Stonewalls and Coalfaces

Mansfield, “that once romantic now utterly disheartening colliery town” has transformed again since DH Lawrence penned those words of change in Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Lawrence bemoaned the encroachment of coal into a quaint market town, now the area is emblematic of what happens when coal leaves; where once it was a symbol of the devils of industrialisation, it now serves the same for its collapse. Even more recently, after an election where Mansfield was a rare win for Theresa May’s Conservatives, it represents the sort of area where Corbynism has limited cut-through. In this repsect Mansfield has joined Nuneaton and Islington as a place that is more famous as an electoral shorthand than as a location. That once romantic colliery town is now an utterly disheartening psephological syndecdoche.
One of the most repugnant invocations of “the Mansfield problem” came from Nottingham University’s Steven Fielding (whose twitter avatar is a picture of him on telly and cover photo is a shelf of Important Books). In response to Jeremy Corbyn’s plans to make it easier for Trans people to self-identify Fielding tweeted “That’ll win back Mansfield.”
There are a few problems with Fielding’s statement. Firstly, while it is always the primary job of the Labour Party to pursue Government, it is not its only role, and this sort of shallow electoralism is why the membership chose Jeremy Corbyn. Secondly, Mansfield is one constituency out of 650, all equally weighted — it’s not the Golden Snitch. Thirdly, why are people from Mansfield all Transphobic bigots? Because they’re working-class? By that token quite a few journalists at major newspapers are secretly hod- or hawk-holding labourers.
Personally I think Corbyn’s proposal is good politics. It will appeal strongly to a lot of people, and probably won’t even register among those who would be predisposed to dislike it — a sort of nice dogwhistle. It should also, based purely on what I’m seeing and hearing from Trans activists, do good, and doing good for a historically marginalised group should always be a core aim of the Labour Party. Finally, pushing socially liberal policies on LGBT and women’s rights allow Labour to paint any Tory that votes against them as a stooge of hardline reactionaries across the Irish Sea.
If you disagree, ok, but own your own bigotry. Fielding’s tactic of blaming others for his opposition to decent rights for oppressed groups — “Oh, I’d love to help, but people in ex-pit towns won’t stand for it!” — is craven and cowardly, and paints people who live outside of a metropolitan bubble as neandrathals.
Sadly, Fielding’s tweet was indicative of a general problem. During the 1980s Labour’s policies that were most lampooned weren’t their economic ones — nationalising the commanding heights of the economy — but rather their social ones. Tory Party propoganda sneered at Labour’s support for gay rights, one poster said Labour was planning “gay sports days”, during an era when Section 28 was ruining the lives of gay children and teens. During the Bermondsey by-election, the Liberal Democrats’ Simon Hughes ran a homophobic campaign against Labour candidate Peter Tatchell. At every turn homosexuality was depicted as a silly, loony left obsession, and homosexuals were painted as posh fops, contrasted with the tough, Methodist working men who had founded the Labour Party. At the same time Lesbians and Gays Support The Miners (LGSM) was organising fundraisers for disheartened colliery towns that were being savaged by the Thatcher Government.
Things have moved on from the 1980s — imagine the Tories running a racist campaign aimed at Diane Abbot today! — but history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Now Trans people are being held up as an example of an extremist group, and their supporters as evidence of left-liberal overreach which has caused a right-wing blowback. Colin Jost quipped on Saturday Night Live: “Tinder added 37 gender options, it’s called ‘Why the Democrats lost the elections’”. Jeremy Clarkson said Parliament should move to Doncaster, in order to realise “there are bigger problems than if Eddie Izzard gets to wear a beret”.
Despite attempts to create a dichotomy between bourgeois Trans issues and gritty proletarian issues, Trans people are not wealthy people experimenting with gender, they’re ordinary people trying to survive. In fact, rates of homelessness and poverty among Trans people are awful. As opposed to living exclusively in “that London” Trans people live everywhere. There are Trans people in small towns, pit-towns, and, I’m proud to say, my hometown: So when you tell those people that their struggle is inimical to the struggle of people in places like Mansfield it isn’t just telling them that they don’t matter, it’s telling them that they don’t exist.