Mandy Clare Blog Section

I have today been declined permission by our male Council Chair to propose a Motion Without Notice (Emergency Motion) to tonight's May 19th’s full council meeting.

The reason given by the Director of Governance and Monitoring Officer, who will have advised the Chair on whether he can use the Constitution to rule the motion out, was “Whilst the attack you refer to in the motion has taken place since the agenda was published, the issues that it raises and about which the motion seeks debate are not something that are newly arising”.

The motion I intended to propose makes the point that this attack - which was caught on camera and happened with a police presence nearby - resulted in the assaulted woman, not the male attackers, being asked by police to move on, marking a significant and worrying escalation of male public aggression and police complacency toward women.

This is the motion that was declined by the Chair:

To consider the following Motion Without Notice

Proposer: Cllr MANDY CLARE

Seconder:

Women’s Rights, Free Speech and Respectful Debate

A woman was physically assaulted this week in the presence of the police by a trans rights activist dressed from head to toe in black. The assaulted woman, rather than the masked attacker, was then approached by police and reportedly asked to move. The activist group, masked and carrying pink and blue flags, had blocked women from speaking publicly next to the ‘Rise Up Women’ statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in Manchester’s St Peter’s Square. We are beginning to see the corruption of violent and sexual crime data through the erasure of the protected characteristic of sex and replacement with ‘gender identity’ something that can be fluid and hard to pin down and which legally should not be used to replace sex. However, despite this problematic development, we still know that male pattern violence and criminality is very different to female pattern criminality and that the best evidence we have suggests that transition from a male to female gender identity does not change this sexed pattern.

Women do sometimes abuse men, but we know that between March 2017 and March 2019, 97% of suspects in relation to domestic homicide (murder of mostly women by a partner or ex partner) were in fact male, the vast majority of victims being female. Research by the University of Bristol confirms that sexism and misogyny set the scene for men’s abuse of women. Attacks and threats against women by men extend beyond the domestic sphere but the events in Manchester this week illustrate a very worrying intensification of male abuse of women within the public realm. Examples of this range from online abuse, to vexatious reports to the police, to women being forced out of their jobs and discriminated against within the workplace, to public character-smearing and de-platforming, to shouting and outright physical assault. This intensification of male abuse of women within the public realm is particularly aimed toward women expressing concerns about issues such as trans Self-ID and the wider implications of that for women’s equality and safety and in relation to child safeguarding. This alarming cultural shift must be challenged by national a local government representatives as women have already been assaulted and it is only a matter of time before a woman is killed.

We pledge our solidarity with the assaulted woman, condemn the intimidation and abuse and acknowledge the stress this particular type of behaviour causes to women in particular, given the social backdrop of sexism and male violence that still exists. We also condemn the serious implications for freedom of speech within the UK. We are opposed to the silencing of women and closing down of legitimate, evidence-based and respectful debate in relation to women’s rights and the issues related to trans Self-ID. The trend toward ‘no debate’ that has actively silenced, shamed and punished women is a sexist and unacceptable development within our culture. Questioning and discussion does not automatically equate to transphobia or bigotry – within a sexist society, women have the right to not be called names, to be and to feel safe and to speak openly, without fear of intimidation and threat, whether others agree with them or not.

We call upon the Leader of the Council to urgently convene a cross-party, all-women Task Group to ensure that our policies and practices (including data-collection) are evidence-based, compliant with the law, with government and expert guidance and are informed by the views and experiences of our female residents and parents and we will provide a clear means for women to discuss their concerns with us and as an oppressed group, free from the fear of male violence.

Why I have made the decision to leave the Labour Party on International Women's Day 2022

Up until today, I was a Labour Party Councillor and an elected member of the party’s new National Women’s Committee. I decided to choose today to resign from the party.

I have been prevented from speaking about Women’s Rights, from raising concerns about serial abuse of the still quite new women's democratic processes within the party, from reporting at the national level the patterns of bullying that women members have asked for my help with and as if that wasn’t all bad enough, I have actually been subjected to bullying by the party itself as a result of trying to speak out and to fulfil my role.

The solutions to the conflicts that exist within some areas of Women’s and Trans Rights won’t be resolved by the closing down of one side of that discussion. However, right across the Labour Party, women are being forced into silence and forced to give way - only one viewpoint is allowed and it isn’t the viewpoint of women who are fighting to retain our rights. Any woman who tries to push back against that or to argue for a space for respectful debate is attacked with impunity.

We live within a political system where only one of two main parties can ever realistically win a General Election. That makes the successful political erasure of women who have legitimate concerns within one of those two political parties even more sobering. If it can be done to women - and the experiences of women all over the world now show that it can - it can be done to any group at any time. It is dangerous.

That is why I am choosing to leave the party today, on International Women's Day and to speak out publicly. I have gone as far as the repressive regime within the party will allow me to. I might have got further if others who share my concerns, who are fully aware of the bullying women routinely face within the party, had felt able to speak up a bit louder alongside me within national level meetings, but they are successfully intimidated into silence or near-silence within that context.

I have also experienced sabotage and mistreatment at the local level as a Councillor within my role as Leader’s Champion for Poverty and Inequality. I am a socialist who actively pushes against the grain, so that is par for the course and expected but what is happening to women within the Labour Party is a national scandal. There is an urgent need for a grown up conversation about how to facilitate respectful, evidence-based, balanced debate and that should be coming from the party leadership team, who also should in my view give their new Women’s Committee some actual oversight and decision-making power and start funding it properly.

I have written to David Evans and Anneliese Dodds MP about the bullying women are experiencing, about the inadequacy of the complaints system in protecting women and about the weaponisation of the disciplinary system, in some cases by men, against women who speak out. Anything considered too much trouble simply doesn't get answered and women who refuse to be silenced are considered far too much trouble.

As an Independent Councillor I support the Resist Movement’s Manifesto https://resistmovement.org.uk which is fantastic. I will continue to fight for women and as a socialist in whatever ways I can.

Mandy Clare