In recent years violent attacks toward LGBT people in the UK have risen exponentially. The situation in Liverpool has been particularly dire with the number of these vicious attacks rising over 25 percent since last year, according to the Merseyside police.
However, the abuse faced by LGBT people in Liverpool reached its boiling point in the month of pride. There were several high profile attacks upon LGBT youth causing a reckoning between the ‘pride’ of capitalism versus its true militant origins.
Culture war or Class war?
The Tories, to distract from their disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic, amongst other things, have made further efforts to fuel a reactionary narrative; one that blames those most oppressed for our societal ills. Of course, this is to distract from the real enemies, themselves and their capitalist friends.
The waging of this kind of narrative is devoid of class analysis, and this is no accident, by ignoring that the classes in society have different and conflicting interests the tories and the capitalist class can avoid criticism for the suffering of the working class.
LGBT people have been hit hard by this disgusting rhetoric and the violence it brings.
The development of LGBT oppression
The struggle against sexual discrimination is linked to the struggle against class society in general. The roots of which can be found in this article. The article also explains that,
‘the vast majority of LGBT people are workers, youth, temporary workers, and unemployed, who experience a double oppression in regard to both their class, in the workplace and living (or surviving) conditions, and their identity or sexual orientation. Joining the struggles against these two forms of oppression is therefore the most natural thing, especially when we consider that the enemy is the same’
The parasitic capitalists have spent time and money trying to convince us that they are a part of pride. With corporations such as HSBC supposedly throwing their support behind LGBT people all while further harming the community with their actions. For example, in 2019 they launched a $451bn fund dedicated to investment in Saudi Arabia, a country notorious for its oppression and torture of members of its LGBT community.
With rainbow flags being thrown into branding across June, as well as the passing of the marriage equality laws in many countries, homophobia is often presented as an ill of the past. However, Liverpool tells a different story.
Liverpool reaches a reckoning.
Several LGBT people in Liverpool, in an act of great bravery, took to social media and with upsetting pictures and captions were able to portray the horrors they had faced to the world.
Curtis Stewart, a victim of one of these horrific attacks, makes clear in an Instagram post why such a public action was required.
“…Since the police can’t/aren’t doing anything about it i thought i’d try and take it to social media to see if people could share it, spread awareness and find the person who done this”.
Never has it been clearer how little faith the LGBT community have in the police who not only have a terrible record at investigating such crimes but have also played a key role as a brutaliser of the LGBT community. Originally, it must be remembered that Pride was a protest against the police.
However, where the police fail, the working class and student body of Liverpool succeeds. On the 22nd of June 2021 hundreds took to the city centre of Liverpool in a protest organised by two LGBT workers in Liverpool. The speeches and interviews made gave a crystal-clear image of how bad things had gotten for LGBT people whose lives, safety and societal agency are all collateral damage to the Tories opportunistic culture war.
After the protest the police assured the community there would be more plain clothed officers while businesses such as lush offered their support with materials for placards. These tone deaf and ineffectual responses further show why the LGBT community can find no safety at the hands of the capitalists and police, the violent enforcers of the very system stirring up hate.
True liberation, Fight for revolution.
The Tories may try and present this as a war between straight and gay, those in the LGBT community and ‘normal working class Brits’. However, this is of course untrue. The question of LGBT liberation is one which is tied intrinsically to the liberation of the working class.
Together LGBT and non LGBT workers must come together in solidarity to remove this parasitic class from society once and for all and instead bring about a society free of the ills’ of the past that for so long have been a tool in the arsenal of this sickening class.
Georgie Gibson
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