Being Other

I’ve lately been frequently reminded that I am ‘Other’, something that someone with my usual background levels of insecurity and introspection has found pushing its way to the fore, which, with my current depressed state, makes me even more awkward and sensitive than usual.

Those who’ve read my previous blogs or read my Twitter feed know the battles I’ve faced with the DWP as a direct result of having the temerity to be disabled, something that came about in fact because I had no shame about being gay in the 1980s when society still had very different views and laws than it does today.  Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act where homosexuality was partially decriminalised, a true landmark for gay men and a marker on the long road to equality – a rough road that we’re still treading and one that those of us who strive for equality will be travelling on for some time to come. Don’t misunderstand me, I think that commemorating the event is important and something that needs to be widely shouted about, but the belief that once the 1967 act became law we danced along the Yellow Brick Road to disco beats in ruby slippers all the way until today really is a rainbow-tinted view and one I personally find difficult. I find it difficult because as a gay man in his mid fifties who is committed to equality in its fullest sense I know that, despite changes in the law, we are still in many, many ways socially far from being an equal society.

Equality is something that we as a nation are very good at making laws for and celebrating – which of course we should – but we’re not very good at actually doing it. Just because something is on the statute books and widely praised doesn’t make it happen, for that we need to listen to, learn from and talk with those for whom legislation is supposedly enacted rather than be spoken at by those who decide the laws – usually phalanxes of privileged folks with little or no real knowledge of what it is to be Other but well-meaning in their desire to be seen doing something good. And there’s the rub. Statutes are on the books yet inequality is still something that we see enacted every day in all aspects of our lives – sometimes insidious, frequently unspoken but increasingly noticeable. Extreme cases scream out in the headlines, usually violence directed against a person or group because they are women, BAME or not British, disabled, LGBT or elderly. We can try to explain it away, salve the pain with talk of diversity, integration, multiculturalism and everything inbetween, and the lily-livered and naysayers can try to excuse it by shouting about political correctness,  yet the introduction of the Equalities Act 2010, (replacing Equal Pay Act 1970, Sex Discrimination Act 1975, Race Relations Act 1976, Disability Discrimination Act 1995, Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2003 and the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006), has done little if anything to create an equal society. Laws alone simply aren’t enough, education from the very earliest years right through until higher education, employment and beyond has to grasp the nettle. Government has to not only talk about zero-tolerance of hate and the need for equality but has to be seen to be enacting the very word of the law and ensuring that all services, employers and organisations are committed to and working for equality.

I’ve seen and experienced inequality at work within the groups I ‘belong to’ as Other, being a gay man and disabled is frequently seen as mutually incompatible at worst or an exotic niche interest at best, racism and exoticism is common too for BAME LGBT+ people, and many lesbians are rightly vocal about the misogyny and exclusion they experience. Some have tried to explain it away to me as the hierarchy of oppression, the youthful body beautiful hedonism of the gay male community or the reflection of misogyny within wider society. I say hogwash. Anyone who has experienced prejudice or bigotry has to ensure they don’t perpetuate hate, indeed we all do. We have to talk and listen openly, learn, and treat each other with a bit more respect.

So there we are, I don’t have many answers but I am aware, I listen, learn, campaign and fight for full equality as Other and ally, and will carry on doing so for as long as I have to. Personally I believe that unless and until there is full equality for women and that 51% of the population are no longer seen as Other striving for wider equality will be a long, tough road. The Equal Pay Act and Sex Discrimination Act were two of the earliest pieces of equality legislation, women are the strong base on which society is built, to whom we entrust childcare and much of education, and yet somehow there is still a gender pay gap and women do not hold even a quarter of our Westminster seats, let alone parity with men across wider society. That has to be addressed and then other equality can genuinely become reality.

Phew, I have gone on. Yet I still feel Other, I will still be seen as Other and as a result I will feel apologetic, insecure and on occasions clinically depressed. And I know that I’m not the only one. I am thankful, truly thankful, to have a good group of friends to buoy me up and make me believe we will, one day, succeed. Society may never be perfect but it can be much better than it is. And it will be.

 

A Broad-Left Manifesto for Social Cohesion

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need

Louis Blanc, 1851

I’m by no means a Marxist, I do not align myself to any party or creed, but I do believe in socialist principals – especially the one highlighted above. I believe that the basics of human life – housing, food, education, employment, healthcare  – should be available to all equally, regardless of income, and that the state has a responsibility to ensure that all citizens have access to a decent basic standard of all of these.  It also has a responsibility to ensure that all have protection under the law and the International Declaration of Human Rights. Not one of the political parties – left or right – have really fully addressed the social and financial pressures the ordinary residents of this country are under, let alone the most vulnerable. They have so far spent the election campaign scoring political points and heaping insults on each other, little wonder that so many feel so disengaged from politics. Under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition living standards are still below the level of those at the time of the 2010 election, child poverty has increased, house rental and purchase costs continue to outstrip wages and  public services – from the NHS to the armed forces – are stretched to near breaking point. Despite this the coalition parties want us to believe that as a result of their policies and fiscal management the country is doing well. I and many others beg to differ. Another term of Conservative government, either as a single party or in coalition, will lead to economic and social divisions unseen since the worst excesses of Thatcherism. The Tory promise to extend the Right to Buy scheme is proof positive of what could happen, indeed we are already well down that road.  The  Equality Trust’s report ‘The Scale of Economic Inequality in the UK’ stated in February:

The UK has a very high level of income inequality compared to other developed countries.

People in the bottom 10% of the population have on average a net income of £8,628. The top 10% have net incomes almost ten times that (£80,240)… income inequality is much starker at the top of the income scale, with the group with the 9^th highest incomes making only 60% of the top 10%’s income. Inequality is much higher amongst original income than net income with the poorest 10% having on average an original income of £3,875 whilst the top 10% have an original income over 27 times larger (£104,940).

Such inequality is inexcusable and serves as an indicator of what is happening in the country – big money and the markets rule.  A small number of billionaire business and media oligarchs appear to be able to influence government and hold sway over an increasing number of  politicians whilst the vast majority of the electorate are at best patronised and at worst ignored. Westminster has increasingly become so far removed from the real lives of ordinary working UK residents that government policy, no matter how unpopular or misguided, is forced through come what may, and the efficacy of such policies seem to be measured by cherry-picking the results most favourable to the government. The 2010-2015 coalition government has forced through socially damaging and divisive policies that are continuing to harm the most vulnerable in society, and blinkered ideological dogma is undermining public service provision in all areas under the pretence that austerity requires it. They have used the 2008 international banking crisis as an ideal opportunity to persuade the public that it was a home-grown failure of Labour’s fiscal policy and the only alternative to swingeing cuts was bankruptcy. The Labour Party’s failure to harness public disquiet over unpopular policies and provide a strong voice for political and social opposition to the harsh and unnecessary level of cuts and reorganisation simply served to prove the Labour leadership’s disconnection from the voters. Once gain the weakest in society came into a government’s sights – not single mothers as in the days of Thatcher but the supposed feckless undeserving sick and disabled poor as well as their usual bogeymen the profligate public services and the thieving foreigners swarming over our borders. In selling us these wide-of-the-mark theories it was willingly aided by the predominantly right-wing media, more than happy to be able to offer their readers tales on the wanton wastefulness of benefit Britain on one page and the lovely luxurious lives of marvellous millionaires on the next.

This election is crucial to stop this country being dragged further from being a social welfare society to a neoliberal capitalist economy. It is an opportunity for the nation to be moved from economics of austerity and despair to an integrated policy of social and economic development which would serve to strengthen communities and re-energise a sense of pride and place, and this means that Ed Miliband and Labour as the probable largest party of the left must swallow their pride and work with the other broad-left parties such the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP to ensure that this can be done. A broad-left controlled parliament could and should ensure that, as soon as possible:

• The attacks upon the poorest, disabled people and the sick stop, with all benefit reform managed to ensure that people of working age in receipt of benefits no longer have to rely upon food banks or choose between heating, food or paying rent. It is a crime that this happens in one of the richest nations on earth.
• A commission be appointed to look, without government or political interference, at a fair and equitable welfare benefits system.
• Employers must pay the living wage as advised by the Living Wage Foundation, rather than the minimum wage.
• Zero hours contracts be scrapped and replaced with employee-centred contracts.
• The right-to-buy scheme for all council housing and social housing be stopped.
• A comprehensive social housing policy be adopted allowing properties to be purchased and built by local authorities. This can be funded by local authorities being allowed to take out mortgages at favourable rates through state funded banks which will, after all, be repaid through rents.
• Council, social and private rents be controlled by independent bodies, taking into account local pay conditions rather than market forces.
• The NHS and all its properties be returned to the nation, with public-private partnerships.
• NHS reforms to be stopped with a commission, made up of NHS staff, patient and health organisations, charged with looking at the best way of operating a modern, patient-centred service. It should fully independent of government and political interference. Physical and mental health should be funded and seen equally.
• Education should be returned to a state system with oversight by boards and a broad-based national curriculum to cover sciences and the arts equally.
• The bias to an artificial percentage of school leavers expected to go on to university education should be reassessed, with apprenticeships and other fully accredited and overseen professional, technical and employment-based training provision accorded equal status.
• University loans should be abolished and a grant system for all higher/post school accredited education be reintroduced.
• Legal Aid in criminal, family and employment cases needs to be reintroduced.
• A reform of the parliamentary system to reflect the democratic needs of the four nations and to finally remove and replace the Lords should be begun immediately and put to the nation in a referendum.
• In order to pay for this taxation must be reviewed. Income tax should be set at levels aligned to personal income with a higher rate of income tax set at 50%. ‘Non-Dom’ status should be abolished and all UK residents should be required to pay their appropriate taxes, regardless of their national, personal or business status. Business taxes should encourage community enterprise and investment with business taxes aligned to business profits.

A comprehensive review and strengthening of equality legislation in all areas – for women, disabled people, LBTQ people, the black and minority ethnic populations – should be taken in hand as soon as possible. Equality is something that benefits all society and it requires the government to lead by full training in equalities for all public employees, service providers and as a full part of the education system and provided by people expert in the relevant areas.

Funding and policy with regard to policing, national security, the armed forces, devolution and local authority provision, immigration, EU membership and foreign affairs obviously need to be reviewed and addressed in order to best serve the people of the UK, not the political establishment or the markets.

Will anyone listen? I doubt it but I live in hope.