Tom: Why do you think that it is so important for LGBT+ liberation to be organised through the workers movement?

LGBT+ Socialists: It is absolutely essential! The government are stalling on LGBTQ+ Rights, making huge cuts to LGBTQ+ health services, politicians and the media are relentlessly attacking trans people, LGBTQ+ asylum seekers are denied safe haven and deported to homophobic and transphobic countries where being LGBTQ+ carries a death sentence, and since 2015, reported hate crimes related to sexual orientation and gender identity have increased year-on-year, In the year to March 2020 in England and Wales, sexual orientation hate crimes rose by 19% to 15,835, and transgender identity hate crimes by 16% to 2,540 – averaging more than 50 reports each day.

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The LGBT+ liberation movement cannot be separated from the working class movement and the fight for socialism as a whole, only the working class has the ability to end LGBT+ oppression. This is why working together and showing collective solidarity is so important, we as working class LGBTQ+ people have far more in common with a fellow working class miner with unpleasant views about gay people for example, than we will ever have with a powerful top of society billionaire LGBTQ+ person, while we may share some forms of opression, but on things like healthcare, housing, etc we have to rely on the system to take care of our needs not use our power and wealth to instantly make everything better.

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That is why we are hugely inspired by organisations like Lesbians and Gays Support The Miners, and their work during the miners strike, Not only did their London group alone raised £22,500 by 1985 (equivalent to £73,000 in 2021) in support. The alliances which their campaign forged between the LGBTQ+ community and British labour groups proved to be an vitaly important turning point in the progression of LGBT+ matters in the United Kingdom. 

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For example, miners' labour groups began to support, endorse and participate in various gay pride events throughout the UK, including leading London's Lesbian and Gay Pride parade in 1985 in a show solidarity for LGSM’s support during the strike. The 1985 Labour Party conference in Bournemouth seen a resolution to enshrine LGBTQ+ rights into the manifesto passed, although this motion had failed before, this time it passed due to block voting support from the National Union of Mineworkers. The miners' groups also became among the most outspoken allies of the LGBT community in the 1988 campaign against Section 28.

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Tom: How have LGBT+ Socialists been putting those ideas into action?

LGBT+ Socialists: We are proud to actively support workers and the struggles of working-class communities, and recognise the importance of grassroots organising towards building and transforming the labour movement, such as supporting the campaigns to repeal all anti-union laws. Our issues are fully intertwined; we are a collective work force and must always stand staunchly together. That is why the very first thing that we did as an organisation in 2018 was to get a banner made to immediately start showing visible solidarity with workers at picket lines and also building relationships with workers and reps present. 

 

Through that work, we have quickly built very good relationships between ourselves and the local RMT and UCU branches, we have also earned praise from UCU General Secretary Dr. Jo Grady for our constant support to the union in multiple disputes including the ongoing Four Fights campaign. Appreciation has also come from the national RMT twitter account for our support during the keep the guard on the train, cleaners pay, and P&O mass sacking disputes, and also for our fundraising work for their strike fund during the ongoing Pay, Pensions and Conditions strike action.

 

The cost of living crisis is proving to all exactly why we should never allow ourselves to see politics as just a series of parliamentary maneuvers. Nor can we just wait until the next election, to vote for the least worst option from the two main parties to bring about minimal changes when we desperately need revolutionary changes to the system of government and to society.

As I made a point of in my speech at the recent Enough Is Enough rally in Liverpool, whatever our backgrounds, every single member of the working class, in all its intersectionalities, are all being disproportionately affected by this capitalism crisis. Issues of equality and oppression are visible every single day and are inherently a class issue and we must treat them accordingly, we need to build a mass movement that unites all the working class, a movement that raises every single person within it, and leaves nobody behind. Any meaningful workers movement must actively take a strong stand against homophobia, transphobia, ableism, sexism, racism and all forms of bigotry and oppression, for doing so it is not an optional extra in the class struggle but a core part of it.

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That means leading anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigning within our communities, and also actively making interventions to support and help guide liberation movements, and also mobilising on the streets where necessary. We cant win anything standing alone, we need to escalate, coordinate, and unite all of our struggles from LGBT+ liberation, to Black liberation, to taking strike action, to win our rights and battles, not waiting in the hope that politicians or a general election will ever, one day make those changes for us.