I was in the women’s movement in the 1970s in the north of England, closely involved in challenging violence against women. I am not a woman who underestimates, or is ignorant of, misogyny in all its forms, from verbal ridicule to vicious brutality. Words and deeds could get very nasty in those days (and still do). Women have suffered, and continue to suffer, the consequences of prejudice and patriarchy.
But to see Labour women now – MPs particularly – complaining about “bullying” and “misogyny” and blaming it on Jeremy Corbyn, because, they claim, he ignores it, or, worse, condones it (or licenses it, according to Owen Smith), makes me despair. If Labour women are not prepared to take the fight of ideas and principles to their opponents, then they need to step aside, not claim special privileges to protect them from the slings and arrows of factional abuse.
The irony in this is that the earliest attacks on Corbyn’s leadership from his parliamentary colleagues (during the debate on bombing Syria) were because of his alleged pacifism. Now it seems he is transformed from pacifist to aggressor. We need to get real and dismiss the social media hate for what it is – the easy, opportunistic, but futile, expression of the frustrations and antagonisms of opponents who have no solid base.
Gillian Dalley
London
It would appear that some people may have paid their £25 to join the Labour party to support Jeremy Corbyn. However there are some of us who have joined to vote against him. His leadership is proving disastrous for those of us who would like to see a credible centre-left opposition to the Tories. How can the Labour Party have a leader who has lost the trust of so many MPs? Anybody can rail against austerity and poverty, but to do anything about it you have to have credible policies that people will support. The job of a serious opposition is to hold the government to account. Corbyn failed spectacularly to do this at prime minister’s questions last week.
One of the worst things about current Labour politics is that anyone who puts a different point of view is disloyal – a traitor, a Blairite, a red Tory. Most of us are none of these things. We would like a decent Labour government that could garner the support of people to build a better society. Have yet to hear anything from the Corbynistas that convinces me that they have any policies to deliver it.
I can’t help but think back with a terrible sense of deja vu to Neil Kinnock’s words at the 1985 party conference: “I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you can go through the years sticking to that, outdated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.”
The trouble is, it’s not just one or two councils that have lost the plot but the leadership itself.
Helen Salmon
Bristol
In normal times rebel Labour MPs would be in their constituencies arguing the case for Owen Smith. However, having banned meetings at local level, they have reverted to a campaign of daily press releases – or “campaign by Murdoch/Harmsworth/Barclay Bros”, as Alistair Campbell would say.
Each day we are drip-fed yet another story about how Corbyn’s evil henchmen have smashed up cars, said really nasty things about people, or even opened up offices that should have been vacated a month ago (Seema Malhotra accuses Corbyn aide over office entry, Observer, 24 July). When Lehman Brothers went down, we saw staff leaving with cardboard boxes within hours; when Theresa May won the Tory leadership contest we saw Cameron out within days; yet Labour rebels who resigned a month ago still want to hang on to the trappings of office.
Next I predict “Corbyn ate my hamster”.
Mike Lake
Ashbourne, Derbyshire
There is no excuse for threats against an MP’s staff, but the small side-window in the building housing Angela Eagle’s office appears much more likely to have been broken by a vandal or a burglar (Report, 22 July). If someone was targeting her actual office, and failed to see the party sticker on her window, they would appear to be extraordinarily incompetent.
And as a party branch secretary I am appalled at the damaging hysteria, which will stop at nothing to oust Mr Corbyn. Please, can we have a considered mature debate on policy? It is the behaviour of the parliamentary Labour party that is now more likely to destroy the party than any activities by Mr Corbyn’s supporters. Owen Smith is doing himself no favours by lining up with the panic attacks on his opponent.
Revd David Haslam
Evesham, Worcestershire