From Glad to be Gay to trans rights: Labour must learn its own lessons

On Friday 25 September, I went to see Tom Robinson at the Colchester Arts Centre. He was performing with guitarist Adam Phillips in their Then & Now tour and I had the joy of being transported back to my school days in the late 1970s.

Back in the 1970s Robinson was a leading figure in the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism. He played at the iconic event in April 1978 alongside the Clash which attracted around 100,000 people to Victoria Park, London.

Perhaps his most important song was Glad to be Gay. I remember it being played in my fifth form common room at Saddleworth School on the side of the Pennines and even as a teenager I realised it was important. The first time I saw Robinson perform it was at the massive London demonstration to stop Thatcher’s Clause 28 in 1988.

The bigotry that the queer community in the 1970s suffered was appalling and it got worse when, at the beginning of the 1980s, Aids arrived in Britain.

Today, as Mike Jackson, the co-founder of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, said to me recently on the Labour Left Podcast, it is the trans community who are on the front line and we must stand with them. As Robinson sang last Friday in a reworded verse, “whatever shade of the rainbow today we’re here and we’re human and happy to stay”.

As Labour supporters gathered last week in Liverpool for our conference, trans women have been excluded from the women’s conference with the result that a number of unions decided to boycott the conference. During the summer, Colchester Labour was not made welcome at Colchester Pride because of the national party’s stance on trans rights. Two moments of deep shame for our party.

In the 1980s, in the face of some hostility, we won the argument that socialists should stand with lesbians and gays. Today it is clear, as Mike Jackson states, that it is the trans community who face the most bigotry from the extreme right. We must all stand alongside our trans siblings.

Another recent Labour Left Podcast with David Renton, How do we Stop Nigel Farage and the Far Right? includes a discussion on Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League. You can also download a Spotify playlist here of the Victoria Park Rock Against Racism festival bands.

This article is republished with the permission of the Labour Left Podcast.