Scotland | Wessex Solidarity

Thoughts on Mistaken Identity in the Scottish TERF Wars

I am, quite obviously, to anyone who meets me in person a cisgender man. I am also a gay man and I like to paint my nails. This is not controversial and men augmenting themselves with makeup has a long history from the farcical trends for pale skin amongst the French elite at Versailles in the late 18^th Century to, perhaps more appropriately for this blog, the androgynous styles of the nightclub scene of the 1970s and 1980s both here and in the USA. It is also worth mentioning that the emo subculture of the early-mid 2000s that coincided with my adolescence was noted for men wearing heavy foundation, thick eyeliner (rather cringeworthily dubbed “guyliner”) and painting their nails black.

As well as being a gay, cisgender man with a penchant for painted nails and perfumes that often come from the women’s ranges I am a man with a neurological condition and now that I am approaching the end of my early 30s, my walking is not what it once was and I need a cane to walk most of the time at the moment. Of course, I use a stylish and elegant cane. I’m not going to let my neurological problems stop me from caring about my style!

This past Saturday, I had gone out into Glasgow to enjoy the first sunny Spring Saturday of the year and I wore a red jacket with red shoes and painted my nails to match. I had a fantastic day, I got my hair cut by my friend, I bumped into some friends I hadn’t seen for a while and I had a wee picnic in Kelvingrove Park and a walk around the Botanics before rounding out my day seeing a film. I then boarded a train home at 22:45, a time when there are plenty of people on the train going home after a day of drinking. I sat down at a table with three other seats which were quickly occupied by other passengers, two older men and a middle-aged woman. As I was ensuring my cane was out of the way for my fellow passengers to sit comfortably I knocked it and it fell on the woman’s toes, and she was visibly upset with this and I was incredibly apologetic.

She then started to sarcastically thank me for causing her pain to which I responded, “I apologised but there’s no need to be sarcastic with me.” This woman then began to lecture me about how I’d caused her pain and I responded that I was in pain every day. The woman then began to swear and shout at me about how I didn’t know pain because I’d never birthed children and when the men defended me we got accused of “mansplaining”, this altercation continued until I eventually told her to “fuck off” which, I believe, I was well within my rights to do so considering she swore at me first. She was utterly appalled that she’d been sworn at and when I responded that she’d sworn at me first she pretended to cry and went “diddums” at me. She continued to shout and be generally unpleasant and abusive and the group of women on the other side of the carriage defended me at this point too. I left my seat and flipped this woman the finger and did the wanker sign at her. I admit that this was not my finest hour but I was tired and this woman had behaved in an utterly repugnant way towards me. I should not have done the hand gestures. The “travel safe” team then got involved and stood between myself and this woman before I alighted the train. As I was about to get off the train, the woman went up to one of these “travel safe” guys and commented about the situation and he responded with something like “just leave it, the guy’s getting off in a minute” to which she loudly responded “you’re identifying THAT as a guy, really, you’re identifying THAT as a guy?”. She also tried to take my picture and a picture of the travel safe guys before we alighted. I went home annoyed and thought it was just another story of repugnant drunk behaviour (she stank of booze and horrible perfume) but I didn’t sleep very well after it and it’s bothered me more than I thought it had done.

I was talking to a group of people about this incident on the Sunday and one of these people is a trans woman who does legal advocacy work and she explained that it is a common transphobic tactic to default to the pain of childbirth to minimise someone they perceive as a trans woman’s womanhood. I was quite shocked by this because I was quite shocked that anyone would think I was a trans woman for having painted nails. It’s a sad and pathetic indictment of the moral panic we find ourselves in, I suppose.

I have also found myself reflecting on my position in the world and I have found myself empathising with trans women and butch lesbians on a deeper level. No wonder they are so exhausted if this the reality of their daily lives- I believe in a world without gods, governments and masters and bodily autonomy for all and that includes radicalised women who want to police gender based on strict, essentialist view of biological sex. The radicalisation of predominantly middle class and middle aged women by the gender critical cult is just as harmful for society as the radicalisation of young men and boys by the likes of Andrew Tate. We’ve had a Netflix documentary about the latter, when are we getting one about the former?

I now find myself in a position where I now question how safe I feel around women above the age of 45. I was sexually harassed by an older woman a few years ago at the outdoor pool in Gourock where she rubbed her breasts at me and tried to make a seductive face. At university, I worked in Primark and I was sexually harassed by women who would wave underwear they were purchasing in my face whilst asking me if I thought the underwear was sexy. As a child even, I had to endure sexualised language from women. I’m a softly spoken, gentle person and I wonder if it’s just because I’m perceived as an easy target. I don’t know whether I’ll come to any conclusions on that one.

The sex essentialism that infects the entire world currently is the natural outcome of a world where patriarchy is embedded into its foundations. Misogyny can be internalised, just like every other form of bigotry and it leads those who have internalised it to lash out at others who challenge their perceptions of what it means to be male or female in this world. This is mostly directed at the trans women and butch lesbians I talked about earlier but seemingly it’s now targeted at softly spoken gay men with red nails too. This experience has radicalised me further and I will do everything I can to dismantle sex essentialism and patriarchy and build a world without masters who police our gender expression.

– The Pink Panther.

April 8, 2026
Categories: Anarchist, Articles, Scotland . Tags: disabled, Freedom, homophobia, LGBTQ, TERFs . Author: wessexsolidarity . Comments: Leave a comment

Thickies, toffs and TERFs. (A considered response to the ill-considered Supreme Court judgement). By Mal Content.

It’s taken me a while to get around to reading this because I found the media reaction to it profoundly depressing, but I will attack it on its merits, its philosophical weakness and lack of intellectual rigour.

The TERFs are crowing, with backing vox from a spectrum of authoritarian reactionaries: Tories, god-botherers, Bolsheviks and fascists. Media and politicians breathe a sigh of relief, “a victory for common sense”, insofar as they no longer need think before they open their mouths. Anecdotally we hear of trans workers having their rights curtailed at work. Toilets are allegedly being policed (how?) The government has issued guidance, but there has never been such a thing as a single-sex toilet anyway, regardless of the silly symbols they put on the door. Motorway service stations advertise that their cleaners can be male or female, the same applies in factories.

So has the world changed? No, it hasn’t; the judgement of the Supreme Court on appeal from For Women Scotland Ltd – hereinafter referred to as the TERFs – v The Scottish Ministers, is extremely narrow. It deals with the intended meanings of words as used by parliamentarians, (not renowned for their intelligence or integrity) when they enacted the Equalities Act in 2010, and the legislative competence of the Scottish government under devolution – that’s it.

Who are the Supreme Court? The upper echelon of the judiciary, drawn from a narrow and rarefied stratum of society – toffs, in other words. Until August 2009 it was the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, an arcane and archaic institution. The second largest legislative chamber outside the People’s Republic of China, and the only one with reserved seats for the clergy, apart from the Guardian Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its membership peaked at 1330 in 1999, despite the fact you can only get 400 toffs in there at a time, and its largest ever vote was 631.

In the interests of separation of powers between Parliament and the courts, the Justices were moved out of the House of Lords into another building. Only two years later, a Working Class insurrection burst onto the streets of Britain, the politicians panicked, and judges slavishly served the executive by incarcerating poor people for gathering bottled water, babies’ nappies and sanitary wear off the pavement.

From its own website: “By moving to the historic setting of the former Middlesex Guildhall, the Supreme Court took its place in the cluster of official state buildings that surround the edges of Parliament Square; the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the Treasury.” So I think we all know what we’re dealing with. The function of the judiciary is to maintain the state’s monopoly on violence, enabling it to guarantee property and enforce debt, in the interest of the prevailing mode of production.

The judgement rests on the inherent inadequacy in legislation. It’s incredibly self-referential, as would be expected from the court of final appeal. Their lordships quote each other obsessively. It draws on semantics interpreted from earlier laws, in particular the Equal pay Act of 1970*, the Sex discrimination Act 1975, and the Gender Recognition Act 2004, all examples of the ruling class scrambling to catch up with real life. It shows up how badly drafted the GRA and EA actually were, the EPA and SDA belonging to a different era. As I get older, I see language used in government documents of a standard that would have earned me a thick ear when I was at school. Case law then, in this and all examples, is the pronouncements of thickies, interpreted by toffs.

* Equal pay for men and women has yet to be achieved after fifty-five years, and those who care for children and other dependents are disadvantaged throughout life.

The toffs are keen that legislation shall be framed in words easily understood by the proles, the better to abide by the law, “Citizens, with the assistance of their advisers, are intended to be able to understand parliamentary enactments, so that they can regulate their conduct accordingly.” Elsewhere it states that words shall have their “ordinary meaning”. Does that imply they must pander to popular misapprehensions? It forces me, against my will, to delve once again into etymology.

Life has changed since 2010, let alone 1970. My own views on sex and gender have been greatly overhauled and refined since the unseemly fracas at the 2017 London Anarchist Bookfair. Some old friends have transitioned, and to my astonishment, a couple of geezers I’ve known for years confided that they had been assigned female at birth. If these chaps ever set foot in a ‘ladies toilet’ they are going to scare the taxpayers! So I did a bit of research, reading scientific journals and papers rather than polemics.

The world I grew up in had more in common with the First World War than the present day. Look at a crowd scene from the mid-20^th century; you will see only two kinds of people, and subject to class, most likely you will only see two kinds of hat. That period was devoted to the industrialised slaughter of nameless, faceless humanity in the name of ideology. Individual identity was not respected, or even recognised. If we are really going back to that, it’s not only the trans community who will regret it.

In 1970 it was legal to exclude British subjects of the global majority from premises on the grounds of their skin pigmentation. The Offences Against the Person Act dates from 1861, a time when many parliamentarians believed in creation, race as an objective category, and the literal existence of heaven and hell. In its original draft it outlawed “buggery” and abortion. The government are only now looking at the Vagrancy Act of 1824, a component of the Great Expropriation.

Can the understandings of parliamentarians be relied upon? In modern times we had a Prime Minister who was a practicing Hindu, presumably believing in one of those beings that has three arms off each shoulder joint (draw the linkage for me please) politicians who think virgins can give birth, and that a dead hippy came back to life and lives in the sky, drawing on the cosmology of the iron age. If you could make wine out of water we’d all be doing it – common sense, my arsehole! I’m quite comfy with these folk living according to their belief systems, but don’t go lecturing me on biology, or engineering.

Apart from trans people, the other category I feel sorry for are biologists, who must be heartily sick of their studies being misrepresented by slack-witted humanities graduates. The “ordinary meaning” of biological terms I would expect to be defined by biologists. The Supreme Court adopted a few novel definitions of the adjective “biological”, all borrowed from TERF culture. Let’s see what the dictionaries have to say:

The Cambridge dictionary offers this:

“Biological (adjective) connected with the natural processes of living things”

Collins:

“Biological (adjective) is used to describe processes and states that occur in the bodies and cells of living things.”

And, “Biological (adjective) is used to describe activities concerned with the study of living things.”

The O.E.D. wanted me to pay so they can get stuffed.

The Britannica Dictionary:

“1: of or relating to biology or to life and living things”

“2: related through birth — used to distinguish the parents who gave birth to a child from the parents who later adopted the child

The online Biology Dictionary says:

“Biology is the study of living things.”

But offers no definition of “biological”

The judges coin the term “biological sex”, and define it as a category assigned at birth, which must be based entirely on observation of the external genitalia. From this they extrapolate that gendered words can have a “biological meaning” which is poppycock. Our learned friends’ confusion may arise from the commonly accepted term “biological parents”, meaning the suppliers of gametes that cause conception. This is entirely logical*, since “biological sex” is universally understood to be the process by which two gametes form a zygote and it develops into a new individual. That’s all it’s ever meant, to me anyway.

* Mind you, where the foetus is carried by a third party, having undergone the inarguably biological processes of implantation, gestation and delivery, if they laid claim to this term, I’d say they had a point.

I don’t want to keep repeating myself, so if you are interested and would like to read some actual biology, I’ll put some links at the end to the work of proper scientists. Plus you can read anything I’ve ever written on this blog. You’ll find that biology recognises reproductive physiology, chromosomal sex, genetic expression of sex chromosomes, and the social and psychological constructions of gender. None of these are binary, rather a continuum. So I will say, once and for all, that the phrases “biological sex”, “biological male/female”, “biological man/woman” and the idiotic “biological meaning” are in this context utterly meaningless. Therefore I contend that the basis for this Supreme Court Judgement is entirely bogus. If these fools worked for me I’d sack them – oh, wait…

The judges conclude that sex and gender are used interchangeably in law, without any analysis of the etymology of those terms. Until recently, gender was a grammatical term, applying to languages in which words were deemed male or female, for linguistic rather than ‘biological’ reasons. In industry, pipe fittings and connectors, electrical, pneumatic and hydraulic were categorised by gender, possibly because it sounded more polite than sex. But gender is complicated; a ‘male’ D connector is the one with turned pins in it rather than sockets, so the female one enters the housing of the male. I doubt a judge would know that.

The gender binary is highly Eurocentric, as many cultures do not recognise it. The World Health Organisation has this to say:

“Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time.”

Gender acquired its modern connotations thanks to mad scientist John Money, who believed babies with ambiguous genitalia could be assigned a gender surgically applied, then conditioned to live in it. He caused so much misery. Controversy rages amongst academics over whether expressions of gender are the cause, or the result of internal gender identity. Leave them to it I’d say, it’s whatever works for you.

Those who regard sex as an immutable characteristic all hang it on the possession of a penis, or a vagina, the two being mutually exclusive. I suppose they’ve never been to Frankfurt or Amsterdam, never mind. These are precisely the characteristics that can be surgically altered, which only leaves the moment of birth for their essentialism to cling to. Although an important milestone in the development of an individual, it has no more scientific significance than meiosis, mitosis, puberty, maturity, senility or death. Birth is habitually fetishised by nationalists and god-botherers, who like to claim anyone who pops out on their manor. I don’t know when the easily understood “sex-change operation” became “gender reassignment surgery” but this has done a great deal to muddy the water.

There are no points in life for being thick, even for Lord Snooty and his pals; nevertheless, they have uncovered a serious flaw in these laws and the way they interact. Firstly, equalities legislation is a reserved matter under the Scotland Act, so that the Scots parliament is not allowed to deviate from interpretations of these laws set in Westminster. There are two Protected Characteristics at issue here, sex and gender reassignment. Most of the sex provisions relate to women, and mainly deal with gynaecology and reproduction, maternity etc.

Because prior legislation treats sex as binary, it cannot be otherwise, regardless of empirical data. Gender reassignment is defined thus:

“(1) A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person’s sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

The controversy arose when the Scottish Parliament set positive quotas for the appointment of women to certain public bodies. A transwoman would count towards these quotas:

“if, and only if, the person is living as a woman and is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of becoming female.”

The TERFs appealed to the Scottish courts who decided that the Scottish Parliament had exceeded its authority. It was deemed to have changed the statutory definition of the protected characteristic “woman” which is a reserved matter (to Westminster). I covered the historical etymology of “woman” in an earlier blog post. I note the Scottish Ministers used the phrase “biological sex” in a letter to the TERFs solicitors so they must take some responsibility for this bilge.

In response the Ministers rowed back, on advice of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), they asserted that a person who had been issued with a full GRC such that her acquired gender was female, had changed sex so that her appointment would count towards the quota. Having painted themselves, and possibly the entire trans population of the UK, into this tiny corner, they left the field to the TERFs.

A GRC doesn’t change anything about a person; it slightly modifies their relationship to the state in ways entirely determined by the state. It was easy then for the law Lords to reduce the new Scottish position to the absurd by pointing out a few anomalies. For example, a transman with a GRC who became pregnant, would lose the protected characteristic of sex in respect of maternity rights and so on. None of these rights would be covered by the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. To make an equal pay claim under EA10, a worker must identify a comparator of the “opposite sex”*, acquisition of a GRC would reverse the position in either case. Equal pay still not sorted out?

* Another anachronism, in what sense are sexes opposed to each other?

The toffs also had a good think about the definition of a lesbian. Oh what fun they must have had with that one!

If lesbian facilities are for women who are attracted to each other, nobody is going to suddenly become more attractive by brandishing a GRC. Never mind, if transwomen are invited to the party and some lesbians don’t fancy them, that’s too bad. I’ve never been to one where I expected every attendee to like me.

Politicians are no brighter than they look so their enactments are full of unintended consequences. Section 1 of the GRA 2004 provides that a person aged 18 or over can apply for a GRC by satisfying four conditions, one of which is a medical diagnosis of “gender dysphoria”, which is a psychiatric condition (the other three are obvious). Remember when ‘homosexuality’ was listed as a mental illness, alongside bestiality and necrophilia? It wasn’t that long ago. Is it any wonder that most transpeople don’t want to jump through this hoop?

I don’t know if the toffs sympathise with the TERFs, and I doubt they have much contact with the LGBTQAI community. They insist their judgement does not impinge on the protected characteristic of gender reassignment but the backlash has started already; a lot of sorry-arsed invertebrates are out there looking for someone to kick. The Transport Police have announced that henceforth, transwomen will be searched by male officers; this will include fully transitioned, female-bodied women, with or without a GRC. Can you see anything there but an act of petty spite, leading to humiliation, profound psychological damage, and given the character of the average policeman, risk of serious sexual assault? You don’t liberate one group by persecuting another.

Rights, by definition are only ever granted by entities with the wherewithal to withhold them. The state grants rights in response to social unrest, industrial stoppage or other interference with the means of production, and sometimes to bring it in line with overseas trading partners. It likes to remind us that rights can be taken away at any time. Equal rights are to emphasise that all are equally subject to the state, but the state knows full well that not all have the same value to it, or the bourgeois market.

This can’t be the end of the story, until society has matured enough not to need definitions of sex and gender, self-identification serves most purposes. Until it has outgrown the division of labour in production and reproduction. Until the Working Class is freed from the imperative to replicate at its own expense, cranking out wage-labourers to feed the engines of capitalism or deliver groceries to toffs and TERFs alike, or go to war for the bosses’ interests.

We wouldn’t need any of these semantic gymnastics if people didn’t discriminate against each other in the first place, if the capitalist mode of production did not place different values on various forms of human expression.

In 1963 Haile Selassie addressed the United Nations referring to the bogus category of ‘race’, but his words are equally apt applied to sex and gender:

“that until there are no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation;
[…]
until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all
[…]
until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship, and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.”

In 1936 he had told their predecessor, the League of Nations:

“It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.”

Until that day, I’ve got to say: War!

Appendix.

The online Biology Dictionary defines many terms used in biology, but sex is not among them; it does have this to say about sexual dimorphism, a TERF obsession:

“While humans do have some sexual dimorphism, we are near the monomorphic side of the scale.” It postulates that dimorphism results from sex-selection, whereby heterosexual individuals choose a mate, consciously or unconsciously, to reproduce with.

Who but a politician requires a definition of sex? Biologists have done their best, but the rulers have chosen to ignore their efforts. The following links all deal with sex as construed by the life sciences:

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-science-of-biological-sex/

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/biological-sex-male-female-intersex

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/lies-and-deception/202412/what-is-biological-sex

https://www.asrm.org/advocacy-and-policy/fact-sheets-and-one-pagers/just-the-facts-biological-sex/

https://disruptingdinnerparties.com/2014/04/08/take-the-red-pill-the-truth-behind-the-biology-of-sex/

Debunking a common TERF argument:

https://anarchasteminist.wordpress.com/2017/12/07/transgender-self-identification-and-data-gathering/

And my stuff:

All right let’s have it then! (That debate about gender)

Thoughts on the Divisional Court ruling preventing the prescription of puberty-blocking medication to transgender children.

Delayed puberty for trans kids – part two

Patriarchy: A design for oppression.

Freedom, equality, and the law.

June 12, 2025
Categories: Anarchist, Ethiopia, Feminist, Scotland . Tags: All fucking wankers, Anti fascist, anti-capitalist, bent coppers, Freedom, Legal, LGBTQ, NHS, TERFs, toffs, Women's history . Author: wessexsolidarity . Comments: Leave a comment

The Authority of the Boot-Maker, by Mal Content.

To order the book quote quantity and delivery address. Make payment £20 each including postage, by bank transfer to: ‘Dorset Bookfair’, Account number 84669314, Sort code 51-81-18

If the above link takes you away from the page, it’s dorsetbookfair [at] riseup [dot] net

Or read it online.

December 27, 2023
Categories: Anarchist, Antifa, Captain Swing, Catalunya, Derry, Feminist, Forest of Dean, France, Germany, Haiti, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, London, Luddites, Martial arts, Nigeria, Philipines, Prison, Russia, Scotland, Spain, Thatcher, U.S.A., Ukraine, Wiltshire, Zaragoza . Tags: Anti fascist, anti-capitalist, Bakunin, bolshevism, Class War, colonialism, disabled, Environment, European Union, fascist, Freedom, LGBTQ, Marx, Miners' strike, Prison, racism, religion, slavery, workers . Author: wessexsolidarity . Comments: Leave a comment

DRILL OR DROP?

More than 100 climate campaigners have taken part in a mass trespass at Aberdeen’s Torry harbour in opposition to plans by the fossil fuel industry to build on a park.

Climate protest in Aberdeen harbour, 31 July 2022. Photo: Climate Camp Scotland

The action (Sunday 31 July) was part of a five-day climate camp calling for a transition away from fossil fuels, led by workers and the local community.

The activists have argued that St Fittick’s Park is threatened by a proposed energy transition zone, promoted by the oil and gas executive, Ian Wood.

They carried banners with slogans including Hauns Affa Torry and No Future in Fossil Fuels, describing the plans as “a corporate landgrab”. The scheme would, they said, industrialise the last accessible green space in the Torry neighbourhood.

The developers behind the energy transition zone have said it would become “a focal point and catalyst for high-value manufacturing, research, development, testing and deployment”.

During the weekend’s camp, activists have urged the UK government to cancel plans for new oil and gas developments, such as Shell’s Jackdaw fields.

They also called on Aberdeenshire Council to refuse permission for a new gas fired power station at Peterhead. And they asked the Scottish government to ensure communities and workers had a greater say in how money from the Just Transition Fund was spent in the region.

Richard Caie, a spokesperson for Friends of St Fittick’s Park said:

“We are very grateful to Climate Camp Scotland for helping to highlight the very unjust way the “energy transition” is being managed in North East Scotland and for their support for our campaign to save St Fittick’s Park”.

Jessica Gaitan Johannesson, a spokesperson for Climate Camp Scotland, said:

“As an increasing number of people experience the dire reality of climate collapse, and soaring energy prices victimise the most vulnerable, we need to remember that fossil fuel companies do not work for us. The proposed Energy Transition Zone in Torry is a stark example of their priorities: to exploit communities for profit for as long as possible. We’re here in solidarity with the people of Aberdeen, making the vital connection between local and global climate justice.”

August 2, 2022
Categories: Scotland . Tags: Environment, Fracking, oil & gas, Picket, Protest . Author: wessexsolidarity . Comments: Leave a comment

Scotland: SNP COUNCIL IN STRIKEBREAKING THREATS

Anarchist Communist Group.

We are sickened but not entirely surprised to learn that the SNP[Scottish National Party]-run Glasgow City Council has threatened to bring in scabs against the striking cleansing workers and is bullying the GMB union with threats of billing them with the scabbing costs.

The SNP has a reputation for talking left and acting right, but this is beyond the pale. Any party that claims to be on the side of the ordinary worker does not use scabbing tactics.

This comes after an unsavoury scramble by many online nationalists to denounce the striking workers as “talking Scotland down” or being “dupes of the Labour Party”. Such simplistic anti-worker bile is to be expected of these keyboard clowns, devoid as they are of any class solidarity, but it was hoped that the SNP itself might have been more tuned in to the reality. It is abhorrent that instead they have gone with these capitalist, anti-worker divide-and-rule tactics.

We in the ACG [Anarchist Communist Group UK] believe in working class solidarity. We support the cleansing workers in their time of need because we know that when our time of need comes, they will support us. That’s how class struggle works.

November 5, 2021
Categories: Anarchist, Glasgow, Scotland . Tags: All fucking wankers, Class War, Scabs & grasses . Author: wessexsolidarity . Comments: Leave a comment

Reflections on the passing of the D of E.

D of E mid left, her maj the Q sixth from left, King of the jungle (deceased) foreground.

What can one say about an old man that died? Lifelong family man and public* servant, went to war, dedicated to the nation – ah, that old manifestation of class antagonisms. Nothing to speak of, nothing that couldn’t be said of countless unknown Working Class folk, many of whom will have died on the battlefield or perished in prison and poverty inflicted by the British ruling class, unsung and un-celebrated. No cannon fired for these – not yet.

* The word ‘public’ as in -interest, -property, -safety, -ownership, etc, means nothing more than ‘state’; and the state doesn’t represent any people, just a mode of production.

That he was so casually racist he was blissfully unaware of it, that when he used his influence he pushed downwards and backwards, that he was habitually miserable to animals and foreigners despite being one himself. Of course, when you’re a member of a European dynasty, descendant of the Romanov tyrants, grandson of the Prince Of Battenberg, cousin of the British Queen and heir to the Greek and Danish thrones, place of birth doesn’t count, borders are only for plebs*.

* In case you needed reminding, borders are there to maintain differentials in prices and wages, which boost the mark-up on manufacturing.

The nation that rejoices in drowning refugees sent a warship for the Greek royal family then under the Truman doctrine hired a gang of Nazi war criminals to wipe out its victorious wartime resistance and keep its people in check. Not a peep out of the blunt-speaking Phillip as his people became the underdogs of Europe, playthings of the C.I.A. and international capital. The self-described “refugee” likewise had nothing to say about the latter day asylum-seekers deported from his homeland in defiance of international law. You can’t credibly claim to be apolitical when laws are enacted, parliament convened and wars declared in the name of your ol’ lady.

A conservationist who shot a tiger, along with a crocodile and six mountain sheep on holiday in India and allegedly accounted for over thirty thousand peasants. I’m no vegan, but could a chap eat thirty thousand pheasants in a lifetime? That’s getting on for one a day.

Now don’t mistake me for someone who gives a shit, we will see his like again, and again. I’m only driven to comment by the shameless hypocrisy. His long awaited demise couldn’t have come at a better time for the executive with its institutions universally discredited. Pfeffle’s long-winded grandstanding, even to the extent of celebrating the Duke’s verbal gaffes, surpassed only by his own, is a exercise in bad taste. Career brown-nose Keir Starmer will struggle to get his head out of there before they bury the old codger, and even Sinn Fein queued dutifully to kiss the royal sphincter.

The Duke is a poster boy for the ruling class’ fascist revival: ultra-conservative, obedient, grateful, backward-looking and dedicated to the fiction of national interest. Keep your place, one step behind, take what you can get, never complain and never do anything worth mentioning.

– Mal Content.

April 12, 2021
Categories: Anarchist, Greece, India, London, Scotland . Tags: Boris de Pfeffle, Der Starmer, Monarchy, Nazi, No Borders, racism, sandringham, The fucking windsors . Author: wessexsolidarity . Comments: 2 Comments

Stuart Christie Memorial Archive

https://www.gofundme.com/f/stuart-christie-memorial-archive

Stuart’s life may have been plastered with headlines, Britain’s most famous anarchist was the usual description, but the small print of it was what was important. His courage, imagination, his loyalty, not just to what he believed in, but to his friends and family, his remarkable intelligence, his self-deprecating, droll and spiky humour. He was a man of parts, each one of them remarkable.

To reveal the richness of Stuart’s life and the many histories he was a part of, we intend to establish a memorial archive in his name. The Stuart Christie Memorial Archive will be housed at the MayDay Rooms in Fleet Street in London.

This project has been brought together by his family, close friends and comrades and is supported by the MayDay Rooms collective. The memorial will include photographs, letters, personal mementoes, art works, his writings, as well as the output of his publishing arms, Cienfuegos Press, Christie Books and his Anarchist Film Archive.

The archive will also be available online. With the money raised from you, we will be employing a part-time archivist and researcher. Jessica Thorne, a doctoral researcher, whose work focuses on anarchist prisoners in Franco’s Spain, has already started work on the archive. Stuart’s daughter Branwen is contributing personal photographs and letters.

Much of the material will be new, including letters from Carabanchel prison in Spain where he was incarcerated after his failed attempt to assassinate the dictator Francisco Franco, as well as early childhood photographs. It will cover his involvement in the Angry Brigade trial, his period on Orkney – and his newspaper, the Free-Winged Eagle – with previously unseen photographs.

Stuart’s writing was prolific, including his ‘autobiography’ Granny Made Me An Anarchist, which was published by Scribner. That was the expurgated version, there were three previous volumes he published himself. Part of the memorial’s work will be to re-publish the three-part autobiography, as well as Pistoleros!, his trilogy, novel/memoir, the Chronicles of Farquhar McHarg.

An important part of the project will be to make the archive available online so that people throughout the world will be able to access it, to gain an insight into a life lived to the full, but also for study and research. Alongside the archive, the money raised from donations will help fund a series of educational events, addressing Stuart’s history and the histories of the movements he was involved in.

Depending on the amount of money raised, we are also hoping to commission an artist to create a physical memorial to Stuart. We are currently drafting designs for a secular, stained-glass window, which will be placed in the renamed Stuart Christie Library.

If we exceed our funding target, the collective will meet to discuss how we can expand the project further – or alternatively, re-allocate these funds to prisoner support groups/educational projects.

Finally, thanks are due to MayDay Rooms for readily making the space available and for their suggestions and insights and to the many, many friends and comrades throughout the world who have offered their help and suggestions.

There will be regular updates about the developments in the project as they occur.

February 10, 2021
Categories: Anarchist, London, Prison, Scotland, Spain . Tags: Anti fascist, film, International . Author: wessexsolidarity . Comments: 4 Comments

Corona comment number six, from the South of England: Gulag archipelago, by Mal Content.

Since my last comment the bourgeois state has ratchet-tightened its grip on all aspects of life, with the apparent acquiescence of a large section of the British population – Leaving out the six counties, who seem most preoccupied with not being able to buy vegetables. The demagogues of the devolved administrations* crazed with a little power, vie with each other to boss their subjects about.

* Scots nationalists have blown their best chance of independence in a century with all guns pointed at their own feet, I wonder if MI5 had a hand in that.

As I have observed elsewhere, ‘Lockdown’ is a measure taken by prison governors to facilitate searching of inmates for contraband, apprehending a fugitive or putting down disorder. Doors are all locked forcing each prisoner to remain wherever they find themself. It is predicated on the idea that prisoners have no agency, they do not ‘own’ their flesh, their time or their productive and creative abilities. Incarceration in the United States is an extension of chattel slavery as permitted by the thirteenth amendment; in Britain it originates from the custom of holding a person hostage pending payment of a debt. Other cultures find their own justifications. The first use of this term in respect of the corona virus epidemic was in the People’s Republic of China, which is of course nothing but a giant gulag. It will be deeply offensive to many of our Class who have suffered such abuse.

The latest regulations blatantly reserve overseas travel for the rich, and whilst it will amuse us to watch entitled posh people treated like common prisoners there is a serious point. Jewish workers, whose recent ancestors fled Nazi Germany and other European pogroms find it disturbing to need “permission” to leave the country. We have refugees from the former Soviet bloc and other totalitarian regimes. They know what it means to have papers out of order.

The middle class, the stodgy, flabby rump of totalitarianism, continues to twitch its curtains on full pay, brags about attending ‘zoom meetings’ from the bath or not getting out of bed at all. They quibble about how many times they are “allowed” to walk the dog or whether to have their mum over for lunch. Whilst they sit around their computers knocking themselves off like safari-park chimps, the Working Class must run the gauntlet of crowded workplaces, dodgy PPE and weirdoes who thing it’s clever to gob in their faces.

Gulag:
Acronym of Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-Trudovykh Lagerey.
Russian: “Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps”

People are afraid, for sure, not just of the virus but of starvation and homelessness, of their kids condemned to the scrapheap, their parents dying alone. Rumours abound, of the cops using number plate recognition to clock how far a vehicle has travelled from its registered address. There are despicable class traitors who will grass on their neighbours. Although there is no stop and search power that requires anyone to answer questions*, we hear of people being threatened with arrest for refusing to identify themselves. Call their bluff I say, you waste my time I’ll waste yours.

* Unless you’re driving, then it’s name and address only.

Bosses are taking advantage of the ‘furlough’* to shed workers with protected characteristics, and the super-rich, as always, are making money hand over fist. The sums may seem abstract, but the only value of wealth is the expectation that someone, somewhere will labour to acquire it. This is achieved by limiting access to the product of our own labour. As Heywood put it: “if a man has a dollar he didn’t work for, someone else worked for a dollar he didn’t get”.

* Another prison term. ‘Furlough’ is temporary release. As most prisoners in the U.S. are no threat to anybody but themselves, should they become logistically inconvenient, or if there is no work for them to do, they can be put out to save the state the expense of feeding and housing them.

For years we were offered a false dichotomy between state control and free market – either way is unregulated aggregation of economic power. Somehow the state has been rehabilitated without ever lifting a finger on our behalf, and to contradict its nonsense is to be aligned with cranks with their own set of authoritarian delusions.

Now having had the ‘rona twice I don’t consider it a hoax, it was like sleeping sickness with a loss of mental focus and bodily appetites. The cough only set in after a week but it never quite went away. It tends to magnify symptoms you live with normally, in my case headache, joint pain and irregular digestion. But everybody’s different, some test positive with no symptoms at all, some clearly have it but test negative or inconclusive.

We hear a lot these days about “imagining new futures” but no-one has any answers beyond more of the same, with a bit of technological wizardry thrown in. You cannot “unite” a society built on domination and abuse that refines its exploitative mechanics with every crisis it visits on our Class. The idea that there is an alternative to the status quo that is still military-industrial capitalism is irredeemably stupid. It wasn’t too much of a surprise that fucking idiot Hancock is influenced by Hollywood films, he could have just read his government’s own report on preparing for a pandemic, published in 2016, if he were serious about becoming health secretary. Are we really going to let wankers like that get the better of us?

You cannot compromise with the ruling class because they won’t compromise with you. They will maintain their privilege at all costs – and it costs them nothing. Black people, and other disadvantaged groups will need to take matters into their own hands because the liberals and the reformists can do nothing for them. They will need to fight their oppressors with the same ferocity with which oppression was imposed on them. Compliance will eventually cost more of our lives than any pandemic. The proper response to the Colston situation was for a hundred thousand Bristolians to turn out on the streets and tell the ruling class we will not allow it to try these comrades, precipitate a real insurrection, there’s never been a better time.

There are no broad sunlit uplands on offer, only a brutal, vicious war with the prospect of the means of production finally under control of the producing Class – it’s got to be worth a fight, stuff your prison logic, let’s put our heads together and have a serious discussion about how to fuck shit up.

February 10, 2021
Categories: Anarchist, Prison, Scotland, U.S.A. . Tags: anti-capitalist, antisemitism, Class War, corona virus, film, IWW, Legal, Matt Hancock, No Borders, Prison, workers . Author: wessexsolidarity . Comments: 3 Comments

Stuart Christie, the Eternal Young Rebel Always in the Fight for Life, by Xavier Montanyà

Kate Sharpley Library.

Stuart Christie was born in Glasgow in 1946, too late to enlist in the International Brigades and go off and fight alongside the Spanish republicans in the 1936-39 war. As a child, though, he befriended some Scottish miners who had fought with the International Brigades in that faraway war that he was to take so closely to his heart. A war for ideals that were and are universal. He used to listen in wonder to the tales they used to tell. Taking a pride in them. Such conversations moulded his sensibility to life and struggle.

He did not know it yet, but Stuart would later be ready to carry on with their fight. He would try to complete his friends’ task in Spain. From then on, that was to be his mission and his life. A commitment to the struggle that would be deployed across many fronts. Internationalist, revolutionary antifascist activism, direct action and history, publishing and investigative journalism. Stuart Christie was the real thing, a free man.

As he was to put it in the first volume of his memoirs The Christie File: Part 1, 1946-1964: My Granny Made Me An Anarchist (2002), his granny

Read more.

September 1, 2020
Categories: Anarchist, Antifa, France, Scotland, Spain . Tags: Anti fascist, fascist, Freedom, International . Author: wessexsolidarity . Comments: 1 Comment

Octavio Alberola says goodbye to Stuart Christie

Octavio Alberola at Kate Sharpley Library.

Octavio Alberola, who was in charge of Defensa Interior and was a close friend of Stuart’s has left us this farewell message to his friend.

Stuart Christie, comrade and friend

The news of Stuart Christie’s death arrived by phone halfway through yesterday afternoon from comrade René after he asked if I had heard the bad news and after I quizzed him brusquely: Who’s dead? I could tell from his tone of voice that it must have been somebody close who had passed away.

René’s answer stopped me in my tracks, because even though Stuart had told me a week before that the cancer had left him still hoarse and that the findings of his medical tests were none too encouraging, it never at any moment occurred to me that he would be taken so quickly. I am surrounded by several male and female comrades – more or less of my own age – who are in none too rude health and at my age (due to turn 93 shortly) the thought that one’s days are numbered is just “normal”.

But in Stuart’s case, how could this be when he was eighteen years my junior? Besides, we had both been working on joint projects and both had been determined to plough ahead with our battles with the world of authority and exploitation.

To me, his death represents not just the loss of a comrade and friend but an end to long years collaborating on joint actions and initiatives designed to expose the injustices of the world in which we live and the fight for a fairer, freer world. A world that is possible for all of us who have not given up on wishing and trying to work towards a consistent practice of active, internationalist revolutionary solidarity.

We have known many years of brotherly relations ever since our first meeting back in August 1964 and up until 2020, without interruption. Half a century of our lives in tandem, one way or another, working on behalf of a common cause, heedless of borders. That struggle, though centred on the Spanish people’s political and social vagaries, initially under the Franco dictatorship and later under this phoney democracy spawned by the Transition/Transaction, has at all times carried the imprint of an internationalist revolutionary outlook.

The evidence of that, in Stuart’s case, was the time he spent behind bars in Spain and England, and in the case of Brenda his partner, in Germany and, in the cases of Ariane and myself, in Belgium and France. Experiences that bear witness to struggles that knew no borders as we knew that a characteristic of freedom is that it is the right of every man and woman.

So how could I not feel impelled to remember it now that our fraternization with Stuart has ended with his death? As well as with the death just a few days ago of the German comrade Doris Ensinger, the partner of Luis Andrés Edo, with whom Stuart shared some of his prison experiences and with whom he rubbed shoulders in their struggles; obviously, speaking for myself, the loss of Doris in a way represented the final ending of my fraternization-in-struggle with Luis. A finale that started some years back with Luis’s own death.

The fact is that in the case of Doris’s death too I was stopped in my tracks, startled by the news of her demise communicated to me by Manel, as barely a week earlier she had sent Tomás and me an email to let us know that she had been abruptly recalled to the hospital and undergone a transplant operation … But was now back home and feeling well …

Meaning that yet again I am brought face to face with the tenuousness of our existence and the need to preserve the memory of what we strove to be and do, to the very death.

Perpignan, 17 August 2020

Octavio Alberola

From RojoyNegro_Digital el Mar, 18/08/20; 15:02 http://rojoynegro.info/articulo/memoria/octavio-alberola-se-despide-stuart-christie

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.

August 24, 2020
Categories: Anarchist, Antifa, Prison, Scotland, Spain . Tags: Anti fascist, fascist, International, No Borders, Prison . Author: wessexsolidarity . Comments: Leave a comment