The latest from Cafe Royal Books, with photographer Ian Sumner:
[Photos © Cafe Royal Books/Ian Sumner]
Mick Hartley
Politics and Culture
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The queen of weaponising the trans debate shows zero comprehension or remorse. From the Times:
Nicola Sturgeon has claimed there “was nothing I could have done” to have improved the tone of the debate on trans rights, in a reversal of her previous position.
Apart perhaps from slagging off her opponents as homophobes, bigots and racists.
“This issue is not as toxic and divisive amongst the general public as it is amongst campaigners on both sides of the debate,” Sturgeon said.
“I reflected in the book that maybe I could have done more to avoid the issue becoming so toxic and polarised. I have to say, the reaction of some of the campaigners on the other side of this debate to me suggested that I might have been wrong about that.
Asked whether she expended too much political capital on her self-ID law, which would have allowed anyone aged 16 or over to obtain a gender recognition certificate by signing a declaration, she denied doing so.
Sturgeon’s name will forever be linked with Isla Bryson.
A spokeswoman at For Women Scotland, the group which secured last year’s landmark Supreme Court ruling, said Sturgeon remained “in her own bubble, convinced of her own righteousness and as disconnected as ever from the ordinary men and women of Scotland.”
She added: “Few lawmakers have tried to destroy women’s legal rights with the single-minded determination of Ms Sturgeon, leaving the rest of us to mop up the chaos caused in hospitals, prisons, and the violence against women sector. Now, it seems, she can’t even take responsibility for her failures and continues to blame women’s rights campaigners for the ‘toxic’ debate while she — who held all the cards — alternately ignored us and smeared us.”
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A GLAAD mea culpa here. Finally admitting to what everyone’s been saying for years.
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Worth a read.
October 7, 2023, was the day Islamic terrorism finally hit its perfect target.
Not office workers in New York. Not commuters in London or Madrid. Jews. The one people on earth against whom no justification has ever been required. The one people history itself has already condemned in the eyes of their enemies: they deserved it, just as they “deserved” expulsion from a hundred countries across the centuries. The old blood libel needed no update. It only needed a new stage, and Hamas delivered it in living color, bodycams, livestreams, babies burned in ovens, women paraded naked, elderly Holocaust survivors dragged into tunnels. Barbarism so pure it should have ended every conversation. Instead, it became the moment both Islam and the radical left dropped the mask together.
For twenty-two years the West had clung to the fiction that jihad was the work of “Islamists”, a political perversion, not the faith itself. That firewall had protected Islam from scrutiny after every terrorist attack. But on October 7 the target was Jews, and suddenly neither Muslims nor their new leftist allies could afford the old distinction. They did not want to distance themselves from the slaughter. They wanted to celebrate it. They wanted to own the triumph.
So Muslims claimed Hamas outright. Not as a “radical faction.” Not as “extremists who hijacked the religion.” As Islam. Pure, unadulterated, straight from the Qur’an and the Prophet’s example. For the first time since 9/11, the theology was not denied. It was embraced. The chants were not “Not in our name.” They were “From the river to the sea,” “Globalize the intifada,” and open calls for more October 7ths. Imams and influencers who had spent decades parsing “Islam versus Islamism” dropped the parsing. Hamas was not a distortion. Hamas was the faith in action. The mask was not just off; it was thrown away because the victims were Jews and the victory felt too sweet to disown.
The radical left, which had spent the same two decades polishing that same “Islamism” distinction to shield its favorite victim group, did not hesitate either. It claimed Hamas too. Immediately. Enthusiastically. The very people who had once called bin Laden’s followers “deviants” now marched with the same killers’ flags. Why? Because the target was Jews. Because Israel is not merely a country to them; it is the living symbol of the West, its competence, its resilience, its refusal to apologize for existing. To both ideologies, Israel is the final proof that the old order still breathes: Judeo-Christian roots, Western values, individual dignity, technological triumph grafted onto ancient soil. Smash it, and you smash the West without firing a shot in Manhattan.
So the left supplied the language the Muslims had always lacked in polite society. What Hamas filmed as religious ecstasy, jihad, conquest, humiliation of the infidel, the left translated into “resistance,” “liberation,” “anti-colonialism,” “decolonization.” The rapes became metaphors for “settler violence.” The baby-killings became “context” for 1948. The massacre of festival-goers became “armed struggle against occupation.” Suddenly the oldest hatred on earth had a progressive gloss. Jihad was no longer medieval; it was intersectional.
This was not alliance. It was convergence. Two anti-Western projects, Islam with its fourteen-century mandate of submission, Marxism in all its postmodern, critical, decolonial flavors, had hunted for a common symbol for generations. They found it in the Jews. Demonize Israel and you delegitimize the entire Western project. Legitimize violence against Jews and every other anti-Western grievance becomes instantly righteous….
The streets told the story. Palestinian flags flew beside rainbow banners and Che Guevara icons. Queers for Palestine marched beside people who would throw them from rooftops. Feminists chanted “globalize the intifada” while women in Gaza were still being stoned for “honor.” Marxists who had spent decades denouncing religion suddenly discovered that one particular religion was sacred when it killed Jews. The shared symbol had done its work. Israel had become the hinge on which two dying civilizations could briefly unite to tear down the one that still worked.
What happened after October 7 was not merely the repackaging of Islamic terrorism. It was the mutual legitimization of two irreconcilable projects that hate the West more than they hate each other. By claiming the same enemy, they claimed each other.
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This is an example of the immense symbolic moral power of the British monarchy deployed to protect and reassure a small, beleaguered section of the British people.
It may seem a small gesture but it has touched and heartened the Anglo-Jewish community.
It is symbolic of course but monarchs have a special ability to make such symbolic gestures over the heads of politicians – Queen Victoria and Franz Josef did so in their own way – and so did, in much worse circumstances, the King of Denmark, The Duke of Edinburgh’s mother, the Sultan of Morocco and Bey of Tunisia, and in perilous, murky circumstances monarchs in Bulgaria and Romania.
The recent spasm of antiJewish hatred that has swept the country has shocked and scared many – a spasm that included the attack on a synagogue and murder of Jewish people on Yom Kippur the holiest day of the year, the terrorist burning of Jewish ambulances who serve all communities this week, the Birmingham police Maccabi football scandal, the marchers who celebrated October 7, who praise Hamas, Iran and promoted blood libels and incited the massacre of Jews and Israelis, the repeated harrassment and attempt to drive out ‘Jewish’ restaurants Gails and Miznon, the intimidation of Jewish students and professors at universities, the arrest of Mancunian jihadist terrorists planning a massacre, the arrest of Iranian state agents scoping out CST and Bevis Marks for attacks, the NHS bigots spreading vile racism and threatening patients and much more…. -
The headline – Transgender girls told to leave Girlguiding groups by September.
They’re boys. So transgender boys. Boys pretending to be girls. It’s not a tragic loss of inclusivity, but a reassertion of the obvious point that Girlguiding is for girls.
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More on that Margate exhibition of antisemitic scrawls – from the Telegraph:
Labour-led Thanet council apologised for promoting the event on its tourism website after being accused of supporting the exhibition.
A spokesman said: “Once the council was contacted regarding the nature of the content, the link to this exhibition was removed. The council is not affiliated with the gallery or this exhibition and apologises sincerely for any distress or offence that has been caused.”
Fair enough. Good for them.
The police, on the other hand, decided that blood-soaked images of Jews eating babies were not antisemitic:
The historian Sir Simon Schama, speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival, said the police needed to be given formal education in anti-Semitism.
“What it comes down to is educating the police,” Sir Simon said.
“There is no question that it’s perfectly legitimate to criticise Zionism or the actions of the Israeli government, but it’s also extremely clear when that morphs into something that is destructive and harmful to the safety and peaceful self-respect of Jewish communities.”
Speaking after he delivered the festival’s inaugural lecture on anti-Semitism, Sir Simon said: “Somebody was so horrified by the exhibition in Margate that they contacted Kent police. Two perfectly nice policemen came along, were surrounded by this absolute symphony of emblems of blood-soaked, child-eating Jews, and said, ‘No, we think this is perfectly legitimate criticism of the state of Israel.’
“It’s very hard to set up a college course in Jewish history for police forces around the country, but something really has to be done educationally.”
Sir Simon said he knew the artist, Matthew Collings, many years ago. “He was a brilliant art presenter on Channel 4 in the late 90s – and now a rabid anti-Semite.”
It’s the by-now familiar use of “Zionist” instead of “Jew”. Makes it seem political. Fooled the police here, anyway.
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Melanie Phillips in the Times looks at the malign influence of Tucker Carlson – Maga’s favourite podcaster platforms antisemitism and refuses to say if Israel has a right to exist.
Carlson is no mere crank. He has enormous influence over millions of Americans — mainly men under the age of about 40 — who treat his poisonous opinions as near holy writ. This faction forms a very significant chunk of Donald Trump’s core Maga constituency. Carlson’s enormous following helped propel Trump into power. Carlson’s son works for the vice-president, JD Vance….
Seeking explanation for bad things that frighten them, this faction is blaming the Jews. Perceiving a disproportionate number of Jews prominently involved in progressive politics, they see only the Jews — ignoring the entire cultural establishment that has been unravelling western identity over the past half century.
Right on cue, from today’s JC:
Controversial US podcaster Tucker Carlson has described Oswald Mosley, the pro-Hitler leader of Britain’s short-lived fascist party during the Second World War, as one of the country’s “great war heroes”.
Carlson further claimed this week that Mosley’s “only crime was being the opposition” to Winston Churchill, and that was why he was arrested.
Churchill, according to Carlson, was a person we are “required to deify”, but in fact was a figure who “presided over the imprisonment of his opposition party during the entire length of the war, and their families, and their wives.”
About Mosley and his party, he continued: “Their crime was being the opposition party and being disloyal and unpatriotic, they weren’t.”
The British Union of Fascists was not the opposition party, of course, They were never more than a minor faction, sent packing at Cable Street. The actual opposition party, Labour, joined Churchill and the Tories in a wartime coalition.
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Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph – “Despite the law supporting female-only spaces, biological men who have been rightfully excluded will do all that they can to destroy them”.
We all know the scenario where two small children are playing and one snatches a toy off the other and they start fighting. An adult comes along, takes the toy away and says: “If you can’t learn to share, neither of you can play with the truck.” One of the children feels that they have been unfairly treated. Neither child is happy. This is where we are on the issue of single-sex spaces for women.
The law that was clarified by the Supreme Court last April said clearly that sex in legal terms under the Equality Act meant biological sex. In the debate that has raged around it, there has been an insane focus on toilets, but the ruling is about more than that. Women are entitled to single-sex spaces – and not only should our big institutions ensure that this is facilitated, but our smaller social organisations should do so too. This includes organisations actually set up for women, such as the Girl Guides, the Women’s Institute, the Ladies Pond at Hampstead Heath, a female boxing club… all should be what they say on the tin. For women only.
This should be straightforward. Somehow, though, chaos has ensued. This is partly because the Women and Equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson, has refused to lay out guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and partly because organisations, often under the sway of a minority of trans activists, say that unless biological men (trans women) are allowed into women’s spaces, they will basically destroy them.
If someone says no to tantruming men, if women won’t hand over the toys, then no one can have the toys.
There is, unfortunately, considerable assistance from the “be kind” women – in Girlguiding or the Women’s Institute, for instance.
Janet Murray’s report in this paper detailed the clashes in the Girlguiding movement because some of its members do not accept the decision made last December to restrict membership to biological girls. This was in line with the Equality Act and it means boys who identify as girls will no longer be able to become Brownies or Guides. In defiance, a militant group, Guiders Against Trans Exclusion (Gate), is handing out badges to groups as young as Rainbows (children aged between five and seven) to show support for trans allies.
Again we must ask: who is this for? Trans people are a tiny percentage of the population (in the 2021 census, it’s 0.5 per cent, and even that figure has been criticised for being an overestimation). Now that puberty blockers have been banned, these Gate-sympathising boys are simply self-IDing as girls – and parents are going along with social transitioning.
A safeguarding issue, though, comes into play for the Guides when it comes to shared rooms on group trips. Why is the movement tearing itself apart over this?
The Women’s Institute is going through similar skirmishes that I find hilarious. If trans women are not admitted to its meetings, it will close down some of its branches. Nora Salmon, of a group in Hackney, said that ruling men out had created “a carnage of concern and upset”. I love this. The words carnage and Women’s Institute in the same sentence – it’s the first time I have ever wanted to join!
More legal wrangles are going on concerning the Ladies Pond in Hampstead. There are three ponds: one men’s, one mixed and one for women – and guess what? Yes, biological men want access to the Ladies Pond so that all three are for men. Women, share your toys or have none.…
What are we now saying to girls? You are never allowed anything of your own? You have no right to complain? You have no right to privacy? There is no place you can go where men are not allowed? If you were sensitive and learnt to share you would let men access all areas?
No. This is not what the law says but, perhaps more importantly, this is not how many women feel.
Inclusion now appears to mean both the exclusion of women’s concerns and the facts of male violence.
Until those facts change, I won’t consider sharing my toys.
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It gets sillier and sillier. From the Telegraph – National Trust boss: Ethnic minorities don’t know what to wear in countryside;
Non-white people do not feel welcome in the countryside because they do not know what to wear, the head of the National Trust has claimed.
Hilary McGrady said it was the heritage and conservation charity’s job to stop ethnic minorities feeling the outdoors was “not a place for them”.
The trust’s director-general said research found minorities did not feel welcome and that the organisation had a duty to respond because it was “here for everyone”.
How very patronising.
Listing a “whole raft of reasons” which she said showed the countryside was not welcoming to non-white people, she told LBC: “Everything from: it’s not culturally something that they necessarily feel as if it’s part of what they do when they go there.
“They don’t necessarily know ‘what am I meant to wear, how do I behave? What’s a countryside code? I’ve never heard of it’.
She thinks ethnic minorities are stupid. “Them” as opposed to “us”. In need of guides and subtitles. Just look after the National Trust properties, you ridiculous woman. If people want to come they’ll come: if they don’t, they won’t.
In 2024, the charity Wildlife and Countryside Link claimed the countryside was a “racist colonial” white space “governed by white British cultural values”.
It prompted, Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, to say such claims were dangerous, adding that “we need to stop making white people feel guilty for being white”.
The previous year, academics specialising in British colonialism and hate studies were commissioned to record the “lived realities” of ethnic minorities living, working, or hiking in the country to gather evidence of “rural racism”.
They were clearly determined to find it.
Mick Hartley 