flowing and everyone is getting on well, and somehow, we find we're talking about religion. It gets dropped in by accident, and you all say ordinary, acceptable kind of things about rationality and reason and tolerance, about it being very well in its proper place.

You almost certainly know that I'm a Christian. You probably know that I'm a Catholic because I like to joke about it, and you also know that on most things I think the same way as the rest of our set. We're casually left-wing art students with casually left-wing views. So you're not expecting it when I tell you that I'm pro-life (even though I give it heavy disclaimers, mostly so you don't associate me with extremists). You're not expecting it when I talk about living in a world with a real, tangible devil, or when I describe a book I'm reading for class as blasphemous. You can't believe that I'm saying these things because somehow these aren't the views of our set, our world, our friends. And yet I'm sitting in front of you. I'm drinking real ale, we've been talking about how to make the socialist utopia come about for the last half-hour, and I have just casually mentioned believing in the Immaculate Conception. Way to make things awkward, I can see you thinking.

There's a particular look in people's eyes when you mention these things. A kind of embarrassment, sometimes with a flash of anger, sometimes disbelief, but mostly just confusion. If you're clearly too embarrassed to talk about it, I make a joke about it and steer us back onto safe waters. But sometimes we do talk about it. And here things get interesting.

The first thing I want you to know, in this conversation, is that I am a rational, thinking person who has arrived at her faith logically and constantly evaluates her beliefs. This is probably the reason why I have started gabbling on about Canon Law or the schisms of the Early Church. You probably don't care, but please bear with me. I'm attempting to prove that I don't live on cloud cuckoo land, and that we can have a rational debate about this where I will understand your points and respect them. One thing I have found is that a lot of people assume that as a Christian talking to a non-believer, my initial response will be judgement, or attempted conversion. They assume that I cannot imagine a world beyond my brainwashed ideology and will not be able to talk about my faith on a theoretical level. I hope very much that they are wrong, because talking about my faith theoretically seems to be the only way to get people to respect it. The language of faith is increasingly alien, and the only way to make headway in conversations, like this one we're having now, is to translate it into academic concepts that we can detach from our instinctive emotional reactions. This also means that we're less likely to ruin our friendship arguing over determinism at 2.30am.

The problem is that I'm trying to prove myself by presenting faith in secular terms for a secular world, and increasingly, I feel that as a person of faith, I am living in a different world to people without. The mechanics of my world are different; yours runs on 'Science', whereas 'science', in mine, is just a part of the machinery, a descriptor of the divine whole. Last term I took a module on one of my favourite types of fiction, Gothic Literature, and in class we had some fantastic and broad-ranging debates about interpretations and world-views, of ideologies and sub-text, but somehow there was one ideology that only seemed to be visible to me: the idea that the monsters could be real. Even though you can discuss this as a theoretical concept, you can't really imagine it, because in your world God is dead. But not for me. For me, we are in the middle of a cosmic battle between good and evil, a battle declared won in the transformation of bread and wine where times touch and the victory is at hand. I live in a cyclic time marked by festivals moving us through the journey of our faith, through the agonies of sin and pain to redemption and glory. I believe in miracles and angels and visions, and even though I can discuss rationally the influence of medieval superstition or pre-Christian thought on the development of my faith I am still an alien to you when I talk about this world.

Alien. Aliens, especially religious ones, threaten you and the secular balanced world you believe in. The game at the moment seems to be divide and rule; turn us against each other, especially minorities or people whose lifestyles or beliefs go against the cultural norm, wait for retaliation, then play the blame game. So we're fighting on two fronts; we're fighting against the extremists who give faith a bad name at the same time as fighting for our faith to be taken seriously. And this is terrifying. If a commentator risks telling you that they cannot say #JeSuisCharlie because they find Charlie Hebdo's disrespect towards Islamic beliefs callous and offensive, then they risk being identified with the evil committed on that day. It's like this on a smaller scale when we talk. I want to prove that I am rational and intelligent, but I also want to stand up for my faith, which in your eyes, does not belong to the rational and intelligent world. How can I do both? In the end we drop the conversation and go home, wishing it had never been mentioned.

I want you to understand how much it hurts sometimes, trying to be a person of faith in your world. When you take the name of my Lord in vain, it's like you're using the name of my kid or one of my parents as a slur, except it's worse, because you are being offensive about someone I love more than I will ever love any person. I want to stand up for my faith and tell you to stop, but I also want to let you say what you will because I don't want to suppress your rights to free speech. When I was in my teens I thought that any conversation on faith could be 'won' by just providing better and better arguments, but these days, I'm more convinced that the only victory is that the conversation ends on a note of respect. I've acknowledged that your beliefs have a sound basis, and that I can respect your right to have them, and you have done the same for me. It's not exactly Preaching The Gospel, but I don't believe that anyone ever comes to faith through arguments. If we're arguing, I am not trying to convert you. I just want to talk.

Yes, I do want you to become a Christian. It would be strange if I didn't. But in this conversation I just want to talk honestly about faith. If we're in a seminar I want to show you an academic perspective that it has opened up for me. If we're talking teleology in the pub or 17th century politico-religious symbolism at 2am, then I want to talk about teleology or religio-politico-symbolio-ism. Just that. But more than that, I don't just want your tolerance of my faith, your awkward permission to believe it ('But...'). I want your respect.

Feminism: Did I Really Say That?

Trigger Warning: I do discuss my views on the pro-life/pro-choice debate later on as an example

About a year ago, I wrote a blog post trying to work out my feelings on feminism. I received quite a few responses - some agreeing, some disagreeing, and some offering me information and sources to look into feminism and expand my knowledge and understanding of the issues surrounding it.

Since then, I have been trying to understand more about the feminist movement and gain a clearer picture of what is happening in it today, as opposed to the fuzzy picture of its past I'd been basing my opinions on. One year on from that conversation with my tutor where I refused to call myself a feminist, I would probably be happy enough to stick it in my Twitter bio. I follow most of the right feminist on the Twitter-sphere, I've engaged in the debates about sexual consent in the YouTube community, I've searched the right terms in Tumblr. There is a right (or should that be left?) way to to Feminism on the Internet, and I think I've got it sorted.

The first thing  I learnt about feminism is that sexism is still around. Following @EverydaySexism on Twitter has been an eye-opening experience; sexual assault is real, and sexist prejudice occurs frequently, in both minor and major ways. Often the perpetrators are unaware that they have done anything sexist, having been poorly educated about gender issues or raised with sexist opinions as part of their cultural norm. A year ago, I reckoned that women's lot was basically 'all-right'. As I sat in the back of a taxi stuck in a traffic queue and tried to ignore the man in the next car masturbating whilst staring at me, I realised that I might just be wrong.

Another thing I've learnt is that feminism isn't just about women's rights, a common misconception I held a year ago. Although women's rights are obviously the core of feminism, feminists recognise that you cannot support the rights of one oppressed group whilst ignoring another, or even allowing them to be oppressed to further your own ends. As a result, good feminist practice means supporting other movements for equality, acting against ableism, racism, and class prejudice. Ableism is a new word, and a new concept, to me, and possibly to itself. It replaces more negative words describing anyone with a disability, preferring to talk more positively in terms of ability, rather than lack of it - a term which removes the dividing wall between 'able' and 'disabled', classifying us instead on a spectrum of ability. Work against prejudice against disabled people has been around for a few decades, but the ableist movement is encouraging people to look beyond the obvious - e.g. allowing disabled students to go to university - and challenge assumptions and practices which disadvantage disabled people. The feminist movement seems to have stood staunchly behind this, especially where the two intersect. Indeed, intersect is the appropriate word here - the correct term for the union of these separate movements is Intersectionalism. I had to Google it the first time I saw it, and this awesome blog post came up - check it out if you'd like more information. It means that no-one acts alone; not only do we stick together, we watch out for ways in which our group maybe committing other types of prejudice, e.g. white woman taking precedence over coloured women at a feminist meeting.

Discovering Intersectionalism has given a name for something I've always felt, the sentiment of Martin Niemöller’s First They Came. But the application of Intersectionalism within feminism seems to be complicated. Phrases like 'check your privilege' and 'calling someone out' are the warning signs. 'Check your privilege' is basically the sentiment of the opening of The Great Gatsy ('just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had'), but reversed - remember that you are privileged, and that your background is the same as the oppressors. 'Calling someone out' means that if someone means publicly correcting someone because they have inadvertently said something ableist, or transphobic, or without awareness of their privilege in speaking, etc. I respect the good intentions of these actions, and agree with their basis, but in practice it seems to lead to a lot of feminist in fighting, squabbling, and divisions. People feel hurt as they fall out of the clique, having forgotten to use a neutral pronoun or dared to write an article from a man's perspective or disagreed with a statement about the glass ceiling in the workplace. Sometimes these issues are huge and should be noticed, and the feminist community should rightly feel proud that it is highly accountable and self-critical.

However, the result of this accountability and criticism seems to have been that a 'right' and a 'wrong' way of doing feminism has emerged, and some feminists will pounce on anyone doing the wrong type of feminism, and forbid them from calling themselves a feminist. This attitude rightly frustrates most other feminists, who are more interested in the practical application of feminism to the world. Laurie Penny, one of my favourite New Statesman writers, had a fantastic rant on her Twitter page this morning about 'Is it feminist to ...' articles. Although we're good at criticising victim-blaming and slut-shaming, we're even better at feminist-shaming.

Firstly, men. Male feminists can be 'Allies' but have to respect that there are certain arguments and places they must have no voice in, and no presence thereof, partially so that women can speak and not fear oppression, partially because they are descended from that great race of oppressors, the Male Species.

As a woman, I'm a bit better off, but a white, cisgender (the opposite of transgender), heterosexual woman I have to watch pretty carefully in case I throw my privilege around. I understand the importance of this; in so many places, the voices of the cultural norm overshadow and dominate the voices of the minority. I don't know what it is like to feel oppressed. However, at times the preoccupation with our differences, especially ones we have no control over, seem to hinder rather than help the feminist discourse. We're so obsessed with breaking down the rankings that we risk creating an alternative social hierarchy, where the right to speak and have a voice is negated by your lack of pre-determined privilege. I'm being careful making this comment because it is the exact same argument that Daily Mail (or Daily Male, right?) readers make when they claim that only asylum-seekers with twenty children get council houses, and that people ought to feel sorry for us poor 'indigenous' white Brits. That argument is clearly balls: my feeling here is that we haven't struck the right balance yet. In an ideal world, oppression would be historic, past disadvantages would be readdressed, and people of any sex, gender, race, ability etc would be able to discuss issues with equal voices. Until that happens, protecting the voice of minorities is important - I just feel that we haven't worked out a good way to do this without alienating anyone who happens to be in the majority, which is particularly galling if as part of the majority (white/cis/het) you're becoming feminist to stick up for the rights of someone in the minority. People get alienated for stupid reasons. I'm not personally offended, but it doesn't exactly make me want to get involved in feminist activities either.

The thing that really causes me problems within feminism, however, is how certain opinions - opinions I don't, and can't hold - have become set-in-stone feminist doctrines, and disagreeing with them seems to reduce the validity of your status as a Feminist. Although one of the principles in feminism is free debate, a little experience tells you instantly which argument will be taken up as the 'feminist' voice, and which the voice of the outsider and oppressor. For instance, I believe that women should have the right to wear the Hijab, so long as they do so because it is part of their personal belief system, and not being forced on them by men. Some feminists agree here, but those who disagree do so aggressively and angrily, labelling pro-hijab groups anti-feminist.

Let's take an even-worse example. I am pro-life. As a Christian (and a practising Catholic!) life is sacred to me from conception onwards. I think that pre-conception contraception is fine, but any form of abortion is unacceptable. This is my personal opinion, and I would not force it on anyone else, but in this case, my faith dictates that I have a moral duty to stick up for my belief, and for unborn children. I chose to do this by supporting better contraceptive advice for teenagers and more support for pregnant mothers etc rather than standing outside abortion clinics with placards, believing that it is better to treat the cause rather than the symptom, and that those kind of tactics are unpleasant and abusive. However, the loud voice of Mainstream Feminism seems to consider that to be pro-life is to be anti-woman, and a form of oppression over women's bodies. Men cannot have a say in what women do with their bodies; their foetus' do not count - in fact, only the woman in question does. It's a valid argument unless you believe in the sanctity of unborn life, which I do. Yet because I hold this opinion, I am seen to be siding with the Oppressor, the continuation of male and societal control over women's bodies. I'm not writing about this to start the pro-life/pro-choice argument, even though I know people will message me complaining about my views. The point is that feminism can be exclusive and restrictive, to its detriment.

Over the last year, my opinions and perspectives have been challenged in many ways, and I hope will continue to be challenged. I've found things I like and things I dislike about feminist, people I admire and people who frustrate me. I've also realised that I, and people like me, need to be active and aware of the complex social issues around us, fighting against prejudice in all its forms - whether that's black people sat at the back of the bus or the local radio playing Blurred Lines. Feminism is a shifting and dynamic movement, and yes, it's imperfect. But you know what? So were all the other movements that made a difference. We look back on the Civil Rights movement or the early gay-rights protesters or Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragettes as perfect examples because their cause was just and they succeeded, and we whitewash the flaws and the divisions in their campaigns - but that doesn't mean they weren't there. For all its stumbling blocks and cliques and in-fighting, today's feminist movement could be the successor to the glorious movements of the past, achieving monumental change not just for women but for society as a whole. It's worth baring the hitches and virtual-slapping and bitching to be part of that.

One year on from the pretentiously titled 'A Conversation With Feminism' blog post, I'm finally having that conversation - with myself. In my last post, I asked: 'Am I a feminist?' Today, I can finally answer: 'Yes.'

Joanna.